Culinary Adventures with Camilla

from amazon.com This month the  Pass the Cookbook  crew - under the leadership of Kita, the culinary force behind  Pass the Sushi  - is cooking Alton Brown's I'm Just Here for the Food .  This post contains an amazon affiliate link at the bottom - for the book. Our three choices this month were for skirt steak, Tres Amigos, and eggplant parmesan. I opted for the second one! Sort of. I have to be honest, I am not good at translating two dimensions (words) into three dimensions (real-life). So, I cannot even imagine what this dish was supposed to look like! Sorry. I'm thinking some kind of rosette: a scallop wrapped in petals of salmon and halibut. In any case, I say that I 'sort of' made it because I skipped the halibut completely and used some fresh gravlax as the salmon part. And, as for my name - Seafood Kisses 'n' Hugs - I thought the scallops looked liked 'O's and I formed the gravlax into 'X's. Love...xoxo...get it? ...

Making my own gravlax had never occurred to me. Until I heard a quick recipe mentioned on NPR's The Splendid Table . I was on my way to Huckleberry Hill for a hill work-out, but it haunted me during my run and I swung by Whole Foods on my way home to pick up some wild-caught salmon and give it a go. Here's a link to the recipe as posted on thesplendidtable.org. I used it as a starting point, but made several modifications to fit the ingredients I had in my kitchen. 1/2 C coarse sea salt 1/2 C raw turbinado sugar 1 t ground black pepper 3 springs fresh dill splash of absinthe 2 pieces of wild-caught salmon, well matched in size and shape, if possible Mix the salt, sugar, and pepper together. Spoon a third of the mixture on a piece of plastic wrap and place one of the salmon pieces on top of it, skin-side down. Put half of the remaining salt mixture on top of the salmon. Drizzle the filet with absinthe. Sandwiching the fresh dill in between, fit the other piece o...