Wanna know what would be cool? Arizona. I hear there’s one group there that’s worth meeting because they’re really diligent about reviewing proposals and getting back to people in a prompt manner. No bulk-flushing of email without reading stuff or anything like that.

Anyway, I’m not going to Arizona. I’m also not going to Australia either, at least not in the immediate term, as the Sunshine State I’m referring to is Florida and not Queensland. Probably just as well, as the major centres of Queensland are about 2000+ kilometres away from Greenock (as in Greenock Creek Winery and the Roennfeldt Road micro-bottlings).

Floridians read stuff. And pretty darn promptly too. Just saying.

I’m sort-of looking forward to this because my last eight trips to the state (2006 x 3, 2007 x 2, 2008 x 3) coincided with the arrival of a hurricane, and we’re months away from the Atlantic storm season so it should be all good. I also understand that the winter freeze the state was suffering from has ended.

This year’s kick-off looks pretty good: I’m flying a combination of Air Canada code-share and Star Alliance partners so while it’s going to be cramped and uncomfortable on the sequence of Canadair RJs I’m pretty sure that my Aeroplan status will ensure that I eventually make it there and home again.

YUL-IAD

The first leg already sucks because it’s a code-share to Washington-Dulles (the airport that takes the “dull” in its name seriously) and it’s United who’s handling the flight (boo…). They are just the worst Star Alliance partner but check-in was fairly straightforward today, though I suspect that it was a combination of my checking in online and there being no one else at their counter.

The checked baggage system at PET-Dorval failed but as I switched to Briggs & Riley’s Asian-airlines compliant luggage years ago, I could skip the line of 2000+ and head directly to security and INS. The new body scanners are now in place but one can refuse (for now) and go for a full body patdown; since I have a narcissist streak and don’t like anyone touching me to begin with, I elected for the scan. INS was a snap but at some point I’ll have to sign up for NEXUS and just hope that the retinal scanners don’t oh, burn out my retinas. I wonder if Steve and the Conservative entourage go for the scanners?

Nasty surprise – Maple Leaf Lounge Internet access is no longer free. CAD$9.95 for a 24 hour period, and it’s only valid 24 hours and within the Lounges themselves as there’s no partnering with other SA lounges. I guess there’s Boingo, but no 24-hour access plans across airports because it’s Bell that’s controlling the service in YUL (airport roaming requires *monthly* plan – one of Bell’s great idea to help pay for that HSPA network they just installed). Of course, I wouldn’t have this problem if I had a 3G modem but I’m too far down on the food chain to warrant one. I’ll guess I’ll just content myself by drinking the lounge’s free tonic water while cursing Colin Rovanesceau.

While I’m playing with my glass of tonic water, I’m sitting beside a guy who’s on the phone with his real estate agent. He seems to be trying to get an inspection set up for a house he’s interested in buying in Outremont but rather than questions on say, presence of urea insulation, dry rot and potential water damage, he’s concerned about soundproofing. Goes on and on and on about soundproofing. Wants the inspector to look inside the wall (hello? you haven’t bought the house yet) to make sure that there’s soundproofing installed. And to also make sure that they used special soundproof pipes (not soundproofing material around the pipes, special soundproof pipes), because he doesn’t want to hear his “little woman” make cooking noises or listen to dishwasher noises. (FYI) Miele makes a dishwasher that puts out less than 45 dBa but I guess he’s from the Fred Flintstone generation since the little woman has to get up early to make breakfast or something.

Troglodyte aspects aside, I’ve never quite seen someone that relaxed when it came to purchasing a house because the inspection’s going through and he hasn’t lined up his financing yet with the bank (“when he gets back from his trip”). Also been a while since I’ve seen someone so quick to miss the point. I’ll save the iMac joke for another post, but the whooshing sound was deafening as structural condition, roof, and infrastructure weren’t important. Just soundproofing.

This of course would have been better tolerated if Internet access was still free.

