Salmon Tartare.
Because Things Change.

French Fridays with Dorie

When I was a young boy, my friend Tony Macquarie tried to impress us on the playground one afternoon by proclaiming loudly that his father “ate raw meat.” “Ooooh gross!” we all exclaimed, clearly impressed by Tony’s father’s complete disregard for what he put in his mouth. My ten-year-old ears tried to make sense of Tony’s confessions by picturing his daddy sitting down to a slab of uncooked steak and gnawing away at it with nothing but his bare hands and molars.

If you had known the Mr. Macquarie I knew, you would understand my rush to judge him thusly. He was a gruff man without the, um, polish I had come to expect from the other neighborhood fathers who mostly favorited what today would be called “preppy”.  While our fathers left and came home from work wearing a suit and tie, Tony’s wore street clothes and was heavily ornamented with flashy gold chains around his neck and his fingers covered with chunky gold nugget rings. On weekends, would he morph into a Stanley Kowalski and strut around the house fixing things and doing chores while bellowing at his younger wife to bring him a bottle of beer — all while wearing a tight-fitting undershirt and filling out his chinos nicely thankyouverymuch. Alas, Tony wouldn’t avoid his father’s bellicose weekend rants . He would be criticized constantly for his lack of sports prowess and, well, his general lack of any similarity to his father. I was always curious about Tony’s father, but also somewhat afraid.

So that day when Tony announced his father ate raw meat I thought, well, he actually ate raw meat.

It would be several years later I would finally be set straight, so to speak, regarding Mr. MacQuarie’s meat eating. I was invited by Tony’s family to a fancy restaurant birthday dinner where Mr. MacQuarie ordered his beloved steak tartare – made table-side no less.  Oh! Raw meat! That night I came to understand that Mac’s ‘raw meat’ was just a very fussy preparation intended to make the raw meat taste like anything other than, well, raw meat.

Salmon Tartare

We moved away from that neighborhood several years later and I wouldn’t encounter Mr. MacQuarie again for another fifteen or so years.  One night, obviously not recognizing me, Tony’s dad approached me out of the shadows in a West Hollywood gay nightclub and tried to pick me up!

I hear ya. What does all this have to do with Salmon Tartare? Well, not a lot really.

Except that the point I’m trying to make with all of this talk of meat eating and well, meat eating, is that one should never cling to your assumptions. One’s tastes AND proclivities change. What once sounded “gross” and quite wide outside my comfort zone  is now one of my favorite dishes.

I’m sure Mr. MacQuarie would have a lot to tell us about tastes changing too.

So if you are one of those who think eating raw salmon is just not for you, I think you should give it a try with an open mind. You may just find it appealing once it is prepared as it is here: with a healthy dose of lime, scallions, chive, and mint – all of this topped above a tower of chopped tomatoes and avocado.

Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.

Right Mac?

The recipe can be found here.

This Salmon Tartare was an assignment for French Friday’s with Dorie, a cooking group working its way through Dorie Greenspan’s culinary tome “Around My French Table”. We generally avoid including the recipes in our posts. However, wherever there has been a significant adaptation by me or where the recipe has already been publicly posted by Ms. Greenspan or her publishers or by hundreds of other bloggers, or it is, in fact, not much of a recipe at all but rather a methode, I will either include it here (adapted) or provide a direct link to it. Please feel free to contact me via the link provided on my page if you need any assistance finding a French Friday with Dorie Recipe. You should buy the book though.

It will change your life as it has mine.