Mike’s Tips for Cooking Salmon Filets

After years in the Pacific Northwest I’ve learned to appreciate a nice salmon filet. Unfortunately, I’ve seen most cooks ruin this king of fish by either overdoing their recipe with complex sauces and hiding the taste of the fish itself or overcooking the filet so that it is dry and grainy or treating salmon, not surprisingly, like they would a piece of fish.

Salmon, unlike most other fish, is best prepared almost exactly the way you would prepare a prime steak. When it doubt, think, “Would I do this to a dry aged prime porterhouse?” and follow that experience.

Selection

These tips apply to any filet but I’ve generally found that line-caught Alaska King Salmon is the most flavorful. When available, the salmon from the Copper River are the best due to their extra fat developed from the particularly cold water. Coho salmon is also excellent but being smaller the fillets tend to be less flat in shape and are harder to cook evenly. Avoid Keta or Pink salmon, these are really not in the same league as their cousins and avoid farm raised Atlantic Salmon (called that no matter where it actually was farmed) because their restricted diet, lack of exercise and lack of exposure to cold water tend to make them flavorless and dry.

Try to get a filet that’s about the right size for your meal. I usually plan on about ½ lb. per person but a 1/3 lb. portion may work for some people. Realize that you will lose water and fat in cooking so much less than this is going to be a snack and not a meal for the same effort.

Since you’re cooking the filet as one piece, try to get a filet that is as even in thickness as possible. This avoids having the edges overcooked by the time the center is medium rare.

Preparation

If the filet is frozen, allow time for thawing. If this isn’t possible, carefully thaw it in a microwave.

Before you do any preparation work, let the salmon get to room temperature. This is very important in getting a filet that is medium on the outside with a good crust and a medium rare center. A cold salmon will end up with either an overcooked, dry exterior or a raw interior.

If needed, slice the salmon filet vertically (from spine to belly) to get the right size piece.

If your filet has a flap of thin belly meat, slice it off and cook it separately. If you leave it on it will not cook evenly. But do not throw it out or give it to the dog unless you are feeling very generous since if you cook it first, this thin strip can be a great treat for the chef to nibble on while the rest of the fish cooks.

Dry the salmon on all sides with paper towels. This keeps your heat going into the filet rather than being wasted in boiling off the water.

Remove any pin bones with a pair of needle nose pliers. (A typical kitchen tool here in the Northwest). These are the secondary rib cage and even the best fish monger occasionally misses one. Using pliers and pulling straight out allows you to remove the bones without tearing chunks out of the meat.

Liberally coat all sides of the filet with a neutral tasting, high smoke point oil. This isn’t for flavor but is to conduct heat and to help form a crust.

Salt all sides of the salmon and rub the salt into the oil. This will draw proteins to the surface and will also help to form a good crust. Yes, you should use more salt than you think you really should.

Cooking

You should use a frying pan or other grill surface that can hold heat and is large enough for the filet. Cast iron works well.

Lightly oil the surface and bring to a very high heat.

Once the oil has reached the “shimmer” stage you should place the filet in the pan skin side up. This order matters for two reasons, the heat in the pan is highest at this time since the fish hasn’t cooled the pan yet and getting a crust on this exposed surface is easier now than when it is flaky from being cooked. (This is why you should always brown a filet before vacuum sealing it if you cook it sous vide)

Avoid the temptation of moving the filet or jiggling the pan. You should let it cook on this side until the sides are opaque and lighter colored at least 2/3rds of the way up the side. You will probably see little cream colored liquid beads form. This is a great sign. It is beads of melted fat escaping and is a sign of a good, fatty fish which is the mark of a juicy and flavorful filet.

Once you have reached the 2/3rds level, you should flip the filet with a good spatula being careful not to tear the browned surface. If possible, place the filet in an unused section of the pan but if there is not enough room for that to be possible, try rotating it 90 degrees as well so as much of the filet is on fresh hot surface.

If you have a thermometer you can gauge doneness by temperature (you are shooting for a rare temperature so that carryover heat will bring it to a medium rare temperature by the time the filet has rested). If not, you can tell by touch once you have some experience but you may just have to separate two of the flakes in the filet and look at the color. You want the internal color to be pinkish red in the center but not transparent. If it is a dark pinkish opaque color you’re ready to pull the fish.

At this point, place the filet skin side down on a plate or cooling rack for 3-5 minutes. You can tent it with aluminum foil to trap the heat but do not wrap the filet in foil or the moisture escaping will ruin the crust you spent time forming.

After the rest, put on a plate and serve.

Seventy Years Since Bermuda

Seventy years ago, on April 19th, 1943, the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom convened a conference in Bermuda with the intent of dealing with public outcry against the Nazi’s extermination of millions of Jews in Europe. Note that the intent was NOT to help stop the extermination.

Both nations wanted to fix their PR problem but neither wanted to face the option of having to deal with the possibility that Hitler would change his policy from extermination to exporting Jews to the UK or US – an option that neither nation found acceptable.

Both nations worked very hard to make sure that neither nation would have to do anything. The conference was held in Bermuda which under wartime restrictions was inaccessible to the press. No Jewish organizations were allowed to attend even as observers.

The agenda explicitly prohibited referring to the Nazi "Final Solution" and, in fact, prohibited discussing the Jews any differently than other refugees not targeted for extermination.

Neither nation increased their tight restrictions on Jewish refugee immigration. The US sent as a representative a man explicitly prohibited from actually signing anything that would bind the US. The British explicitly refused to lift, even partially, the blockade of Jews attempting to flee death by going to the "Jewish Homeland" in the British Mandate of Palestine promised by British Foreign Minister, Lord Balfour 25 years earlier. Neither nation was willing to bomb the rail lines or gas chambers or crematoria already known to exist.

As a PR move it failed. The response to the conference included protests, condemnations and suicide. The result did not save a single Jew targeted for death.

And after seventy years, we of both nations either have no knowledge and have accepted the rewritten history that "nobody knew it was happening" that protects the images of Churchill and Roosevelt or we hide this history away and pretend it didn’t happen.

But ignorance and willful self-deception do not prevent future genocides, only learning the hard reality of history does.

To learn some of that history see:

• The PDF report on the Bermuda Conference from Yad Vashem
• The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies report
• PBS’ "American Experience" page on the conference
• The entry in Wikipedia
• A report from Bermuda itself

Today’s Filibuster of Background Checks

Today 5 Democratic Senators and 41 Republican Senators betrayed their constituents. Today these corrupt officials violated their oath of office and ignored the wishes of over 90% of the American public they’re sworn to represent.

Also today 4 Republican Senators singled themselves out for doing their jobs correctly. As much as that is ludicrous to call out, let’s start by giving them credit so they are not tarred by association with their party.

• John McCain of Arizona
• Susan Collins of Maine
• Mark Kirk of Illinois
• Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania

They, sadly, deserve the credit for doing their jobs.

But, the real story is that 46 Senators did not do their job and should not be returned to office.

Reality is that the public has a short memory and Senators have a 6-year term so roughly 1/3rd of them will be up for reelection next year, 1/3rd in 2016 and 1/3 get to stay in our employ for 5 more years.

Fifteen of those betrayers of the public trust are up for reelection next year and today begins the job of making this their last term in office. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) has already announced he will not be running for reelection.

I suggest we contact not just the remaining 14 Senators and let them know we will make preventing their reelection our single-minded priority but that we also contact their major donors and let them know that a dollar in these coward’s campaign chests means a customer they’ve lost and a negative publicity campaign their PR firm will find themselves fighting for as long as their support for these embarrassments to our nation continues.

Those 15 “Senators” who are up for re-election in 2014 are:

• Lamar Alexander (R-TN)
• Max Baucus (D-MT)
• Mark Begich (D-AK)
• Saxby Chambliss (R-GA)
• Thad Cochran (R-MS)
• John Cornyn (R-TX)
• Mike Enzi (R-WY)
• Lindsey Graham (R-SC)
• Jim Inhofe (R-OK)
• Mike Johanns (R-NE)
• Mitch McConnell (R-KY)
• Mark Pryor (D-AR)
• Jim Risch (R-ID)
• Pat Roberts (R-KS)
• Jess Sessions (R-AL)

Oh, and the other 29 Republican Senators and 2 Democratic Senators who betrayed the Constitution they swore to uphold? We’ll remember them in 2016 and 2018 if they haven’t resigned for other reasons before then.

After Two Years

A little follow-up to my July 2009 post on Google’s Chrome OS. Ed Bott is now reporting the first usage numbers that include Google’s attempt to convince people to give up their personal computers and switch to terminals where everything they do goes through the Silicon Valley Ad Agency’s servers.