United (boo…) has gate slot 85 in the US terminal, meaning that it’s the furthest point in the terminal from the lounge, and that I’ll be getting some exercise in as I trudge over there. The flight itself is United’s (boo…) version of the Embraer 170 and for some reason the new travel system does not understand the concept of using Aeroplan status to oh, pick a seat that’s not right in front of the lavatory. I did manage to change, though United (boo…) goes out of its way to see if you want to *pay* them extra for extra legroom. Well, no, I just want a seat near the front of the plane and I want that free.

Take-off was on-time and they’re now using a larger cup for the complimentary refreshment (Seagram’s ginger ale) but the cabin crew didn’t let anyone move up into the Economy Plus seats even though they were all empty because no one paid for them. Does it improve my impression of United? Boo… hiss… (roll eyes now)

IAD – the “dull” in Dulles grows to new heights

Just how dull can Dulles get? Watch what happens when not one but *two* aircraft come down with the same mechanical failure.

The area surrounding Washington DC appears to be completely rid of snow but it looks like my clam quinoa risotto because everything’s the same shade of brown. Brown fields, brown trees, brown building tops. I think the area will be nicer when things start to bloom.

The United (boo…) flight landed on time and I hoofed it over to the Z Terminal (that’s a new one) since the United (boo…) Red Carpet lounges were too far from the next connector. No USAir club at IAD as far as I know. I don’t know when it was built but this definitely wasn’t there the last time I flew in/out of Dulles; wow – that was back in 2008 when I was on my way back from Vienna (ah, Austrian Airlines Business Class, how I miss you and your red jumper suit cabin crew).

It’s new. It’s shiny. It’s also desolate; not in a Children of the Corn kind of way but rather a “you’re in the part of the airport where everyone forgot that you exist” sense.

I found gate Z7 and since there was plenty of time, I beat a retreat out of Z and took their new commuter train (with that new car smell) over to B to find some food.

B is the Delta part of the terminal so I can see what Ronny would be faced with should she ever find herself in IAD. The B is for bargain!

City Wok seemed like a good idea, but then again, they were the only option that didn’t have an all-fried menu so I put in an order and did my Forrest Gump and patiently waited to see what I would get.

Friendly enough bunch in a food court sort of way with Hispanic FOH and Asians manning the wok and prep stations; one guy was using a cleaver to take his frustrations out on some char siu – lots of noise but very uniform squares of pork in spite of the rage.

Kung Pao shrimp. Okay, I actually had to ask what this was since it doesn’t exist in the Chinese culinary repertoire. Stir-fried dish served with white rice; it had red and green peppers, onions, water chestnuts, peanuts (amazing – they served peanuts in a litigious zone), 9 shrimp, ginger and a whack-load of raw garlic in a salty dark soy-based sauce. Not bad and they certainly didn’t skimp on the shrimp but I couldn’t finish everything because that garlic was an impressive “thwack!” to the palate.

Hot and sour soup. This was very good: black cloud ear, tofu, egg, lily bud bamboo and read chiles in a (slightly over-salty) broth. If I had to do this all over, I’d do a bigger soup and some little side instead of what I ordered.

So, back to Z in a train that smelled of Windex.

Back to recharging the hardware while waiting for the flight so that I have some power to continue “working” (no, seriously, I did have work to do). Then the announcement that the aircraft normally used to service the Charlotte run had a mechanical issue but that they’re flying in a replacement place from Reagan, so we’d be only 35 minutes late. Okay, it’s not United (boo…) but somehow that doesn’t work because the announcement’s being made at 1:55p and the revised departure is 2:10p. Then my P990i goes off and it’s USAir’s automat system telling me that I’m going to miss my Gainesville connector and to go see an agent. The nice lady behind the counter says that there’s nothing to worry about because the aircraft just left Reagan and is in range. In range? they’re what, 20 miles apart? The plan has to start landing procedures right after takeoff. Anyway the flight crew is pumped and ready to go and the plane touches down at 2:30p with a turnaround time of 20 minutes, which gives me exactly 18 minutes to get to the GNV flight once I arrive in Charlotte. I can do this – I’ve exchanged my crappy seat for one at the front of the plane.

