The Salmon that Never Was

I opened the packet expecting salmon. Not a religious experience, just salmon. Pink, faintly oily, doing that quiet, self-confident thing salmon does when it knows it hasn’t been interfered with too much.

What I got instead was something that looked like salmon, but tasted like it had been through a committee.

This had come to us via Hay’s dad, who was heading off for the weekend and, in a moment of generosity tinged with urgency, pressed it into our hands on the basis that it might go off if left unattended. Fair enough. One respects a man trying to avoid waste. As it turns out, the sell by date is 2029, so there was perhaps a little less jeopardy than first assumed.

There it was, sitting on the plate in a small puddle of its own confusion, having been marinated in soy, garlic and curry powder, then sugared, then smoked, then, I suspect, given a pep talk about “bold flavours” before being sealed in plastic and sent out into the world. Somewhere along the way, the salmon itself appears to have slipped out the back door.

It’s an odd approach to food, when you think about it. Take an ingredient that people go out of their way to buy because it tastes of something, and then systematically remove any trace of that taste. It’s a bit like buying a decent bottle of claret and topping it up with cola, orange juice and a dash of Worcestershire sauce, just to make sure no one is troubled by the flavour of wine.

The result, in this case, is a texture best described as damp cardboard with ambition, and a flavour profile that lands somewhere between smoked mackerel and a slightly aggressive curry house. Not unpleasant in the sense that nothing is actively offensive, but deeply unsatisfying in the way that all compromise solutions are. You keep eating it, hoping the salmon might make a late appearance, but it never does.

There’s a kind of industrial logic to it. If the fish isn’t brilliant to begin with, you don’t improve it, you obscure it. Add salt, add sugar, add smoke, add anything that might distract from the fact that the central ingredient is quietly weeping in the corner. It’s the culinary equivalent of underseal on a rusty chassis. Looks solid from a distance, but you wouldn’t want to poke it too hard.

What’s slightly maddening is that salmon doesn’t need any of this. A bit of salt, a bit of restraint, perhaps the lightest touch of smoke if you must, and it does the rest itself. It’s one of the easiest things in the world to get right, provided you resist the urge to improve it.

But no. Somewhere in Canada, someone decided that what salmon really lacked was soy sauce and curry powder, and the rest of us are now living with the consequences.

I’ve got half a packet left, which, given its apparent ability to outlive us all, may yet become an heirloom. I might put it in a risotto, or mash it into fishcakes with enough lemon to remind it what it used to be. Or I might just leave it in the fridge as a warning to others.