This is our last recipe of January and I couldn’t be more thrilled. I try not to complain too much in my newsletters because well, no one wants to hear it. Today, I just don’t have it in me to write anything super cheery. So I’ll keep it short. It’s now my belief that January is the worst month of the year. You already know the reasons because I told you some last week but I’m just so bored with everything. I have been cooking and cooking and nothing is sparking any excitement. This will pass (everything does) but for now, I am falling back on simple classics. Next week, in February, I promise to have a new outlook but today we are just going to make really damn good salad.
I worked for a handful of women when I bounced around as a nanny/assistant/private chef in LA and there are two, maybe three, that have a special place in my heart. The others drove me totally insane. I’m sure it will come as no surprise that most of the cooking I did for these women was catered around some sort of diet they were on.
One client (that I actually really liked) would hand me a cookbook and instruct me to make anything I wanted but only recipes from said book. This eliminated all the planning and thinking I had to do making my job a breeze. I simply followed a recipe and cooked it. Every now and then I would get handed a diet cookbook and the recipes would be atrocious. Boring and bland with zero life or real flavor…like January!
On occasion, I would come across a diet recipe that would surprise me. With some zhuzhing I could make some of the recipes actually taste pretty great. Today’s recipe is my version of Salmon Salad inspired by a fancy LA diet. It’s not a diet recipe but it does fall into the “clean” recipe section.
Tinned fish has been having a moment for a while now. Fishwife took over the space with their Instagram-able branding and in the blink of an eye, every influencer was eating a can. Wildfish Cannery is another tinned fish company that you can’t miss nowadays. Both are pumping out really great fish products in a can.
To be honest, I always forget about canned salmon. We are canned tuna lovers and because those guys I mentioned above have to be ordered online, I never get around to it. Last week while I did my regular Tuesday morning Whole Foods run, I stopped to look for anchovies and spotted Wild Planet canned salmon. I’m picky about grocery store canned fish but Wild Plant is one brand I’ll buy. We have covered Wild Plant before in our tuna deep dive but from what I can dig up online, they are one of the healthiest and most sustainable canned fish options. Their cans contain one ingredient, salmon, and they taste good!
The only very important detail to look for is skin and bones. Some cans of salmon come with skin and bones and it really turned me off when I bought one by mistake. That was one of the reasons I took a break from canned salmon in the past. Once you get your cans of skinless and boneless canned salmon you are good to go with this recipe. The rest of the ingredients are all things I usually have lying around the house and I can whip this up for a last-minute meal anytime. You should be able to too.