Co-pilot comes back from pre-flight inspection and tells the captain that he needs to talk to him and my P990i gets another call from the automat. Uh-oh. I know what that means so I stake out the real estate in front of the podium for the cancellation call, which comes in while I’m pulling out my boarding passes.

Good thing! Turns out I don’t have to fly to Jacksonville and do the 90 minute drive to get to Gainesville. I can take the next flight to Charlotte and then take the last flight out to Gainesville directly. Okay then, that’s a plan. Too bad that the last flight is three hours later than my original arrival time, but it looks like I’ll get a crack at Charlotte’s Internet access after all.

The gate agent at Z9 is somewhat bewildered that everyone’s rushing the podium to board the flight but I guess she didn’t know about the sequential aircraft breakdowns and how people did so not want to stay in IAD. I get onboard and settle in, with Charlie the Mesa Air pilot deadheading to Charlotte sitting next to me. Am I missing something here? Spring must be coming because he’s hitting on the woman across the aisle, the man sitting behind me is trying to pick up the woman sitting behind me (in the literal biblical sense – he’s actually quoting scripture) and the two women in front are talking about how they can’t find people in clubs (no less). Just take off already.

Gah! What died?

The flight smells of a$$! Talk about one interminably long hour of flight time… we’re at cruising altitude and this USAir flight smells like a porta-potty. Breathe through your mouth, breathe through your mouth, don’t hyperventilate now.

IAD-CLT

We land. I’m in Charlotte. An hour of hyperventilating later, and I’m in Charlotte

I like Charlotte. The airport’s nice, the people are nice, and the Internet access is free across the entire airport.

That’s right – Charlotte-Douglas still has free Internet access; it’s slow access but it’s complimentary and free is always much, much better than not free. I somehow have 178 MB of email to transfer so someone must have been really attachment-happy. Haven’t had that since the J&T team decided that I needed to see the same email and associated attachments in quintuplicate (“best of the best” my a$$).

I don’t mind. I’m happy to be sitting in the USAir lounge in Charlotte; the air is a whole lot fresher than that RJ900 and apart from downloading that massive whack of messages, I have entertainment (business travelers thinking that the lounge is an extension of Ashley Madison) and potato chips to while away the time, and their pod machine is working and is cranking out palatable expresso. I’m also spending the time recharging all the electronics so that I can keep at it on the final leg. Good layover.

There’s a long walk over to E from the lounge but I don’t mind – CLT is very well laid out and it’s very pleasant to walk through.

No CLT NASCAR Café for me this time; I’m going to risk finding dinner in Gainesville since the flight should land just at 9:00p and Avis Preferred status means the car should be waiting for me.

CLT-GNV

Crap. I’ll land at GNV all right, but the aircraft’s number 19 for departure. So much for landing at 9. At least the cabin has a reasonable smell and they’ve given me the whole can of seltzer water (score!).

Dinner at Dragonfly

Nope. 9:43p touchdown and close to 30 minutes to get my vehicle means that Dragonfly closed well in advance of my getting out of the airport. I forgot that they don’t have a separate Preferred counter so my ride wasn’t ready for me and I even had to wait in line. Haven’t had to do that in a long while either. The two people ahead of me took the last G6 and the last Malibu (irrelevant – I have a “no Malibu” in my dossier) so I got a choice between an Aveo, a Kia Sportage and a Nissan Rogue. Aveo? While I’m sure that they’re fine, fine vehicles in their own right, I don’t need to be driving in Florida in one – there’s this general question of being able to survive bumps with the masses of SUVs and trucks that permeate the landscape.

It’s quite dark outside and there’s almost no one on the streets. I did pack my GPS; I don’t know Gainesville that well and it is not really that easy to get around when it’s dark.

The GPS says that Dragonfly is on the way to the hotel just to mock me, but the hotel is 7.2 miles away from the airport. And what was the replacement to dinner at the isakaya? The Clown. Sad but true, as the Golden Arches were the only option open outside of the Chihuahua.

