 No, this has nothing to do with the song. Rather, this is a discussion of my decision to improvise when it came to cooking dinner, almost burning down the kitchen in the process.
Yesterday, there were plans to do a background barbeque at a friends' place, and he and I stopped to grab some fish to do a fish grill. No one but the two of us actually bothered to show, so I ended up taking home two leftover, uncooked salmon filets. (We'd filled up on some awesome hummus and grilled ahi tuna steaks, so we didn't feel the need to have the salmon too.)
So tonight, of course, I'm going to cook the salmon. I decided to cook some pasta to go with it. That went without a hitch -- water, salt, pasta, not much you can mess up with that unless you're a total moron. However, I was going to prepare the salmon teriyaki style -- I could have sworn there was teriyaki sauce in the fridge, but there wasn't, and the pasta was already boiling so running out to get some wasn't an option.
So kitchen Macguyver mode went into effect! A little bit of oil, the last of the soy sauce packets I had hanging around from chinese deliveries past (somehow I ran out of bottled soy sauce in the fridge and failed to replenish it too!), some wasabi paste, a pinch of seasoning salt, garlic powder, squeezed lemon, and some cold sake. Shook that around in a ziplock bag, threw the fish in there for a minute, then threw it into a preheated oiled pan.
Flames. Four foot high flames when I threw the first piece of fish in. Maybe the pan pre-heated a bit too long? Perhaps I put too much alcohol in the marinade? In any case, flames. I'm glad I decided to pan-cook, because I have a freestanding George Foreman Grill that I'd usually use for something like this, and if I had, I probably would've lit the entire kitchen on fire, as there are cabinets above where that grill is whereas the stove just has a fan vent over it.
Horrible thing is, I don't have a fire extinguisher. When I saw the flames, the only thing I could do was jump back and pray that nothing caught fire and that the flame just went back down quickly (which it did fairly quickly). I think I need to get a fire extinguisher for the kitchen. I wonder if the landlord should be providing one of those, since I live in an apartment (code violation?).
Anyway, the kitchen didn't burn down, crisis averted, and that salmon was damn delicious! And as a grill cut, it came with the skin still on one side -- the oil and seasoning mixture crisped the skin up nicely, it was an awesome treat. The seasoning mixture also worked out perfectly as far as the fish flavor. Absolutely awesome taste! I was so happy with myself.
This does make me realize a strong need to replenish my fridge, though... |
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