Simple Sweet and Spicy Salmon

It’s something that people don’t talk about a lot, but I’ve come to think a big part of why people don’t like to cook (other than not having an ounce of energy for it) is fear of rejection. Particularly, but not only, if you’ve got kids. We all know that kids don’t hold much back. Whether you’ve got a polite kid who just pokes a new dish around her plate or a child who takes one look at dinner and announces that it’s gross, it’s tough on your ego. We went through a phase where Julian would weep when he saw his dinner plate. Actual tears. Then he’d calm down, come to the table and enjoy his meal.

Laura and I write a daily dinner column for Metro News and mostly people are sweet about it, sending us notes thanking us for recipe ideas, letting us know they clip them out and save them. So nice! But the other day we got an angry letter from a reader complaining about a certain ingredient that we regularly use in our recipes (it’s pretty typical, I’m sure most of you use it a lot, too). This person was spitting mad. And within a few minutes I was shooting off a funny email about it to Laura, but for a moment it stung. Nobody likes to be criticized.

That was a very long winded way of saying that you may feel like this recipe is not worth trying with your kids. It’s a sweet and spicy salmon that takes all of about 15 minutes to make. It’s really easy and quick but sriracha is a bit spicy. You can tweak the amount to make it more or less spicy in this recipe. I love something with a bit of zing – either spice or even citrus – against the richness of salmon. And if you serve it with some plain rice, that calms things down even more. I was a bit nervous to give this to my kids, even though they’re on a salmon kick lately. But I tried it and lo and behold, they ate it. There were no complaints. In fact, there was enthusiasm. No fan mail but no angry letters, either.

photo by Maya Visnyei