It turns out that after almost two years on the market, Chrome OS has achieved a market share of 0.023%. Yes. Really. Not the 23% that would mark it as a contender. Not the 2.3% that would mark it as a niche product. Being a niche product would be a massive success by comparison. Google really has spent the last four years hyping a product and two years selling a product that’s achieved 1/100th of what it would take to be even considered a niche player.

The Ryan “Budget Plan”–Déjà Vu All Over Again

If you thought the Bush Tax Cuts for the Rich plan was bad, just wait until you see the Ryan Budget Plan (or as it’s sometimes called, Paul Ryan’s attempt at Ayn Rand Fan Fiction). It cuts $5,700,000,000,000 over 10 years from the government’s income and then doesn’t actually explain in more than vague "it’s magic" terms how it’s going to cut enough of that out of the budget to keep that off the deficit while claiming it’ll balance the budget. Remember, he not only doesn’t cut Pentagon spending – the largest part of the discretionary budget – he raises it.

Of course, while those new debts go into everyone’s purse, the tax cuts themselves are massively geared toward the very rich.

• If you make less than $22,000 per year you’ll save less than $40.
• If you are middle income you’ll get $900.
• If you are, however, in the group making over $3,300,000 per year (up in the 99.9% group that Ryan actually thinks aren’t parasites) then your tax savings would be $1,200,000 per year.

Or put into percentages

• Bottom 20% get a 0.3% cut
• 2nd 20% get a 0.9% cut
• Middle 20% get a 1.6% cut
• 4th 20% get a 2.1% cut
• Top 20% get a 5.9% cut

But the biggest gifts go to the very top

• The top 1% get a 10.9% tax cut
• The top 0.1% get a 12.1% tax cut

Yes, the top bracket don’t just get more in cuts but the percentage of their cuts is forty times as great as the cut for the person struggling to put food on their family (we’re talking Bush logic – may as well use Bush phrasing).

So, tax cuts mostly for the wealthy and no real way of absorbing those cuts without putting them into the deficit except "by magic".

Sorry. We’ve been there before and we’ll be paying, as a nation, for that mistake for decades.

For the actual numbers and analysis by the Tax Policy Center, here is the link.

And if you want to see just how UnFlat this tax cut is…

I Won’t Pay for Your Star Trek V Collector’s Plate

The second in a series of posts to answer questions I’m tired of explaining over and over again. See Flattened Taxpayers for the first.

Let’s start by clearing up a misimpression that people seem to have.

Buying and selling stocks is not investment income

Buying stock is not "investing in a company", it is gambling on reselling some collectable you bought based on your assumption that the stock or Limited Edition Star Trek V Collector’s Plate is going to fetch more in the collectors market than it did when you bought it.

Actually investing in a company would require that the money you paid went to the company. Aside from when you buy into a public offering of new stock, your money did not go to the company, it went to another collector. It does nothing to help the company fund their start-up costs to produce a new product for the actual marketplace. And even in the case of a public offering you don’t help the company when you cash out that investment. You bought, say, 0.1% of that company and that was the only time you helped them bring something new to the market. If you purely sold that 0.1% of the company for 1/1000th of the actual value of the company at the time you sold it, then your income would be "investment" and your profits would be actual investment income tied to the increase in the actual value of the company you risked money on.

No purchase and sale of stock is investment. By the time the company is ready to float an Initial Public Offering they’re cashing out on the investment by selling off the company’s assets. Any purchase and sale of stock after the IPO is just gambling income and does not contribute to the free marketplace that Capitalism revolves around.

Neither is most venture capital

That said, now lets talk about actual investment income. If you are an "angel investor" or "venture capitalist" (which is really another name for unregulated banking with no guarantee on either your return nor their costs) then your income from that risk is the increase in valuation of the company’s actual assets over the time you were a partial owner. Any income you get beyond that isn’t investment and in no case does your selling your share benefit the company’s ability to bring products to market – they get no benefit from your profit so stop thinking that you’re risking your money to help get a startup going when you cash out.

Adam Smith, Capitalism and “Investment Income”

One of Adam Smith’s premises in The Wealth of Nations – the book that defined Capitalism back in 1776 – is that the greatest harm to a Capitalist market based economy was the creation of instruments that brought in income without producing valuable items that could be traded in the marketplace.  He called these instruments “rents”.

