Lachs und Spargel

"Ich bin ein American soldat. Wo is die bahnhof?" is the line every American soldier in Germany was taught. It means I am an American soldier. Where is the train station? When I served in Germany from 1986 to 1989, I was at worst a little better in German than this emergency line.

But in point of fact my German sucks. I studied for a year in high school with a teacher named Amado 'Sonny' Narvaez who did magic tricks during class to keep his students amused. I also studied for a year in college with a Swiss woman named Regula Meier--"I am Swiss, I like things regular." Frau Meier taught us Hoch Deutsch, or high German. Which wasn't really much use to me as a cavalry officer who was occasionally lost disoriented in Bavaria trying to talk to farmers' kids about which way to the intersection with the Autobahn.

Once you have a foreign language in your head, some words always stick with you. Years after learning German, I was in class at the Foreign Service Institute learning French, and German words popped into my brain when I was stumped for the proper French word.

The German word for asparagus is one of those words that you couldn't get out of my head with a tooth scaler: spargel. When I go to the grocery today, instead of writing asparagus on the shopping list, I write spargel.

Anyway, tonight's dinner is salmon on a plank with asparagus--lachs und spargel. Pretty simple.

Soak your plank for a couple of hours in water. Get your fire going and set it up for direct heat.

Put the salmon--tonight we used Coho--on the plank, sprinkle with salt and pepper. In a small bowl mix up some minced garlic, toasted sesame oil, and minced ginger. Spread it on the salmon.

Trim the ends of the asparagus and rub it with a very light coat of olive oil, add salt and pepper to taste. You could add some garlic or ginger or sesame if you want, but I think the asparagus tastes fine by itself. Ms. F and I have a dispute over thin vs. thick asparagus. She prefers thin. Enh, I don't care so much, so we use thin. You can set the asparagus directly on the grill grate or use a grill pan... as you wish.

Put the plank on the grill and cover; let the smoke and heat work together. Plan to cook the salmon for about 25 minutes and the asparagus for about ten minutes. The salmon's done when it flakes a bit, but you won't hurt yourself if you take it off a little sooner. You can hurt the meal if you take it off much later.

This goes well with a drier Riesling. I like the German or Austrian wines but Ms. F prefers the Oregon.

Genießen sie es.