BODEGA BROILED SALMON

My intention was to cook fish in the oven, under the broiler, but intentions don't manifest uniformly as the Romans and Ottomans remind us. Porcini mushrooms, walnuts, garlic, rosemary, olive oil were turned into a paste.

A 1lb salmon filet was cut in three and schmeared with the aforementioned paste. 

The oven wasn't getting hot. The oven was as cold as ice. To my distress the gas wasn't flowing to the ice cold cooking oven in the kitchen... It was a night like any-other but it also wasn't.

Having just moved into a lovely two bedroom in windsor terrace with my live in girlfriend, I left it to her to set up our utilities.

Utilities can be a tricky matter, if approaching them from a traditional Monopoly™framework you would not be incorrect to assume there are only two utilities,

We, however, do not live in a Hasbro dystopia, but I digress....

I asked my serious live in girlfriend to contact Con Ed regarding the matter of the gas (and its absence) We hoped at very least that Con Ed could confirm there was no gas leak.

Eva and I have only ever paid utilities in Manhattan apartments; the hassidic land lord had included all the utilities in the rent of a past apartment I had shared with friends in Williamsburg. But barring this one exception we had both only ever dealt with Con Ed, as a supplier for both our electricity and gas. –We were surprised to discover that in Brooklyn, as in most places in the country (and probably world), gas and electricity are supplied by separate utility companies. Only in Manhattan does Con Ed supply both. We were forced to extend the olive branch of friendship to a hot company named National Grid. They were the guys for us, they had gas and we wanted it.

The expediency with which National Grid turned our gas off was not matched by expediency reestablishing gas. We were informed that it would take them two weeks to come back and flip the "on gas" switch. But the fish could not wait. The hour glass was running on empty.

I'm not sure why I chose to divide a fillet of salmon (intended for two) into three bits but what ever divine hand guided my knife was omnipotent and all knowing.

The third piece of salmon was traded to Tony who works at the bodega below us in exchange for the use of his broiler. The salmon broiled for 20 minutes on a bed of grapefruit while I drank cans of beer in the bodega's back room with the loose organization of local men who used it as their hangout. Tony said it was the best fish he ever ate, a polite exaggeration.