Asian Glazed Salmon

Remember the other day when I mentioned that I can't cook fish at all, ever, anyway, no way, no how, not ever except breaded? It seems that I have proven myself wrong. So anyone who's keeping a mental file on my cooking abilities, first of all - I can now cook fish, and second of all - um...why are you keeping track of this? Dude, you're freaking me out a little bit.

Ok, "I can now cook fish" may be overstating the issue a little. I followed a recipe a couple of weeks ago - but last night, I made up my own. Which means you might as well just go ahead and call me a poissonier.

What did I concoct that was so good? Something there's a million recipes already floating around for. But that's ok. I'm confident in my non-creativity. You know why? Because I'm eating some more of this salmon as we speak.





Asian Glazed Salmon

• 2 six ounce salmon fillets
• 3/4 cup soy sauce
• 1 Tbsp canola oil
• 1" piece of ginger, peeled and grated
• 2 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 1 Tbsp rice vinegar

Mix all of the ingredients except the salmon in a small saucepan. Cook over medium heat, stirring frequently, until sugar is dissolved and it is merrily simmering.

Remove from heat and cool for about 10 minutes.

Pour the marinade over the salmon fillets.

Marinade overnight in the fridge or for about an hour at room temperature.

Turn on your broiler.

Lightly grease a pan (I used a square pan, but a cookie sheet will work just as well - the marinade will just make a bigger burn spot you'll have to clean later).

Place salmon fillets (skin side down, if the skin's still on - mine had skin) in the pan.

Brush the fillets with some extra marinade (or be like me and decide that dirtying another utensil is too much work and just pour a little on each fillet).

Place pan in the oven, 6-7" from the broiler.

Cook for 15 minutes, or until the salmon easily flakes and is thoroughly cooked.

Boil the remaining marinade and serve on the side as a sauce.



Notes:
Last night, I just let it marinade for an hour on the counter while I went grocery shopping, then came home and popped it under the broiler. It was so good that I was glad I had only fixed half the salmon, because I used the leftover marinade/sauce to marinade the remaining salmon overnight. That extra time in the juices didn't really seem to change the flavor though.

Now that I'm looking at the recipe, that seems like a LOT of brown sugar to me. If I were just finding the recipe, I'd immediately plan on cutting that down. But it really wasn't overly sweet - although the fact that I used high-octane soy sauce (translation: I grabbed the wrong bottle and came home with the non-low-sodium version) may have helped to counter the sugar somewhat.