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crowscriven

Crow's Culinary Abominations: HAMFISH

Friends, comrades... it's time for a new culinary horror. After the unexpected popularity of the salmon mousse, both here and among the poor depraved souls I served it to, I knew I had to keep making more nightmare fuel unconventional recipes. I've gotten many wonderful and horrible suggestions from people here, so thank you so much for that! If you have any weird recipes that make you question all your life choices and wish you could un-see the ingredients list, feel free to send them my way. I can't guarantee that I'll make all of them, but I still love seeing them.

This time, I decided to go for a childhood favorite. While I consider it delicious and nostalgic, I expect it's still an abomination to people who didn't grow up on it. It's salty. It's spreadable. It's a horrible, pureed flesh color. It may or may not be harvested straight from the meaty pits of hell. That's right... this week, we're making deviled ham.

Listen... I don't want to oversell this stuff. It's meat paste. It looks, smells, and presumably tastes like canned cat food. But spread on toasted bread with a slice of cheese and some mustard, it's actually delicious. Delicious in a way that leaves you questioning what your life has come to, while your cats try desperately to steal your sandwich because they're fully convinced that your filling of choice is just straight up Fancy Feast, but delicious nonetheless.

In its canned form, this stuff has actually been around since the 1860s! Honestly, the old branding was so much better.

I had already been quietly scheming about deviled ham for a while when one of my friends dropped this in the chat, no context:

All the pieces started falling into place. Chilled ham paste is pretty dang sculptable. So there's no reason, theoretically, why I can't turn a humble bowl of Satan's meat puree into... HAMFISH.

The chat loved the idea, obviously. So yesterday I purchased seven pounds of suspiciously cheap ham*, and today... we make HAMFISH.

*(don't worry, this will not result in seven pounds of HAMFISH. Even I'm not that invested in deviled ham. The extra will be frozen for future eating in regular boring ham format. Fun fact, February is a great time to find suspiciously cheap ham because many grocery stores are experiencing the "we ordered too many Christmas hams and need to sell them before they expire" panic. My ham is maybe already slightly past its prime. But it's fine. Slightly dubious meat feels like the right choice for this dish.)

There are a ton of recipes out there for homemade deviled ham. There's also ham salad, which is basically the same thing but chunky. I don't know if the chunks make it better or worse than the smooth flesh paste, honestly. There wasn't any one particular recipe that really stood out to me, so I decided to make my own based loosely on the recipes I read.

The ingredients:

Ham

Mayonnaise (most recipes call for about 3/4 cup mayo to 4 cups ham cubes. I'm just gonna wing it.)

Onion

Celery

Worcestershire sauce

Pickled jalapeños (and a little of the brine from the jar)

Lemon juice

Spices (garlic powder and smoked paprika for me, but honestly, use whatever your heart desires)

Mustard (this is on the list because I do consider it an essential deviled ham seasoning. Ordinarily, I would put so much mustard in this HAMFISH. But I want to make this at least slightly edible for @tamber-tales, and they would never so much as taste it if I added mustard. It's very sad, really. But there will be plenty of mustard sauce on the side, for those of us who understand how delicious it is.)

Stay tuned for the horrors!

crowscriven

The nice thing about deviled ham is that it's one of those "dump everything in a blender and hope for the best" recipes. And by nice, I mean nerve-wracking and terrible.

In the blender we have diced onion and celery, jalapeños (if you can't summon the flames directly from hell, store-bought is fine), mayo, ham, and a generous splash of all the sauces. Nervous about the lask of liquid in this smoothie, but salmon mousse taught me that raw celery actually blends pretty well.

crowscriven

Hmm... well that's what that looks like I guess. This is fine.

(Send help)

crowscriven

This is a fine and normal amount of deviled ham. This is exactly how much I wanted. Everything Is Fine. *muffled screams in the distance*

In spite of how it looks and my body trying very hard to tell me that it is not an edible texture... it tastes amazing? Needs crackers or toast or something crunchy... but damn. That's some of the best pinkish beige goop I've ever had.

Gonna let it chill overnight before molding. Tomorrow, I'll make the mustard sauce from yet another horrific vintage recipe. On Thursday, we feast on HAMFISH!

crowscriven

Crow's Salmon Adventure, Part 2

((Part 1 for context))

Okay folks, it's time to take the abomination out of the mold. Smells... not terrible? Vaguely of ketchup. Not too fishy.

Does not want to come out of the mold. Uh oh.

crowscriven

Oh...

Oh no

crowscriven

This is fine

(I am in hell actually)

crowscriven

It's happening. We're eating it. It's... actually decent?

The texture is... moist. Cold. Vaguely gelatinous, but smooth? Honestly the sauce or even just a little dill makes the flavor so much better. It balances out the fishiness. A little dill and garlic in the mix would be a nice addition. Out of the seven of us, we have:

-Two people eating huge globs of it enthusiastically with celery and crackers

-Me, snacking on small amounts with an "eh, it's edible" attitude

-Four people who tried a bite and seem to share the opinion of "it tasted like I expected it to and I don't care for it"

It's not the worst thing we've eaten. It's not even the worst thing we're eating tonight (stay tuned to hear about desert - Thanksgiving diner inspired oreos).

Was it worth greasing the pan with mayonnaise? No. Do not grease the pan with mayonnaise. I put the extra salmon goop in another pan with cooking spray to test and it slid out perfectly. Meanwhile the mayo-drenched abomination came out flayed and glistening. Just use cooking spray or oil. Not mayo. Please.

tamber-tales

Here it is on the table, ready to be eaten:

And the first person to dip into the unholy mess:

My one (1) crackerful:

(I could not get any more of that texture down my throat)

Bonus round: our friend who decided he wanted to keep the rest of it had no utensils so SCOOPED IT WITH HIS HAND INTO A BAG instead of just borrowing the casserole dish:

And now if you would care to see more culinary horrors from tonight, I will be blogging about the Thanksgiving dinner Oreos in a new thread.

crowscriven

More photos from the Salmon Devouring last night. Watching my dear friend slide the remainder of the abomination, jiggly and glistening, into a plastic bag using his bare hands was a heck of an experience. No one asked him to do this. He chose to live this way. What a guy. I'm so glad he loved it so much and forever haunted by the thought of him cutting off a corner of the bag to slurp it up like one of those Churu cat treats.

crowscriven

Crow's Salmon Adventure

Okay y'all. So. I'm making a thing and it's going to be horrible, so obviously I need to share it with Tumblr.

For context, @kedreeva recently did a fun new year's ask game where they shared recipes from a cookbook. Most of them sounded really tasty! And then I saw... this one.

(recipe image from Kedreeva's blog)

My thought process was as follows:

That sounds like an absolute abomination

But...

I like salmon (usually)

I like mousse (of the dessert variety, ideally chocolate)

I generally enjoy things with obscene amounts of condiments (though a cup of mayonnaise, admittedly, is very iffy)

I have a group of friends who will go out of their way to try literally any weird snack they can find (we've eaten durian pocky and dill pickle cotton candy, but that's another story), and they'd totally let me force this upon them, and, most importantly,

I could finally use my fish molds for their intended unholy purpose.

Yes, the fish molds. My collection of seafood-themed vintage copper pans that occasionally get used for breads or cakes but mostly just hang on the wall because I have opinions about kitchen decor and one of those opinions is that there should be copper fish everywhere. These things are literally designed for horrendous '60s savory gelatin concoctions. So I figure I have to make one eventually. Y'know, for the sake of the fish. Savory mayonnaise jello is probably enrichment for them or something.

So basically, all of this is to justify why I'm making salmon mousse tonight and liveblogging the process. I suggest blocking the tag "crow's salmon adventure" if you don't want to see... well. Gelatin. Mayo. Canned fish juices. Et cetera.

Stay tuned for the horrors!

crowscriven

Veggies: chopped!

Concerns about how chunky raw celery will be after going through the blender: many!

Fish solids and liquids: separated!

Smells: horrendous!

Cat: enthralled, having the time of his life, wants to drink the salmon smoothie right now.

Gelatin: uhhhhh... looks like that. This is probably fine.

crowscriven

Fun fact! Apparently when you add vinegar to canned salmon juices it turns a horrific milky white! Ain't chemistry fun?

Hot salmon ketchup soup actually smells significantly better than the plain juices, if a bit acrid.

crowscriven

Who wants smoothies???

crowscriven

I am in hell actually

"Grease the mold with mayonnaise-"

No. No for the love of god do not grease the mold with mayonnaise do not tenderly rub globs of mayo into the cold scales of the fish mold with your bare hands learn from my mistakes and save yourself from salmon hell.

crowscriven

Going in the fridge now. You'll all have to wait until Thursday for the final unveiling, but I'll add an update tomorrow for the cucumber-dill sauce. Now it's time to sit on the couch and question my life choices for a while.

crowscriven

Wow, I was not expecting this to get so much attention! Thank you all for being here with me on this journey through salmon hell.

A few answers to questions/comments from the notes:

Yes, the recipe calls for a can of red salmon and I used pink. I couldn't find any red salmon at the grocery store and figured there wouldn't be much difference, but have since learned that red salmon is actually much better quality and smells less like cat food. So I may have inadvertently made this worse for myself by choosing the wrong salmon. Whoops.

The cat's name is Timber and he belongs to @tamber-tales! He's a little menace who wants to eat everything, but we love him. He will not be partaking of the salmon mousse, sadly, due to the fact that it's full of onions and extremely poisonous for cats. He has complained loudly and repeatedly about this grave injustice.

It doesn't actually need to set for multiple days, but since my unwitting victims friends are gathering on Thursday and I knew I wouldn't have time to make the mousse tonight, mine is getting an extra day to chill in the pan. It was not ready in 3 hours like the recipe said (still soupy when I went to bed last night) but it does seem to have set decently overnight. The current firmness bodes well for getting it out of the mold but extremely poorly for any kind of pleasant eating experience.

A lot of people in the notes are talking about similar dishes that they enjoy, which I really love hearing about! I looked up other recipes and found that a lot of salmon mousse is made with smoked salmon and whipped cream cheese for a more fluffy, creamy texture, served on crackers or cucumber slices. That sounds way more appetizing to me, so maybe I'll try making that style after I've recovered from this one.

Today I prepared the cucumber-dill sauce, which was considerably less dubious than the mousse. Sour cream (no, I will not be subbing in half a cup of mayonnaise to put extra mayo sauce on my gelatinous mayo fish, no thank you), diced cucumber, lemon juice, dill, salt, and pepper.

It's pretty tasty! I diverged from the recipe slightly here and added a little bit of garlic powder. Perhaps I should have left it as-is for the proper experience, but I couldn't resist. The need for added garlic is just one of those things you feel deep in your soul sometimes, y'know?

That's all for now. I'll make a new post for the unmolding and tasting tomorrow, since this one is getting pretty long.