You can enjoy perfectly grilled, juicy wild salmon in only 6 minutes

Fresh wild sockeye salmon from Costco Wholesale spends only 6 minutes on a preheated stove-top grill. Here, I served it with Costco pesto and organic salsa, as well as chopped mint and other herbs from our garden.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

We cook fresh wild salmon at home nearly every week during the season, which runs from June to October at Costco Wholesale in Hackensack.

A friend who just returned from a vacation in Alaska reported rivers are thick with salmon struggling to swim upstream and lay their eggs.

The price of fresh wild sockeye fillets has fallen steadily since June, and I've learned a thing or two about cooking this wonderful fish on a preheated stove-top grill.

For one thing, I was cooking the fillets too long -- 8 minutes to 10 minutes.

I reduced the cooking time to 6 minutes, and they came out juicier.

The longer cooking time is appropriate for wild king salmon fillets, which are thicker than sockeye.

Wild sockeye fillets are thinner and smaller than both king and Costco's artificially colored farmed Atlantic salmon, which are probably raised on antibiotics.

I usually get six serving pieces from about 2 pounds of wild salmon, and add sea salt and fresh lime juice before arranging the pieces skin-side down on the large, rectangular preheated grill.

The All-Clad Grill is 20 inches long and 13 inches wide, and the fish cooks best at both ends -- over the burners.

Quick dinners

Besides quick-cooking wild fish, my strategy for putting a meal on the table in less than 10 minutes includes making such side dishes as quinoa, brown rice, pasta and baked or mashed sweet potatoes in large quantities.

Then, you can plate and reheat some, add your wild salmon, enjoy dinner and finish with a big salad of Earthbound Farm Organic Spring Mix, also from Costco. 

In the morning, two organic eggs, sunny side up, are wonderful over sweet potatoes mashed with extra-virgin olive oil, especially when you break the yolks over them.

The All-Clad Grill I use straddles two burners of my stove. I preheat it, use spray oil and turn the heat on both burners to medium-high before adding the fish, skin-side down. After 3 minutes, I turn the pieces, and then again onto the skin for the last minute. If you're serving the salmon with ripe peach halves, grill them first, because they need much more time.

A package of 2 pounds of Fresh Wild Sockeye Salmon yields about six serving pieces.

An electric cooker full of organic brown rice, organic diced tomatoes, low-sodium red beans and chopped fresh garlic, prepared with extra-virgin olive oil. The leftovers allow you to put dinner or breakfast on the table in minutes.

A delicious lunch at Rosa Mexicano

Image by Rowan Peter via Flickr
A rice field.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

We skipped breakfast this morning to attend a free cooking demonstration at Rosa Mexicano Restaurant in Hackensack, then stayed for a wonderful lunch of freshly made guacamole, fish tacos and jumbo shrimp in a roasted-tomato peanut sauce with green-chili rice.

Coffee and juice were available, but the complimentary breakfast we enjoyed in the past has been eliminated. 

With pottery, textiles, sconces and other decorative touches, Rosa Mexicano remains one of the most beautiful restaurants in North Jersey, and virtually all the food is made from scratch -- paying homage to native, Spanish and French culinary influences.

Two chefs, David Suarez and Dennis Lake, showed their audience of more than 30 how to prepare the labor-intensive roasted-tomato peanut sauce, green chile rice, pork picadillo, homemade marshmallows and other dishes. 

At the end of the "Real Men Cook Mexican" demonstration, we were starving.

Me, my wife and 12-year-old son shared the chunky guacamole ($10) a waiter made at our table, spooning some into thin, warm, homemade corn tortillas, some of the best I have ever tasted, and adding red or green salsa. 

A nice hunk of beautifully roasted Chilean sea bass ($12.75) followed,  served with more tortillas to make tacos, plus salsa and three side dishes -- rice, beans with pumpkin seeds and creamed corn.

We also shared an entree of those jumbo shrimp ($19), stacked in a pool of roasted-tomato peanut sauce and served with a mound of rice, made with mustard greens, scallions, spinach and cilantro. 

Unfortunately, the spicy sauce we tasted during the demo was toned down for the restaurant service.

Rosa Mexicano Restaurant, 390 Hackensack Ave., 
in The Shops at Riverside, Hackensack; 201-489-9100.
www.rosamexicano.com