Teriyaki Salmon and Pythagoras

Japanese Entree

TERIYAKI SALMON

INGREDIENTS

½ cup mirin or (½ cup white wine and 3 tablespoons sugar)
¼ cup sake or dry white wine
⅔ cup soy sauce
2 teaspoons corn starch
2 teaspoons ginger
2 tablespoons brown sugar
¼ cup white sugar
4 6-ounce salmon fillets
1 green onion
½ tablespoon sesame seeds
no-stick spray

SPECIAL UTENSILS

large, resealable plastic bag
outdoor grill

Serves 4. Takes 3 hours 25 minutes.

PREPARATION

Add mirin, sake, soy sauce, corn starch, ginger, brown sugar, and white sugar to pot. Bring to boil using high heat. until sugar dissolves. Stir constantly. Remove and let cool to room temperature. Add marinade and salmon fillets to large, resealable plastic bag. Refrigerate for 3 hours or overnight.

30 minutes before marinating is done, dice green onion. Add sesame seeds to pan. Toast sesame seeds at medium heat for 5 minutes or until they start to brown. Remove from heat. Add marinade to pot. Bring to boil using high heat. Stir constantly. Reduce heat to low and simmer for 15 minutes or until marinade thickens to a glaze. Stir frequently. Transfer to a bowl.

Spray grill with no-stick spray. Heat grill to low-medium. Brush salmon with glaze. Add salmon fillets to grill. Grill for 10 minutes for every 1″ of fillet thickness or until the thickest part starts to flake when tested with a fork. Turn once. Baste salmon with glaze every 2 minutes. Garnish with green onion and sesame seeds.

TIDBITS

1) Look at the above picture. The piece on the right looks like a triangle. So, in 570 B.C., when the geometry whiz, Pythagoras, was about to feast on a right-angled shaped piece of salmon teriyaki, inspiration naturally struck. “Whoa ho, the sum of the square of the two-sides equals the square of the hypotenuse.” None of this would have happened if he had been eating a hard-boiled egg.

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef