There's something fishy about this

Yesterday I was craving a tuna melt (I know, who craves tuna-from-a-can?), and it got me thinking about fish. When I was younger (as in until about the age of 26), I swore that I hated fish, except for tuna-from-a-can. My boyfriend (now my husband) told me that that was ridiculous and that I really should try 'real' fish. After several tentative bites of his salmon at a restaurant, I decided that he might be on to something. I did this again several times before being brave enough to order salmon for myself. Then I started cooking it at home in a pan on the stove but set off the smoke alarm in our tiny apartment the first few times.

This brings me to today's tip. To avoid setting off the smoke alarm when cooking an oily fish like salmon indoors, and also to help curtail the inevitable smell of fish that can linger for several days, start in a pan on the stove and finish in the oven (a pan that goes from stove to oven is one of my 'essential tools' - a future blog post idea that's on my list to write about someday). This only occurred to me after I saw the technique in a recipe, and I wondered why I'd never thought of it myself. Of course, if you're lucky enough to have a grill (which we FINALLY do after 5 years of living in apartments without outdoor space), clearly you can just cook the fish on it, and prevent both odor and smoke problems.