up against the wall, motherfucker

I had hot-smoked snapper for dinner last night (in a taco with salsa and fried potatoes), so lunch today was a snapper melt with the leftover fish: seeded rye bread toasted on both sides and buttered on the outside, flaked snapper, red miso + mayonnaise, grilled onions, mozzarella + aged Mahon.

Pepper Relish Lay's on the side.  (Imagine salt and vinegar chips, a little sweeter, with the flavor of fresh pepper and onion.  They're pretty good.)

Fish definitely makes meatlessness easier.  So does being a week away from St Patricks Day, a Reuben, and corned beef hash.  What I miss most from the meat counter: hamburgers, Buffalo wings, duck breast, roast chicken, unctuous pork bits (tails, feet, etc).  Even Buffalo wings depend on the collagen-richness of chicken wings.  That lip-smackingness, you dig, that's always missing from "boneless Buffalo wings," because the collagen in this case is all in the skin.  Unctuousness -- the almost-gooeyness of collagen-rich parts like oxtails, spareribs, pig tails, etc -- is something neither fish nor flora can provide.  

Similarly, I find that without meat as a palette for it, I have not much interest in tanginess -- the sweet-sour-sharp of barbecue sauce, for instance, or mustard glaze, or Filipino adobo.  Peppadews or pickled cherry peppers on a steak sandwich.  The contrast between a hot dog and sauerkraut.  I'm not sure I miss it yet, but it's one of my favorite counterpoints for meat, which means it's a well I'm used to going to often.  I would certainly miss it in the long run.

(Interestingly, one of my favorite fish dishes, Platonic fish, is a tangy dish -- I just haven't got round to making it yet.)