Yeah, G Smolt, I sort of wondered about that—bruising the fish and otherwise damaging it. Not that the fish would care much at that point.

My father was born and raised on San Juan Island and grew up eating salmon. It was just about his favorite kind of food. He learned how to cook salmon a variety of ways (an art that, I now regret, I never learned), and he could do it to perfection. Not too moist, but not dry either. He said that there was a point in the cooking process about twelve seconds long when it was just right, and you had to take it off the fire then or it would be too dry. Restaurants and sundry other folks tend to cook it until it has the consistency and flavor of a Presto-Log (Ivar's Salmon House on the north side of Lake Union in Seattle does a pretty good job, though).

Fish-tossing at the Pike Place Market is all very humorous and it's apparently become something of a local sport, but anything that compromises the flavor of salmon is not good! There are few things in this world as delicious as a properly cooked piece of salmon.

(I gotta back off a bit. I'm drooling on my keyboard.)

Don Firth