A recipe in which onions are paired with salmon

Marvel at my nice cuts please.

Should you be searching for a way to immediately soothe your soul, look no further than clips of Julia Child and Jacques Pépin cooking together on Julia & Jacques Cooking at Home, which was filmed, as the name suggests, at Julia's house in Cambridge. I like to think ​of them being forced together while their adoring audience watches them 24/7, Big Brother-style, as they putter around and cook. But in reality, despite their different backgrounds, the two famed chefs came together over both their love of French food and also their simple attitudes towards cooking: They each possessed deeply calming energies. In a piece published to align with what would have been Julia's 100th birthday, Jacques described the first time she met his wife Gloria at the aforementioned home thusly: "Julia embraced Gloria and me in a big bear hug, which, considering our disparate sizes, ended us up in the middle of her bosom."

He also went into detail about how the show came about, through cooking presentations they did together at Boston University. Any concerns I may have had over whether I'd projected a different dynamic onto the pair than they felt themselves was swept away by his description of their time together:

We argued on stage, stealing each other’s mise en place. We felt comfortable together, had a good rapport, a good time, and we respected each other. Our affectionate disagreements resulted in heated, opinionated discussions; we had conviction, enthusiasm and passion for our métier.

My father's copy of the book that came from the show by the same name (branding: it doesn't have to be so complicated) was--I believe--snatched up by my older sister, so I don't have it myself, which is a shame, because apparently the two basically engage in a polite fencing match in its pages, showing the different ways they each like to execute certain recipes. Not owning it myself is even more of a disappointment given the detail that Jacques reveals about his memories of cooking with Julia, noting that the two "did not follow recipes" but made them up as they filmed the shows. (I MEAN.) But a recipe that I do have from the book because it is noted in Fave Recipes is called Salmon (ala Pépin).

There are about a zillion different ways to make salmon that are all about the same: steamed or baked, with butter, capers/dill/parsley/lemon/salt/pepper all combined in some arrangement. Salmon (ala Pépin) set itself apart when I was considering dishes to make because, despite how close it is to the many salmon recipes I've made before that fall into this category before, it has onions in it. Onions are great, but they seemed unnecessary and "off" to me in this dish, which meant of course that I must try it. Another thing Jacques does in this recipe that I couldn't remember trying before is dry steaming the salmon.

Fish is so easy to make it seemed like it wouldn't hurt to pair it with two sides that take a little more time. So I chose artichokes, checking another recipe from Fave Recipes off the list, albeit one I've made many times before. I went outside the book though and just steamed them in an inch or two of water after I'd rubbed them with a cut lemon on their little bottoms. My dad was from Iowa, and as we all know, Midwesterners have stereotypically tended towards boiling vegetables and overcooking meats. There's no need--in my opinion!--to do that to an artichoke, though I do constantly wish I would get it together enough to buy a collapsable steamer basket to make steaming even easier than it is now. Given that they are literally $8, there's actually no reason I haven't, other than laziness and unwillingness to add yet another item to my already full-to-the-brim kitchen.

I also made rice, to soak up the salmon's onion/caper sauce. Rice is one of those foods that people tell you is hard to make and then you grow up and you're like, why did anyone say this is hard and why bother with a rice cooker? (My parents were given one for some holiday and never used it and now I see why.)

So that was all stuff I'd done before. Now to the skepticism-inducing salmon: This recipe calls for it to be salted on both sides, then placed skin-side down into a hot pan, then covered, so the whole thing steams. It's actually a little nuts how fast it cooks: 7 minutes and it was totally done. (As an aside, here's a nice breakdown of the differences between farmed and wild salmon if you're looking for one; a shocking spoiler is that both can be bad for the environment and you really just need to ask your fishmonger what he's got available and where it came from. As usual, being an active participant in the weights of this world is not as simple as we would like it to be!)

Before; After.

After the fish is cooked you place it on a plate to rest and use the pan to make your sauce. That means throwing in the onions in butter for so little time I was honestly thrown: just 30 seconds. Then you add the capers (san their brine, though I always use the juice even when they say not to--I love it!) and some lemon juice. The sauce is done, and you can now pour it all over your salmon and rice, which acts as a very nice sponge and ensures that now sauce goes to waste just sitting on the plate, but ends up in your stomach where it belongs.

I still don't know that I was wowed by the onions, though I did like the way the lemon and capers pickled them a little, which made a nice tangy contrast to the salmon. It probably didn't matter because artichokes are one of my favorite foods on earth (as is lobster; I seem to enjoy things that are a challenge to eat which I'm sure a therapist would have some comments about) so any time I can eat them I'll be happy. They even make a great meal all by themselves if you're not super hungry. You'll notice in the recipe above my dad says to use mayonnaise as a dipping sauce; again, that's the Midwesterner in him but I adore it (with a little lemon as well) so much that use it as a dip for asparagus, much to the shock of my dinner companions. It tastes amazing so please STEP OFF until you've tried it. I bet if I called it an aioli you'd all shut up.

That hostility on my part aside, my reaction to the foods on this plate (comfort with the familiar, hesitation at the un) reminded me of the insightful comments I got about my dislike of celery last time around. I am including a few of them in the hopes that they will spur you to keep pushing yourself flavor-wise the way they inspired me, even if we're just talking about little basic biases and not something as monumental as avoiding tripe.

From Ryan: "Yah you need the celery for that bitterness / fullness of flavor I think! The asian trinity is ginger/garlic/scallion and the ginger performs that purpose. But you don't want ginger in here. Anyway celery is so cheap don't feel bad using two and tossing the rest?"
From Julia: "I like celery in small chunks that 'melt' into things. In this case I would have thrown in some diced celery root with the potatoes and a few celery leaves from the tops to finish. I also find celery salt a delightful addition to potato and other mayo based salads." From Madonna: "I don't like celery either. I don't mind the flavor, but I don't like biting into pieces of it."

Same.
KATE

P.S. Going back in topics a few weeks, here's a fun article in the Wall Street Journal about how everyone loves chicken cutlets. Sarah Karnasiewicz, you're not reading this newsletter, but clearly, I agree.