Cat food or me food?

Anyone who was cracked open a thing of canned salmon and asked this question is not alone. Driven by some invisible force (mixture of a desire for more protein and a culinary curiosity) about a week ago I decided it would be a good thing to make use of two of the cans of salmon I had purchased roughly a year ago during a canned salmon sale at my local cheapo market.

I've had a rough history with canned salmon. My original introduction to it was through salmon latkas which my Bubbie (grandmother) would serve during dairy meals when we visited. Despite how good anything was at one of these dairy meals, as a kid who loved to eat meat and looked forward to the meaty delights of my Bubbie's kitchen, I was always a little discontent. It took me a while to develop a taste for things fishy, so as a young kid I stayed away from the latkas and always assumed they were pretty gross. A few years ago, however, I was taking a bus back from Bubbie's to boston and she decided to pack me a lunch for the trip. In a roll (I think it was an onion roll) she put some salmon latka and dressed it up like a hamburger (for those who don't know what a salmon latka is, its essentially a burger made from canned salmon). To my utter surprise I really enjoyed this way of eating the salmon latka.

Still, in the time since I've realized a liking for canned salmon, I had been pretty scared to actually use it. I had one good experience making pasta with chunks of the canned fish and some creamy sauce... but generally the cans have been pushed further to the back of my cupboard, unused and unwanted.

My first thought, upon opening the two cans of salmon last week, was to make salmon latkas. I had on hand some carrot, pepper, onion and garlic. After dicing these up with some chopped frozen ginger (freezes really well) I sauted these vegetables for a few minutes so they wouldn't be too tough in the latkas (it was my plan to pan fry them and hence vegetables would not get cooked too well). The salmon went into a large bowl where I worked hard to mix it all together. I added in some salt and pepper (I could have done without the salt since the canned salmon was pretty salty to start with) and then added in the vegetables, after having let them cool for a little. To bind this together I added about two or three eggs and a good portion of chickpea flour (any type is fine... but I like the color this gives to things when fried). In the end I have a nice thick batter of fish and vegetables. Tasting it (which I probably should not have due to the egg) I realized it needed a little sweetness, so I added in a few squirts of honey.

A hot cast iron pan did a pretty good job of cooking up three midsized latkas which served as my dinner. I was not that happy though since pan frying tends to leave the insides a little mushy and requires lots of oil. At this point it was pretty late in the evening and I had a large bowl full of slightly fishy smelling batter sitting in the kitchen. Not wanted to spend the hour to fry up another 30 latkas, and not that happy with the results of such frying anyway, I did what anyone sick of cooking, yet with ingredients leftover, would do --- I made a kugel.

You ask what it means that I made a kugel? If it sounds impressive it is not. All I did was grease up a glass pan and pour all of my batter into it and then throw it in the oven for 45 minutes (for part covered with tin foil). After cooking the moisture which plagued my fried prototype latkas had cooked out and I was left with a nicely browned, and very mild (on the fishy scale) tasting kugel. The flour and egg helped it hold together nicely, and the honey give it an extra nice sweetness (after all it is the season of Rosh Hashana where we wish people a Happy and Sweet New Year). The great thing about a kugel is that once its made, you can cut it into individual sized pieces and freeze. In my experience, reheating in the microwave works really well for these single portions.

So, what is the lesson to be learned here? If you start making something and then get sick of it or disillusioned with it just turn it into a kugel.