a dish with an impressive pedigree...

we joke a lot about recipes that require you to have previously cooked a whole different meal in order to obtain one (or more) ingredient for whatever dish you happen to be making at present. something like...

me: the first step of this recipe says to heat duck fat in a skillet over medium heat. 

him: is there a step zero-point-five telling you to cook a duck and save the fat?

me: that would have been helpful.

pretty much.

that being said, it is not uncommon to find us making a meal that includes parts of an earlier meal. not because we like to make life complicated, but because we try our best to avoid waste. beyond that, there is a world of flavor in previously-cooked foods. a bone from a roast or the carcass of a chicken can be the start of a phenomenal pot of soup (like our fridge-cleaning soup from last Winter). if there is flavor to be had, we put it to good use.

then there are times when things get taken a bit too far, as was the case with the delicious salmon i had for lunch.

said dish began earlier in the week, when the animator removed a piece of pork shoulder from the freezer and announced that he would be making char siu. now, i can hear you wondering what pork shoulder has to do with salmon. that is the point. it is a story about how something that should be relatively simple becomes completely absurd. 

char siu pork is one of those magical foods that we would enjoy once in a while, usually when it is prepared by someone who we assumed had to undergo many years of special training to produce the elusive combination of flavor that defines the dish. turns out you can get the same results at home (thank you, Google!), and it is laughable how ridiculously simple it is to make. so now, this once-special dish is part of the effortless lineup we like to refer to as "Wednesday food". 

so, he made char siu pork, and it was amazing (as always). he skipped roasting the meat on the metal rack this time around, and just dumped it (and all the marinade) into the baking pan, turning the meat frequently during the cooking time. the resulting dish had all the flavor of char siu, but a thicker, stickier surface that was closer to classic American bbq, it was sooooooo good. 

this is when the crazy began. 

we were putting away the leftovers, and i was lamenting getting rid of all the super-sticky sauce clinging to the bottom and sides of the pan. so, i added a splash of hot water to deglaze it, let that liquid cool back to room temperature, then dumped it over some (frozen) pieces of chicken and left them in the fridge to defrost/marinate for a day.... or two, as they were still half-frozen the next day. then we proceeded to have an amazing meal that featured char-siu-pork-flavored roasted chicken.

and, as we were cleaning up from that meal, i joked that there was still enough sauce clinging to the roasting pan to use as a marinade for some other thing.

him: it's like a turducken. you can add another animal and make it pork-flavored-chicken-flavored. 

he was too busy laughing to realize that i had removed the two pieces of salmon that were lurking somewhere in the back of the freezer. i did the same thing as before: deglazed, cooled, then poured the marinade over the (frozen) fish.

thus was born char-siu-pork-flavored-roasted-chicken-flavored salmon... a dish that (literally) requires that you first prepare two other meals. talk about a dish with an impressive pedigree! and—absurdity aside—it was incredibly delicious. 

the flavor of salmon can be a bit... well... assertive (a fact which is off-putting to a certain animator). however, this... uhm.... strength of character is what makes it a perfect canvas for such a powerful marinade. [random aside: my maternal grandfather owned a fishing vessel, so everyone on that side of the family was more or less raised on a steady diet of things from the sea. the phrase "it tastes too fishy" is incompatible with my DNA.]

i cooked the salmon at 375°F for about five minutes, then switched the oven to broil for another couple minutes, brushing the last bits of that precious sauce over the top to encourage a lovely, toasty surface. 

naturally, i served it up with some rice that was left over from last night's dinner.

best part is, he hates salmon... which means i have that second piece left over for yet another meal.  

and, yes... i am officially declaring the thrice-previously-used marinade (finally) done!