This afternoon Edna and I were working as we usually do on our own projects when she came to ask me the not-unusual question of the day, “what are we having for lunch?” I hadn’t really considered it; I mean, I realized that I’d become hungry without noticing it but I hadn’t really thought about it. When I was on my way to her place this morning I passed In-N-Out as I often do and that got stuck in my craw and I really couldn’t get the sweet succulence of an all-American double hamburger out of my mind. Sadly that would not do.

Both Edna and I have recently committed ourselves to eating better. There are a whole host of reasons behind that, we have our own reasons and we have some in common. She’s doing much better at it than I am though (and truth be told this is one of the primary reasons I like going to her place to work) and we’ve been talking about our options for a couple of days. So I went over and grabbed the first cookbook off of the shelves and started flipping through it. Inside of the Atkins for Life Low-Carb Cookbook I pretty quickly came upon a recipe for Crunchy Salmon Salad Wrap that looked awesome and it inspired us for this day’s lunch.

We kicked around a number of ideas for what we wanted to turn the inspiration into and we really went off into the deep end but it turned out really well. So well, in fact, that it inspired this blog. We both love to cook but when the pressure of needing to cook comes up it’s all too easy to lose your mind and just fall back on an old standby.  …like going to In-N-Out instead of turning on the stove.

The grand plan that we had was to do salmon wraps but to use fresh salmon instead of canned and then to just use romaine lettuce as the wrapping medium so we could avoid the tortillas that the book suggested.  Look for wild caught fish too over farm raised, it’s better for you, better for the environment, and it tastes WAY better.  Edna thought that it would be great to do a sesame ginger sauce of some sort, too, so I looked one up online and we doubled it but otherwise did it as presented.  Food N Whine has a discussion about a fantastic Sweet Soy Ginger Sauce which is basically just a bunch of stuff put together in a bowl and stirred. It should keep for a few days in the fridge and I think it’ll go great with a lot of different things.

• ½ c. soy sauce
• ½ c. mirin
• 1 t. grated or minced garlic
• 2 t. grated ginger
• 4 t. sesame oil
• 2 t. Sriracha

That’s it; mix it up and you’re good to go.

Then we tried to make mayonnaise. Yes, I can only say we tried. Edna’s blender must be the loudest blender ever created and it was running forever. It seemed like things were going well but… It just never whipped up. We’ll try again though another day and let everyone know what we did wrong. She dug into it a little later and it appears that our egg yolks may have been too cold. We’ll see if that holds next time we give this a shot.

The wraps themselves then are pretty flexibly built at the table by the consumer, that way folks can get exactly the balance they want from the flavors within. This is messy food to eat, so have plenty of napkins available.

• A good-sized salmon steak; a pound per person should more than sufficient (and will leave you leftovers for later!)
• vegetable oil for frying the fish
• salt and pepper
• Soy Ginger Sauce from above
• mayonnaise
• a cucumber
• two carrots
• some red cabbage, maybe an eighth of a head
• some dill
• romaine lettuce

The great thing about cooking as a team is that one person can run the stove while the other does washing and cooking prep. Edna is the fry master generally so she just took that role and… well, I was thinking I might have done something but I think I just cleaned up after her as she rocked all of the slicing and dicing and salad shooting.

The salmon steak should be cut into strips about an inch wide. Hit them with some salt and pepper and throw them into the frying pan with a little oil. We like to leave the skin on and leave the fish a little rare but since it’s right there in front of your eyes, let them be the judge of when it’s all done enough for you.

Jardiniere or julienne the cucumbers and grate the carrots and cabbage.  Put this stuff in a bowl, it can all mix together and will as folks serve themselves.  Put the dill onto a small dish and put some mayo on another small dish. Mixing the dill into the mayo may actually be even more effective now that I think about it. Put out the lettuce and the fish and have at it.

The way we were doing it was putting some mayo into the lettuce leaf, laying a slab of salmon onto it, then adding the vegetables and putting some soy sauce onto it all to top it off.

It was a-maz-ing.

10/10, would make again.