Chaos Magnet

Memories of fish

When I was a kid, I lived in New York City, and every Sunday, my dad would go out and get "appetizing." Now, appetizing, in case this is a word that is either regional or (more likely) peculiar to my family, is a whole range of food, including bagels, cream cheese, and various fish, including sable, creamed pickled herring, and lox heads and wings.

Now, if you've never heard of them, lox heads and wings are not what they sound like. Lox, as you may know, is smoked salmon, and most of the time it's cut into thin slices and put on cream cheese and bagels. That means that when they fillet the salmon, they have to cut off the bony art near the head (the lox head) and the part around the fins (the lox wings).

Lox heads and wings are really hard to eat, and eating them is how I got my reputation for liking food that's a challenge. They've got a lot of bone and cartilage in them, and after I've eaten a few of them, I practically need a shower to get rid of the lox smell.

When I was very little, my dad would go down to the lower east side of Manhattan and get a garbage bag full of heads and wings -- well, it seemed like a garbage bag to a five year old -- for free, since they were going to throw them out anyway. Eventually, they figured out that people actually wanted them, and my dad paid a quarter a piece. Nowadays, if you can even find them, they charge you by the pound -- the full price for lox. Suffice it to say that I don't get them much anymore.

But I did develop a taste for sushi, and when I did, salmon was a natural choice. Of course, I don't get out for sushi much either -- most authors don't make tons of money, no matter what it looks like -- so I have to content myself with the occasional fillet of salmon picked up at the grocery store. It's good, it's heathly -- lots of Omega-3, so it's brain food, which I definitely need -- and with a generous dose of salt, it tastes a lot like lox.

Lately I've had a craving for salmon, so I was thrilled when I walked into Wal-Mart and found an entire freezer case of whole salmon. (Well, beheaded, cleaned whole salmon.) They were frozen, but they were huge -- about two feet long, in fact. And at all of $5.94 each, it was a deal I just couldn't pass up.

Trouble was, I had no idea how to fillet a salmon. I followed the directions and thawed it in the refrigerator like a good boy, but absolutely mangled the thing when I tried to fillet it. Oh, I cut off the one side OK, but in trying to remove the rib bones, I muffed it, but good. So imagine my surprise (and pleasure) to find Salmon University's How to fillet a salmon. Too bad I didn't think to look it up earlier! I've still got the other side of the fish to fillet, so we'll see if I do any better with that one.

But it still won't be the same as having my dad come home with a bag of heads and wings.

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