Setting The Table
For my cookbook project, I will be cooking a Kosher meal for Passover which is a recipe made with salmon. It comes from the Jewish religion and it is mainly cooked during the time of Passover. Passover is a Jewish festival that is to remember being freed from slavery from Egypt and it lasts up to eight days. This year it will begin Friday April 19 and end Saturday April 27. People who traditionally make this dish would be anyone who celebrates the Jewish tradition of Passover. This is important like any other meal during Passover because they remind them of what they had to go through to get to where they are today. In the Torah, there are laws that say all creatures in the sea with both fins and scales are kosher. This fish is important because in the Torah fish symbolizes fertility and abundance which are both good things. To prepare this dish I will need to go buy quite a bit of materials. The ingredients I will need are; 1.5 quarts of water, 1.5 cups dry white wine, 3 tablespoons of vinegar, 1 onion sliced, 1 carrot sliced, 9 springs parsley, ¾ teaspoon dried thyme, ¼ teaspoon peppercorns, 3 bay leaves, 3 ¼ teaspoons of salt, 1 cucumber peeled seeded and grated, 1 ¾ cups of plain yogurt, 1 clove garlic minced, 2 tablespoons chopped fresh mint, ¼ teaspoons of fresh-ground black pepper, 2 pounds center-cut fillet, cut into 4 pieces, 1/8 teaspoon of paprika. Some problems I could run into would be not knowing what some of my ingredients or instructions mean when I go to buy and make my dish. I will have to ask someone else or just look them up on the internet. Another problem I could run into would be that I only have access to one stove and it is the one on the floor of Dimmit so I will have to plan accordingly to cook my dish or maybe I could go cook with someone who lives in a house. What attracted me to this dish is my dad used to cook salmon sometimes while I used to live at home so I have always wanted to try cooking it. Hopefully I can still make it taste as good as his did. This fish should be considered religious because it is written about in the Torah and the Torah is the law of God in the first five books of Hebrew Scripture. Since the Torah is such a huge part of the religion and it talks about the important of fish and salmon specifically that is what makes it religious.
Nutrition Facts
Salmon is a big part of the Jewish religion and is even talked about in the Torah. A fish is actually a widely used symbol in the Jewish religion, fish have a lot of meaning too. It is said that the water they swim in protects them from the evil and their eyes are like the eyes of God and never close symbolizing God’s protective grace. Another thing that fish symbolize is fertility because fish lay many eggs at one time and in the creation narrative in the Torah God blesses fish with fertility (Bywater, M. 2015). It is pretty interesting to learn about the different practices and symbolic meanings of a different religion rather than my own.
Salmon is a very nutritious food that is very good for your individual well-being. Salmon has been given the nickname brain food because it contains docosahexaenoic acid that helps maintain the central nervous system. It also has many other health benefits such as; reduce inflammation, help burn fat, control blood sugar and blood pressure. Salmon contains omega-3 which is a very healthy competent and it is what helps in reducing inflammation and burning fat. Eating more salmon can increase your lipid levels and reduce the chances of cardiovascular disease. Salmon is a great choice if you want to eat healthy, it only has 170 calories in fat and it has 26 grams of protein. It also contains a lot more health benefits making it is a great choice to add to your diet (London, J. 2018).
There is a total of eight species of salmon in North America. Five of the species alone are found in the Pacific Ocean. Commercially salmon production exceeds over one billion pounds annually with about seven percent of that coming from aquaculture salon farms (Filippone, P T. 2018). There is a large quantity of salmon so it is available to anyone who wants to and can eat it. The only people who would not be able to eat it are the ones if it goes against their religion or if someone were allergic to it. Salmon is sold in almost every grocery story so it can be easily accessible to anyone. The abundance of salmon is good and God is to thank for that. He has provided our world with such a beautiful and nutritious fish for us to eat and be healthy.
Environmental justice is very important to know and to keep in mind while we prepare and eat our food. Since there is such a large number of salmon that are available to us it is good for the environment that we eat salmon so they do not over populate. However, we must recognize that these fish are a gift to us from God and be thankful for them. If we did not eat fish there would be an over population of them and that could be bad and cause problems for the environment in the sea and for us. God has given us everything we have on this earth so we should include him and thank him while preparing our food. People of the Jewish religion do not want to disrespect their God and the gifts given to them from him, that is why it is important that we do not take advantage of the food that he provides.
Religious freedom is a big part of our country and what makes it special. We have the ability to choose and freely express whatever religion we believe in. Judaism is one of the more popular religions in the United States. Religious freedom allows the people who practice Judaism to freely and safely express their religion and the practices of their religion. It is important to always consider the significance of the food we eat and be thankful that we are able to eat it. Our country is built on freedom and we are allowed to eat all kinds of different foods so we should recognize that and always be thankful for the blessings we have regardless of religion and race.