Hilton

My friend Betsy tuned me onto the Hilton Garden Inn properties. No-nonsense stuff, with the important stuff like free water bottles, a cookie (that I don’t really need) and reliable free Internet access.

This one’s a bit out of the way (it’s close to a shopping complex) but easier to drive to and from where I’m going. They remembered my HHonors number and my free(!) bottles of water at check-in, but I was given an “accessible” room (which they swear up and down is in my HH profile – uh, no), then a room next to the guest laundry (Maytag industrial units definitely aren’t Miele-like for decibel output), then finally to where I’ll be holed up in until this is all over. It’s a “connecting room” but so long as the person doesn’t stay up watching pr0n all night I’ll be okay. Most importantly, there’s in-room coffee, the internet access is still free and the microwave actually worked in reheating without any resultant McNugget explosions.

They’ve got Travel Channel and there’s Anthony Bourdain on the Monday night loop so at least there’s background noise while I finish off the work I need to do. Looking forward to day 2 – there’s going to be galbi on my order.

Ah! I’ve made it to 100 posts and I’ve decided to put forward ikura and peas to commemorate the milestone. Besides, it’s almost spring.

Ingredients

• ikura (salmon roe)
• soy sauce
• mirin
• sake
• fresh fava beans
• fresh spring peas
• fresh snow peas
• wine salt

Preparation

Prepare marinade for salmon roe by combining three parts soy sauce, two parts mirin and one part sake. The flavor profile for this marinade is Japanese so use either a Japanese or Taiwanese soy sauce. Add the ikura to the marinade.

Shell the peas and the fava beans. De-string, cap and tail the snow peas. Bring a pot of salted water to a strong boil. Add the peas to the water and let cook no more than 15 seconds; remove with a spider and immediately place peas into ice water to halt cooking. Add the snow peas to the water and let cook up to two minutes, depending on the age of the peas (very young snow peas will require under one minute); remove with a spider and immediately place into ice water. Add the fava beans and let cook no more than 90 seconds; remove with a spider and immediately place into ice water.

Drain peas and beans, set aside spring peas. Slice snow peas into julienne. Peel fava beans, taking care not to split them in half.

Service

Carefully assemble julienned snow peas onto service plate. Place spring peas and fava beans onto plate alongside and atop snow peas. Top with marinated ikura, using a bit of the marinade to dress the vegetables. Sprinkle pinch of wine salt and serve immediately.

Notes

When I first made this dish, I was in experiment mode and wasn’t too thrilled that a salad was the best thing I could come up with when faced with really fresh spring vegetables.

After some reflection, this is actually one dish I am really happy with – it’s tasty, vibrant and visually appealing. One needs really good ingredients and really good soy sauce, mirin and sake to get it to be tasty and vibrant so no skimping. Since it’s so reliant on fava beans and peas, it’s highly seasonal and worth a revisit especially as spring is less than two calendar weeks away.

The only really negative about quinoa that I can think of is that the stuff is freaking expensive outside of the Andes. Oh – there’s that little issue with the saponin (high fibre + saponin = funzies all around), but proper rinsing of quinoa takes away its laxative surprise.

Risotto? Classic Italian rice dish originating from Piedmont that everyone knows and many know how to make badly. However, when it’s made well, it’s one of the best rice dishes that’s available in the West. The boundaries of what constitutes a risotto is being pushed forward by Carlo Cracco, Heston Blumenthal and others, but I suspect that Cracco’s having a bit of difficulty right now over the molecular gastronomy ban. I’ve given risotto a bit of a push myself, and at some point I’ll finish writing up that post.

I was playing around with quinoa to see what else could be done with it ouside of classical Peruvian applications and what the vegans are touting, and as it is rice-like in how it cooks, tried it out in a risotto application.

Ingredients

• quinoa
• white onion, finely minced to a near-purée (can be regular white or sweet onion)
• green onion, finely minced
• white wine
• littleneck clams, shucked, clam liquor retained
• chicken broth (broth should be hot)
• Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese
• unsalted butter
• olive oil
• pepper

Preparation

Proportions are approximate.