These practices produced income sources for an essentially parasitic class that could use their wealth to create ongoing revenue for themselves with no risk and no contribution to society nor the marketplace. It’s important to remember that despite what the GOP or some Randian tells you, Adam Smith was an Enlightenment radical who created Capitalism to flatten society to a level competitive playing field. He was doing so at a time and place where most wealth was held by the landed houses of England who did nothing but being born into the right family to achieve wealth far beyond even the worst robber barons the US ever produced – families with trillion dollar plus family assets in current dollars.

Smith’s central premise was that society did best when ideas and products competed equally and the wealth created through the market was by production and sale of competitively better goods at a better value as determined by consumers.

What we call "investment income" does none of this. It is a Smith “rent” scheme. It is wealth distributed not by the competitive value of new inventions and improved products but by passing valueless paper around from one wealthy family to another. This is neither Capitalism nor good for a Capitalist economy. Smith himself said that as this is something that damages the efficiency and fairness of the market it is the job of the government to regulate it into harmlessness and to re-level the playing field so actual competition can continue.

As an aside and a reward for reading this far, the next time some “get the government out of the free market” idiot blathers on, you can now safely assume he doesn’t know what Capitalism actually is.

Now, let’s look at some “investor" assertions I’ve actually gotten in my discussions…

I earned the money I spend on stock from a job.

That’s really irrelevant. If I say "I used the money I made by selling food to starving orphans at minimal costs to buy equipment to torture kittens" do we really care how you got the money to torture kittens? No. No matter how you got the money it’s the issue of whether we as a society should subsidize what you choose to do with it.

I take risks

Should subsidize your losses in your hobby of buying and selling collectables? We currently do. Investment loss is deductible and when we do that we’re precisely taking tax dollars from other people to cut your risks. I’d argue that we should not do this at all but that isn’t the question at hand.

I should be able to cash in on my gains

And I think so, too. In the case of long-term investment I suggest taxing your "cashing in" collectable sales profits at the same rate as income you gained by actually producing something of value to the market. That’s probably too generous but I’m trying to be reasonable during the transition period of moving toward actual Capitalism.

I also suggest that we tax short term gains at a 50% rate. Yes, it really should be higher as its meant to discourage if not eliminate a dangerous hobby. There are several damaging aspects of short-term investment that need to be addressed but lets focus on the worst of those. Short term profit taking discourages businesses from actually producing goods and services for the market and ends up replacing the productive free market with optimization for short-term shareholder return.

As a compromise, how about we say "if you want to claim short-term stock gain as regular income you are prohibited from voting your shares directly or via proxy, are prohibited from participating in any shareholder litigation and are barred from any interaction with the company you partly own during your period of ownership for a period of two years prior to your intended or actual sale. Any of these activities triggers marking the "investment" as stock manipulation and requires your shares to be sold at the price you paid for them or the current market value, whichever is lower and any income you received above that amount to be added to your tax bill.

The increase in stock price funds innovation

Some people will say that the increase in stock price in the speculation market continues to fund the company since that company gains as the shares they own increase in value. That anyone thinks that way shows that we have let the tail wag the dog. The purpose of the company in actual Capitalism is to produce a product for sale in the competitive marketplace. When their income is now tied to the immediate stock price rather than the value of their products in that marketplace they no longer are participating in the market and are now just speculators themselves and no longer focused on producing goods and services to stimulate the market based economy.

Summing up…

Summarizing, I fully support actual investment as measured by the purchase of a share of a company and the gain in wealth of the value of that share of the company itself. That is investment income. It is unsubsidized risk being rewarded by the marketplace. Speculating on buying and reselling collectables that do not directly fund the value of the company is both harmful to the company and to the economy and should be discouraged by any Capitalist government as part of their role to keep Adam Smith’s playing field level.

A Little Checkpoint

I saw a little reminder today. A checkpoint on where we’ve been and where we are and where it looks like we’re going. It was the opening clip from Aaron Sorkin’s show The Newsroom. If you haven’t seen it, watch it. If you have seen it, watch it again.

Here’s the video clip:

The opening of The Newsroom’s pilot episode

Yep. A great show and one of many great moments.

The difference between today’s left and right in the US is their response to those numbers Sorkin cites in that speech.

Liberals respond to all the "we’re number 14 in this" and "we’re number 34 in that" with "That sucks and we need to fix it" while conservatives respond with "How dare you think we’re not best at everything? Why do you hate America?"

The most recent, really on point, example is not the shootings last week – horrific as they were – but the vote on the UN treaty on the disabled. This was the UN saying "The USA created a great policy for a nation to follow with the Americans with Disabilities Act and we think all nations should aspire to be as good to their citizens as the USA is to theirs". An action that we used to deserve and used to receive with a fair degree of regularity.

