Salmon in the summer...delish.
We loves us some salmon. And by “us” I mean The Husband, The Dog and myself. The cat, strangely, only likes the cheapest cat food on the planet, which is a blessing, I guess. The Dog gets the salmon skin after it’s cooked, and her coat is very shiny as a result. She’s also a very good girl when she smells the salmon come home!
We get our salmon every Saturday morning from the Halaby’s stall at our farmer’s market. We often get halibut, tuna, swordfish, Mexican sea bass and shrimp too, but salmon is a given. And it’s gorgeous—The Husband will only eat this salmon. Doesn’t matter if the greatest restaurant in the world offered it, he’d turn it down. Did I mention he was picky? (That said, he did like the salmon last night at our friend Ryan’s house–outstanding meal!–but it was in a salad.)
So I decided to bathe it in our favorite grilling marinade of late: miso, garlic and chives in either butter or oil. I adapted this from a Sunset Magazine recipe (possibly the best magazine ever published in the history of magazines, up there with The New Yorker), where they were using it as a melting topper on grilled steaks. The Husband decided we didn’t need it for the steak (after I made it, natch), but I decided to marinate the shrimp in it for the grill.
Dear reader, it was delicious on the shrimp. The saltiness of the miso and the tang of the garlic was perfect against the sweetness of the fresh shrimp, and we’ve used it several times since. Since I still had all those veggies left over from the Chinese farmer’s market stand, it made sense to use the miso marinade on the salmon and make a stir fry to accompany.
And it worked great, using grapeseed oil instead of the butter and slathering it on the salmon. I also worked out the whole saltiness problem with the stir fry–I used WAY too much oyster sauce. The brand I chose is a very salty one. Please taste your oyster sauce before chucking in your stir fry, and add only to your taste!
And without further ado, the recipe:
Miso, Garlic and Chive Marinade
Use on any kind of seafood—we’ve now used it on shrimp, lobster and salmon.
1 stick of butter (or use grapeseed oil)
3 Tbs. of miso paste (I use Westbrae Natural Organic Mellow Brown Rice Miso, and it lasts in the fridge for literally a year!)
2 Tbs. chopped fresh chives (I’m lucky enough to have some in the garden)
4 cloves of garlic, chopped fine, pressed or grated with a fine microplane grater
Fresh ground pepper
Melt the butter over low heat, and add the rest of the ingredients. I let it cool before using it as a marinade, and I used the grapeseed oil when I made it for the salmon. You could use coconut oil in this too for a different taste.
To use it as a topper for steaks, as Sunset suggests, don’t melt the butter. Let it soften, add the other ingredients and mix well. Scrape out onto a large piece of plastic wrap, and shape into a log. Refrigerate. When ready to serve the steaks, slice the flavored butter thickly and place on the top of the steak. Although I can’t attest to how good this tastes, but if Sunset recommended it, it’s got to be good.
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