Heat 5 mL / 1 teaspoon each olive oil and butter in  a saucier. When the foaming of the butter starts to subside, add the minced white onion (approximately 1/4 cup) and soften. Add 250 mL / 1 cup quinoa, and stir to coat the quinoa grains. Continue to cook until quinoa is slightly browned. Add 250 mL / 1 cup white wine (something with a bit of acidity). Stir and continue to simmer quinoa until liquid is almost evaporated. Add chicken broth a ladle at a time to quinoa and continue stirring. Add additional broth as liquid in saucier continues to evaporate until quinoa is almost completely cooked. Add clam liquor and ground pepper to taste, remove from heat and fold in small cubes of cold butter and grated cheese.

Sauté clams quickly with minced green onion.

Service

Plate quinoa into middle of service vessel. Top with sautéed clams and grate over additional cheese. Serve immediately.

Notes

I thought it then and I think it now, but this is a dish that is very “brown” – the quinoa is brown, the clams are brown, the Parmigiano-Reggiano is beige, which is a pale brown.

The quinoa offers us very fluffly grains when cooked this way, but it is not “soupy” as there is inadequate starch content to produce that texture. This dish works very well as an opener in a tasting menu, but I can’t see it being served as a primo primarily because of the cost.

If I had to do this again, I’d probably use dashi and sake rather than chicken stock and wine to better harmonize with the clams since both will play to the marine umami that the clams bring. if I wasn’t using the clams, the “classic” method works very nicely. Oh, and something with color to break up the brown.

Oops – guess I shouldn’t have posted my upcoming shopping spree since it may interfere with being granted entry into Italy. Okay, so that’s a joke, but this isn’t: Italian Ministry of Health secretary Francesca Martini is wielding the banhammer against molecular gastronomy as an entire class of food preparation.

The Ministry thinks that “for the security of its citizens”, restaurants should no longer be permitted to use certain additives (powders) as well as “gaseous substances” (specifically liquid nitrogen) since their use ruins a perfect cuisine. A fundamentalist traditionalist gastronomic viewpoint to be certain, but the citizenry is still exposed to these additives as the ban does not extend to the food industry, and I’m guessing someone failed chemistry in high school since the “liquid” in “liquid nitrogen” describes that the nitrogen is is a liquid.

“L” for L*ddite maybe?

• Link: Caput Mundis Cibus, who broke the original story
• Link: Gazzetta Ufficiale della Repubblica Italiana, the repository to view the text of the law

I am by no means trying to compare local dim sum offerings to Vancouver, which was recently named by Condé Nast Traveler magazine as the city with the best Chinese food. Period. True? Maybe. I’ll give YVR the nod as the best in North America following the 1997 exodus prior to the repatriation of Hong Kong, but I’d have to make an eating comparison between Taipei and Vancouver just to see for myself which city is really the top of the pile.

Local dim sum however, remains in flux ever since the opening of the Brossard branch of the Kam and the closure of the Chinatown Tong Por. Chinatown’s main stalwarts (Ruby Rouge and the Kam Fung) continue to be plagued with inconsistencies with the RR suffering more than the Kam, there are rumors that the Tong Por VSL is falling to consistency issues of its own, and Zao’s has decided to rename itself “La Maison Foo Lam”, all the while trying to find a footing to compete against the others. I wasn’t in the mood to find out what Brossard’s latest daikaijū (大怪獣, giant monster) restaurant addition was like (initial reports aren’t good) so I elected to try the Kam’s “other” surburban outpost – La Maison Kam Fung in Saint-Laurent.

Okay, let’s get it over with - the Kam is located in a strip mall. A rather small one next door to the Wyeth facility (now part of the new P), with somewhat limited parking that it shares with a newly-opened breakfast place for the Bois-franc straight-laced in need of waffles and breakfast sausages.