Kitchen Time
To cook my salmon, I first had to go buy it at Hyvee and it was not too expensive only around eight dollars. When I went to the store I was able to find single packs of salmon to cook since I was only cooking it for myself. I also decided to cook some asparagus with it as well because I like it and thought it would go along good with it. I came back home and got out the pan and cooking oil and began cooking. It started out sizzling when I first placed it on the pan and it had a weird kind of funky smell at first when it started cooking. It started out as a bright pinkish red color and then as it cooked it started to turn to a pinkish off-white color. As I first took it out of the package it was smooth and cold because it had been in the refrigerator. As it kept cooking it began to get kind of flakey and had some tears and crack in it and of course it was pretty hot after I got done cooking it. It did not take too long to cook either which was pretty nice I added salt and pepper to give it a little bit more tastes and also a little bit of lemon pepper too. My dad also suggested that I should squirt some lemon juice on the fish too because it would make it taste really good so I cut up some lemons and squeezed the juice out on to the salmon. This was my first time trying salmon and I really enjoyed it. When I bit into it the texture was very soft and it kind of just fell apart as I was chewing it. I could really taste the salt and lemon on it which really did make it taste better in my opinion. I was very pleased with my first experience eating salmon I believe I did a good job cooking it and it also tasted very good I will definitely be adding salmon to my diet and eating it a lot more. I do not think anything really went wrong while I was cooking my meal, salmon was a fairly easy dish to cook and it taste good and it is very nutritious.
Indigestion
The first thing that comes to mind when thinking about eating a living creature like salmon is the well-being of the animal itself. Before you can eat a living animal, you have to kill it first and death is always a painful thing. Especially the way these fish are killed by taking them out of the water where they cannot breathe and cutting them so we can get to the parts of them we are able to eat. Another thing we might think about is the well-being of the species. If we keep eating salmon, overtime the population might get smaller and smaller. If the population gets to small that could harm the other animals that need them to survive too.
Salmon should not be caught in mass loads on fishing boats and things such as that. Taking large amounts of fish out of their native waters can be bad. If people live on that land they might need that fish to feed themselves or their families. In some places like the Pacific Northwest fish might be sacred to the people and their lands so it would be very disrespectful and wrong to these different social societies to take this off of their land. Even if there is a lot of these fish that are available it would still be harmful to these social societies and communities. Take large amounts of fish out of these waters would leave very little fish for the other people that would need them to eat and live off of.
It is important to keep in mind the environment as humans because we take so much from it. It is unfair to the environment in such harsh ways and take so much away from it. God made our earth to perfection so when we tamper with it we are ruining his creation. It is also very harmful to the fish when they are taken out of the water and their natural habitat, when they are taken out of the water they suffer because they are unable to breathe so they are suffocating to death. As for the fishers who catch them and put them in a container of water to keep them fresh they still are not in their natural habitat and are restricted to a small space with no food to live off of until they are eventually sold to be killed and eaten. When we take things out of the environment we can throw off the balance of nature. Taking salmon out of the water can leave the animals that eat them to be hungry and even the things that salmon eat could over populate.
Religiously speaking we should be kind and respectful to all people, animals, and other creations on our world. As religious people we believe that God does not want us to take advantage of these things that he has given us. Our world is filled with many different things that we can see God in our everyday lives. It is not wrong to use Gods creations to keep us healthy and well fed but it is not ok when we leave God out of the picture. Humans often abuse the things he has given us and do not give him the thanks and praise he deserves. It is not ok to kill and harm an animal to eat without first acknowledging that God has given us this creature and we must thank him for that. Without giving the thanks and praise to God we are selfishly harming an animal for our own benefits.
Just Desserts
I think that I picked Salmon for my dish because it is something that I have never had before but I have had other kinds of fish and I liked them. I like trying new things and I have heard from other people that salmon is really good. After making this dish I noticed that my relationship with food has sort of changed. There is something different when you are the one actually making the food, you come to appreciate it more. While I was making this I was actually thinking about the project and all the parts of it and where all this food I had comes from. This dish was new to me and it showed me that there is a lot of other really good food out there. I usually eat a lot of the same stuff every day like chicken, beef, eggs, etc. This showed me that there are a lot of other alternatives and health good tasting foods that I can add to my diet. This has a religious significance to me because I am catholic and during lent as a catholic we eat cannot eat meat on Fridays so we eat fish as an alternative. Now that I have tried and like salmon I have another type of fish that I can eat on Fridays during lent. I also try to remember God and thank him for every meal that I eat.
References
(August, 2014). Poached salmon with cucumber raita. Food and Wine. Retrieved April 25, 2019 from https://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/poached-salmon-cucumber-raita.
Passover 2019 (Pesach). Chabad. Retrieved April 25, 2019 from https://www.chabad.org/holidays/passover/pesach_cdo/aid/871715/jewish/Passover-2019-Pesach.htm.
Nachman, C. An abundance of fish. My Jewish learning. Retrieved April 25, 2019 from https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/an-abundance-of-fish/.
MJL. The Torah. My Jewish learning. Retrieved April 25, 2019 from https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/the-torah/.
London, J. March 2018. “Why salmon needs to become part of your diet asap.” Good housekeeping. Retrieved February 20, 2019, https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/health/diet-nutrition/a19503650/salmon-nutrition/
Filippone, P T. August 2018. “The history of salmon as food.” The spruce eats. Retrieved February 20, 2019, https://www.thespruceeats.com/history-of-salmon-as-food-1807658
Bywater, M. June 2015. “Fish: a Jewish symbol rich in meaning.” Sew Jewish. Retrieved February 20, 2019, https://sewjewish.com/2015/06/30/fish-a-jewish-symbol-rich-in-meaning/
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