The Anna Maria Island Sun Newspaper

Vol. 15 No. 24 - April 8, 2015

FEATURE

Food and Wine

Of salmon and quantum mechanics

Anna Maria Island Sun News Story

SUBMITTED

Joe “I am not a chef” Coury.

I’m not a chef. I guess because I’m a scientist – a chemist to be exact – I can follow a recipe and measure out portions with far more accuracy than the average chef, but I am no chef.

The problem is that I vacation with chefs. John Horne and his lovely wife, Amanda, of Anna Maria Oyster Bar fame, are both very good chefs and very good friends of mine, and we take winter vacations together to Telluride, Colo., most every year.

I am usually in charge of planning the trip, and I can tell you that there’s no greater stress than looking for a rental home with a kitchen that meets John and Amanda’s standards! But the stress doesn’t stop when we enter the home and John and Amanda declare it worthy. Nooo.

For some reason, our merry band of travelers (Did I mention that other chef friends come along with us?) decided long ago that each couple would choose a night and prepare dinner for the rest of the group. Believe me, after an entire day of après ski (Do you really think we spend our time skiing?), a non-chef does not want a bunch of real chefs sitting around the bar – another must-have in a rental home and usually situated close to the kitchen – and observing his cooking skills.

Stress

People handle stress in a lot of different ways. Me, well I do what a lot of men do and had a couple of New Belgium Brewery’s Sunshine Wheat beers before venturing into the kitchen on my assigned night to begin preparing dinner. Of course, John had to set up his laptop at the bar with his favorite libation just to see the show.

I pulled out my carefully selected recipe for chili-spiced salmon and a plethora of volume-measuring tools (Remember, I’m a chemist.) and began to actually feel like a chef. The beer was helping. I thought that I would pre-empt remarks from John by politely asking advice from him as to how much salmon each of our guests might like.

In delivering the advice, he added a primer on how to cut fish and thus remind me that I wasn’t a real chef. How the heck was I supposed to know that you slice the fish with a precise 45 degree angle to keep the filet from curling up? My attempts to reduce my stress level by asking John politely for advice failed, of course, and I was now in what John later referred to as full panic-stricken mode!

But I carefully chose this recipe to produce a wonderful meal requiring as few real chef skills as possible. How hard could it be to mix up a bunch of dry spices, coat the now perfectly-cut filets in the dry spices and cook the dang fish?

I selected two oven-proof pans and browned the now well-coated fillets, skin down, of course, over a 2 to 3 minute period. John, of course, set aside his laptop and was now fully occupied by his libation and watching my pan-handling skills. The gas stove top in the wonderful kitchen that was within the wonderful home that I chose was operating perfectly. The evenly-heated pans were browning the fillets nicely.

I was beginning to feel confident! I felt like a real chef! But then disaster struck. Without referring to my carefully-selected recipe, I opened the door to the giant oven preheated to 425 degrees and gracefully transferred the pans to the oven and slammed the door with real chef-like authority!

I looked at my watch and noted when 7 minutes would pass – a little more time than recommended by my carefully-selected recipe because I am a scientist, and I know how to adjust cooking time for altitude. Looking up at John with a broad smile on my face knowing very well that I was impressing him, my grin immediately disappeared when with a nonchalance that only a real chef can exude, John said, “Aren’t you going to flip those fillets before putting them in the oven?”

Dang! Almost to the goal line and stopped dead on the one yard line. Of course, our little merry band of real chef travelers while enjoying the meal (It did turn out quite tasty.) did not let me get off so easily. In the middle of enduring the joking – me, being the scientist of the group, decided to turn the tables and embarrass my chef friends letting them know that while I might not know a lot about cooking, I do know a thing or two about that mysterious branch of physics known as quantum mechanics.

I looked directly at my best friend, John, and said, “But you don’t know what planck time is!”

John finishes savoring the moist salmon for a second, looks up, and without missing a beat says, “It’s the length of time you soak cedar planks in water before using them to cook salmon on a grill.”

It turns out that real chefs can be real smart and real good friends.


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