THE LEAST BORING WAY TO COOK SALMON

Weather can be a bummer in Seattle, but it led chef Renee Erickson to a revelation. She was cooking outdoors when those familiar Pacific Northwest clouds started to roll in. She worried that her team wouldn’t have enough time to cook the salmon before rain doused the fire. Then she had an idea: Let’s throw it right on the coals, she recalls. “It was one of those aha moments.”

The method may look perilous, but it’s a breeze if you follow the cues. Most important, you need to wait for the fire to fizzle out— gray coals, not red. At that point, place a whole salmon fillet onto the embers, and cover it with a pot or a bowl so that it cooks evenly. The skin of the fish will blacken and morph into a kind of ad hoc plancha. “You don’t get that perfect crispy salmon skin,” Erickson says. “You kind of destroy it.” But when it’s ready, after 20 minutes max, the pre-salted flesh of the salmon—smoky and oily—will pull away from the ruined skin in beautiful chunks. Remove it with a fish spatula and quilt the salmon with whatever you wish—tomatoes, mushrooms, herbs. The only trick? Don’t walk away and let an inferno erupt. As Erickson warns, “You have to keep looking at it the whole time.”

By Jeff Gordinier in "Esquire" USA, April,2018, excerpts p. 68. Digitized, adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.