Now, however, rather than having the vision and courage to produce legislation like the ADA, we can’t even get our own nation to support a non-binding, toothless resolution applauding our own actions because the tin foil hat brigade thinks the UN is about to send blue helmeted soldiers in black helicopters to seize Billings, Montana.

And that’s pathetic.

And we need to not only recognize that but we need to fix that.

Why a UN Declaration of Palestine as a Non-Member State Dooms Hamas

With the UN declaration of Palestine as a non-member state almost certain to pass today, Hamas is left in a very interesting position. They have to choose whether to accept the decision of the UN granting their people a limited declaration of statehood.

Now, this might seem an easy choice for them. But it is a choice that gives them no choices that are good and two that are pyrrhic victories at best.

If Hamas does not accept the UN declaration as valid then they have to admit that Fatah achieved a significant improvement in legal status for the people they both claim to represent. And that will have consequences not exactly good for Hamas.

If Hamas does accept the UN declaration as valid then things are actually even worse for them.

They will have acknowledged that the UN has the legal right to declare states valid and thus:

• They will have retroactively admitted the validity of the UN declaration 65 years ago today that created Israel
• They retroactively admit that same declaration created a state for them in the Arab part of the British Mandate and that they could have legally had that state any time in the last 65 years
• They publicly acknowledge that Israel has a legal right to exist by the same legal means they use to justify their own existence
• And since that original UN declaration is something they now admit is valid, they also retroactively admit Jerusalem’s status as legally bound to the results of a vote of the city’s population – and Jerusalem has had a Jewish majority for well over a century.

If Hamas accepts the UN declaration, effectively all their remaining objections to Israel as a Jewish state now become no more than a border dispute over the details between the 1949 cease-fire line that was Israel’s border prior to 1967 and the UN authorized adjustments to that cease-fire line that were declared in the UN SC242-1967 and SC338-1973 resolutions that ended the Six Day and Yom Kippur wars.

And that is a far cry from everything Hamas has ever stood for.

Today we lost George McGovern

For those too young to remember or so partisan they choose not to remember, Watergate was about the Republican party breaking the law, violating the Constitution they claimed to love, embracing racists and not being called on their lies by a press corps that chose not to call them on those facts (with the sole exception of The Washington Post) with the goal of beating Senator George McGovern in the 1972 presidential campaign.

We have been fighting that Republican philosophy of hatred, corruption and lies to varying degrees ever since it succeeded for them 40 years ago.

This November we are being offered that same choice once again. Do we vote for lies and hatred and bigotry and a view of party and power over country and Constitution or do we tell the GOP and their candidates, "Enough. I refuse to accept your contempt for the nation, its philosophies and its people ever again. Clean these people and their philosophies out of your party or never see the vote of any decent man or woman in this nation."

Today, I choose to vote for those who understand, as Senator McGovern put it, that “the highest patriotism is not a blind acceptance of official policy, but a love of one’s country deep enough to call her to a higher plain”.

Thank you for your decades of service to the cause of calling for us to raise our standards higher, Senator. Your voice will be missed.

A Simple Arithmetic Problem

An word problem for those thinking about picking a President in November. Don’t worry, I did all the hard 3rd Grade arithmetic for you and the answer key is available at the bottom.

The government needs to buy a product that’s sold by multiple resellers. The product wholesales for $100 for each unit and the government plans to buy millions of them.

The least expensive resellers charge a 67% markup because if they charge less than that their shareholders are unhappy and the company might lose the "Strong Buy" rating on their stock. If the government decides to get a wholesale license as a volume purchaser it’ll cost them 2% overhead to handle the extra costs of paperwork and inventory.

Should the government:

1. Get a license to buy wholesale and pay $100 for the product plus $2.04 overhead costs
2. Pay the $166.67 to the least expensive supplier
3. Negotiate a better deal from the suppliers to pay no more than $117.65 for the life of the contract

Those are real numbers in a real multi-billion dollar deal with real taxpayer dollars on the line.

Which choice should the President make?

 

Answer Key

Now that you’ve had a chance to make your decision, let’s look at the answers:

Choice 1 is a single payer healthcare insurance program like Medicare

Choice 2 is what we did prior to “Obamacare”

Choice 3 is what “Obamacare” did by requiring insurance providers to spend no less than 80-85% of their insurance fees on payments for medical costs rather than for overhead, promotions and profits for their owners