I think my family’s been going to dinner at this Kam for the better part of oh, 15-20 years or so and apart from re-upholstering the chairs, I don’t think they’ve made any significant changes to the decor since that first visit. Two tanks of live seafood at the entrance (one with lobsters and crab, one with live fish), the giant phoenix and dragon wall plaque for weddings, dance floor, disco ball, red velvet-y everything. This was the restaurant where we learned not to be present when a Vietnamese wedding is being held (non-stop mandatory table-by table karaoke including disco-beat renditions of “Ave Maria” sung in Vietnamese – think about it). Those are really only during the summer months so it’s a pretty good bet that one can avoid that during the winter.

The Kam uses pushcarts and it’s actually the first time I noticed that the people doing the pushcart 1) all wear the same orange visor and apron that I see almost everywhere else and 2) they speak Mandarin (!). The language support is a surprise. Unlike the Chinatown branch, geography has a less significant effect at this locale, but the staff recognized me even without my parents present so I got a pretty good table (yes!). I was also surprised that it wasn’t as packed as my last, as there were maybe only about a third of the tables occupied at 11:00 am, but who knows? Maybe people were still flipping between the Olympics and Coronation Street. Then again, it really did fill up by noon, and with a very good representation of Saint-Laurent’s multicultural population and many large groups taking up the big tables. All good for turnover, and most impressively, enthusiastic eating and very little squeamishness from what I saw.

The meal

Well, it’s dim sum: whatever was available that looked interesting on the pushcart. I saw the following:

• Assorted steamed dumplings (餃, Dumpling; 餃子 gau zi, Gow gee)
• Har gau (蝦餃 shrimp dumpling)
• Siu mai (燒賣 pork dumpling)
• Char siu bau (叉燒包, steamed bun)
• “Phoenix talons” (鳳爪 Fung zao alias chicken feet) – saw it but didn’t order
• Spare ribs (排骨 paai gwat, páigǔ) – ordered the beef short ribs version, saw but did not order pork ribs
• Tofu skin roll (腐皮捲 fu pei guen) – saw it but didn’t order
• Chive Dumplings – saw it but didn’t order
• Shrimp and Chive Dumplings (韭菜虾饺) – saw it but didn’t order
• Beef leaf tripe (牛柏葉, niu bai ye)
• Lotus leaf rice (糯米雞, nuo mi ji) – saw it but didn’t order
• Crispy fried squid (魷魚鬚 yau yu sou) – saw it but didn’t order
• Stuffed crab claw (釀蟹鉗, niàng xiè qián) – saw it but didn’t order
• Spring roll (春捲 cheun gyun) – saw it but didn’t order

There was a whack load of other things (especially fried and baked) that I didn’t order, including daikon cake, Singapore noodles, gai lan (too late) chili and salt-baked capelin (too late) though it was more that therre’s only so much that I can eat. There weren’t too many of those “special plates” (they’re generally $$$, but it tops off at $5.50 here) that I could spot, but then again, I wasn’t going to hang around the restaurant just to see. Apart from the offerings on the pushcarts, the Kam had a stock menu offering the stalwarts (e.g. General Tso’s chicken) for the more squeamish or for those not in the mood for smaller bites.

I was fairly impressed by the different steamed dumplings this go, as they were greatly improved from the previous times. The skins were not translucent as with other places, but they were thin, not cloying and had a nice chew to them. Fillings were very savory and weren’t skimpy on the key ingredients. My favorite of these was one I couldn’t identify, but it was a seafood filling mixed with peas, corn and water chestnut for textural and color differences. The organ meats were limited to the leaf tripe, which was cut into larger strips and flavored with fried julienned ginger. Interesting. The char siu bao is one of the nicers ones I’ve had in the city and has remained consistent with a nice bread that was slightly sweet from the milk and a savory filling that complemented it. I also liked the two vegetable dishes (eggplant and peppers) as they were light and retained their respective tastes even though they were fried dishes.

