Thanksgiving Recipe 1: Broiled Salmon with Miso Tahini Sauce

Boris had originally thought he'd draw a salmon eating a little person's head, but when he started drawing the face, he changed his mind. So now the salmon's eating a little round cake of mochi ice cream.


As many of you know by now, Boris and I don't eat meat from creatures that have legs or wings. This includes turkeys (as well as gryphons, centaurs, and minotaurs), so it makes you wonder "what to do for Thanksgiving?". Well, we do eat some creatures with scales (including some flying dragons, but not ones with wings, only the serpenty-ones with those crazy big eyes and fins that fly from magic powers rather than wing power), but dragons are pretty hard to catch because they're so smart, so we usually have salmon for festive dinners. Okay, enough silly stuff. Sorry! I could go on like that all day.

I'm not so crazy about the fake meats made from soy (especially since they have ISP--isolated soy protein--as a main ingredient) or "turkeys" made from tofu (although I love tofu and eat it often, I just don't like the way the taste or texture of tofu turkeys), so we just decided to ditch the whole idea of turkeys and have fish instead.

Broiled Salmon with Miso Tahini sauce
Serves 2-4
One pound fresh salmon fillet, preferably wild salmon
1 Tablespoon olive oil
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 inch piece of fresh ginger, peeled and chopped
Black pepper
1 Tablespoon soy sauce
1 rounded Tablespoon sweet white miso (favorite brand, South River)
1 rounded Tablespoon tahini sauce
2 scallions, with both green and white parts chopped
hot water

Rinse and pat dry salmon fillet. Leave the skin on.
Cut the salmon into serving-sized pieces. These could be either one
larger piece for each diner or cut into smaller pieces (maybe 1 ½ to 2 inches or
whatever size you’d like to have).
In a glass bowl, put the olive oil, minced garlic, chopped ginger, black pepper, and
soy sauce. Coat the salmon pieces in the marinade and let it soak, covered, in the
refrigerator for anywhere from ½ hour to several hours.

Heat broiler and line a baking sheet with aluminum foil. Spray the foil with
Pam or other spray oil, add the salmon pieces with the skin side down. Place them
a bit apart from each other. Broil until firm (depending upon the size of the salmon pieces, this could be anywhere from a few minutes to 10-12 minutes). Turn the pieces over and, if you’d like to remove the skin, now is a good time to do that. The brownish part between the skin and the meat is where lots of omega 3 oil is located, so it’s best to leave that part alone. If you slip a spatula between the skin and the brownish part, the skin will usually slip right off
once the fish is firm. Now broil the other side until it’s a little more cooked.

In a bowl that’s large enough to hold all of the salmon, combine the miso and tahini. Add enough hot water to make a spreadable paste. Add the chopped scallions. Add the salmon, folding it into the sauce carefully so that you don’t break up the pieces too much. If you have pieces that are very large,
you can just do this step on a serving plate.