The one dish I was disappointed with was the chili and salt baked shrimp, which was okay in flavor but suffered from way too much breading. The dish calls for the shrimp to be dusted in flour, not dipped in beer batter. I seem to be the only one in disagreement since they were being popped down pretty quickly at other tables.

Dessert. I saw egg tarts, I saw jello (because there’s always room for jello) and I saw silken tofu (豆腐花 dou fu fa). I didn’t order any of it because of lack of space.

Wine

In nearly two decades I’ve never actually noticed whether or not they have wine. I think they do since there is a wine rack behind their bar, but the only alcoholic drinks I’ve ever seen people consume is beer. Standard domestic mix, plus Heineken plus Tsingtao (if you really must). I stuck with tea and ice water though these two guys at the next table sucked down a 12-pack of Coke with their meal (that’s a lot of high-fructose corn syrup).

Photos

[View with PicLens]

Impressions

The last time I did dim sum at the Saint-Laurent Kam (wow, maybe more than a year now), I came away thinking that it was pretty ordinary. Tasty enough, but not great and not something I’d be springing out the door to try.

The Kam has improved their dim sum since that time. It’s still not the most exciting place for dim sum (excitement? it’s across the street from the southern border of Bois-franc), but it’s playing to what its clientele likes by offering competently made mainstream items. Can’t complain at all - seafood was tasty, pork was tasty, vegetables were nice, unobtrusive service. I appreciated this “no surprises” excursion today as I’m about to suffer from a headache coming out of the Big Easy.

The difficult portion of this exercise was actually all the unnecessary steps I had to take due to the less than spectacular sanmai oroshi. I actually wanted to have bones at the end of my char experiment, but rather I found that I had to first find something to do with the big pieces of trim, all the meat left on the frame and all the leftover bits post-fillet.

Fortunately, I’m fairly good on the practicality side (as I still want… a pony!), but the trick continues to be able to recoup as much as possible, use as much as possible and do it in a way that just doesn’t look well, gross. Having found interesting things to do with the belly meat and the scrapings from the remaining frame and trim, what exactly does one do with the skeleton, the head and all the assorted bits and pieces of fin?

I already mentioned that bone crackers (deep-fried fish bones) are pretty popular in Asia, but the prospect of a deep-fried fish head typically generates shrieks (and not the good kind) in the West. So, as with land animal bones, make broth. But not just any kind of broth – dashi (出汁).

Ingredients

• Head, cleaned frame, fins and remaining fish trim from arctic char
• Kombu (昆布)

Preparation

Split the fish head in half so that there is a left half and a right half. Cut the frame into shorter pieces small enough to fit easily into a pot.

Arrange the head, the pieces of fish frame, the fins and any remaining trim onto a baking tray as an even layer.

Roast the trim at 177ºC / 350ºF until bones are golden and the fins are slightly crispy.

While bones are roasting, start the kombu dashi by adding kombu to cold water (upper left photo). The amount used depends on personal taste; in this demonstration the dried strips are approximately 2 cm x 8 cm in size for approximately 750 mL water. Bring the water to simmering point and allow dashi to gently simmer until bones complete roasting (approximately 20 minutes in this case).

Transfer the roasted bones and any remaining liquid from the roasting into the kombu dashi (upper right photo). Continue to gently simmer the bones and kombu for another 45 minutes, skimming if necessary to retain clarity.

At the end of the simmering period (lower left photo), strain the dashi through a fine mesh sieve (line with cheesecloth if required) to obtain the completed clear dashi (lower right photo).

Notes

This is one of those “no effort” ways to use up what is often discarded when prepping fish, however it can only be used when one has really fresh fish. Arctic char and seagoing salmonids fit the bill, though char itself is more delicate (refined?) than say salmon.

The bones can be retained to make a more classic Western fish fumet, but roasting and then using them to make dashi results in a more delicate, umami-rich, clear broth that has many more applications than fumet does. Like soups, the base for chawan mushi, the base for yose nabe, sauces and so forth, though one does have to be careful not to add anything which will overpower it – that would be a waste of the effort used to make it in the first place.