Horseradish mustard salmon with roasted garden vegetables, margaritas, and approximately twenty minutes of very poor respect for a breakup.

The Recipe

This is a meal for a night when you want dinner to look like you worked considerably harder than you actually did.

The vegetables can be completely finished ahead of time. The salmon can be dressed and waiting in the refrigerator. Ten minutes before your guest arrives, preheat the oven. Pour the margaritas just before the knock.

When your guest walks in, the salmon goes in.

Twenty minutes later, dinner is ready.

What you do with those twenty minutes is none of my business.

The Salmon

You’ll need:

• 1 large salmon filet
• Horseradish mustard
• Chef Paul’s Creole salmon seasoning
• Everything bagel seasoning
• Balsamic glaze

There are no measurements here.

Use your judgment.

More importantly, use this order:

Horseradish mustard.
Chef Paul’s.
Everything bagel seasoning.
Balsamic glaze.

Slather the salmon generously with horseradish mustard.

Season it with Chef Paul’s Creole salmon seasoning.

Cover that with everything bagel seasoning.

Then drizzle balsamic glaze over the entire thing.

Yes, before it goes into the oven.

Prepare the whole filet ahead of time and keep it chilled until you’re ready for it.

Preheat the oven to 400°F.

Bake the salmon for approximately 20 minutes, depending on the thickness of your filet and how you prefer your salmon cooked.

That’s it.

No flipping.

No stirring.

No sauce to make while somebody is sitting in your living room wondering when you’re coming back.

The oven does the work.

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The Roasted Garden Vegetables

You’ll need:

• Yukon Gold potatoes
• Sweet potatoes
• Carrots
• Onion
• Fresh garlic
• Fresh lemon thyme
• Fresh rosemary
• Paprika
• Sea salt
• Freshly milled multicolored peppercorns
• The good extra-virgin olive oil
• Fresh basil
• Fresh tomatoes, sliced

Mine included lemon thyme, rosemary, basil, and tomatoes from my garden.

That part isn’t necessary.

It is, however, lovely.

Cut the Yukon Gold and sweet potatoes into bite-sized pieces.

Boil them first.

You want them beginning to soften while still holding their shape. They’re going into the oven next, so don’t cook them into submission.

Drain them well.

Add them to a roasting pan with sliced onion and fresh garlic.

Now get the good olive oil.

You know exactly which bottle I mean.

The one you don’t use when you’re merely trying to keep something from sticking.

This is dinner for a lover.

Use the good shit.

Drizzle generously.

Add paprika, sea salt, freshly milled multicolored peppercorns, fresh lemon thyme, and rosemary.

Then use your hands.

Toss everything together until the potatoes are glossy and covered in herbs and seasoning.

Spread them out.

Give them room.

Roast at 400°F until the potatoes are browned around the edges and creamy inside, the onion has caramelized, and the garlic has gone soft and sweet.

Finish the hot vegetables with torn fresh basil and slices of fresh tomato.

Don’t roast the basil into submission.

Don’t ask the tomato to become something it isn’t.

Let them stay fresh.

The contrast is the point.

A small note for later

The onions and garlic are delicious.

They are also optional.

If you know onions and garlic make you bloat and this particular dinner has ambitions beyond eating, let them flavor the pan and then leave them for your guest.

There is no prize for sacrificing your comfort in sheer lingerie for the sake of an onion.

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The Margaritas

Cold.

Fresh.

Actual glasses.

Salt the rims if that’s your thing.

I poured ours just before he arrived so they were already waiting when I opened the door.

The point isn’t necessarily to get drunk.

It’s ritual.

Ice.

Citrus.

Salt.

A cold glass in your hand.

Music playing somewhere behind you.

And absolutely nothing left in the kitchen requiring your immediate attention.

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The Timing

This is the part that makes the entire meal work.

Earlier: Cut, boil, season, and roast the vegetables. Finish with fresh basil and garden tomatoes. Prepare the salmon completely and refrigerate it.

22 minutes before: Ancestor candles.

20 minutes before: Palo Santo and Pomelo candles in the bedroom.

15 minutes before: Nag Champa incense.

10 minutes before: Preheat the oven to 400°F.

Just before the knock: Pour the margaritas.

When your guest arrives: Put the salmon in.

20 minutes later: Eat.

Or at least remember that you were supposed to.

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The Story

There are meals you make because people need to eat.

This was not one of them.

The Wounded Boy was coming over.

There would be flowers.

There are always flowers.

There would be margaritas, music, dinner, and enough unresolved history between us that the food didn’t need to work particularly hard to create tension.

Still.

I believe in helping things along.

So I bought an enormous salmon filet.

Not individual portions.

One beautiful piece of fish to share, surrounded by roasted vegetables, herbs cut from my garden, and tomatoes I’d grown myself.

But mostly, I chose salmon because of the timing.

Twenty minutes at 400°F.

That’s important.

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First, the Sheets

Freshly washed.

Deliciously soft.

They needed washing anyway.

The Pint-Sized Mechanic had left rather compelling evidence of his previous visit behind, and tonight required a clean slate.

Literally.

So I stripped the bed, washed everything, and made it fresh.

Then I did the same with myself.

The wax was still fresh from the week before.

I showered.

Oiled my skin until it was ridiculously soft.

And smelled and tasted like ripe peaches in precisely the places the Wounded Boy has always been particularly fond of lingering.

Later, he would give me his own oddly specific tasting note:

Water with a hint of orange.

Interesting.

I’d been eating two tangerines a day for the past week.

Coincidence?

Almost certainly.

Still, water with a hint of orange sounded delightfully appropriate for the evening.

I put on a sheer, flowing dark blue lingerie set beneath my blue and white tie dye robe.

And pink fuzzy slippers.

Because seduction does not require suffering.

They also left my toes perfectly visible, which was useful considering the Wounded Boy has always shown them an almost devotional level of attention.

Some information is simply practical.

---

22 Minutes

There was an order to these things.

Twenty-two minutes before he arrived, I lit my ancestor candles.

Bless the home first.

Before the man.

Before the margaritas.

Before whatever questionable activities may eventually occur inside it.

My home was mine before he entered it and would remain mine after he left.

Twenty minutes before, I lit the bedroom candles.

Palo Santo and Pomelo.

Warm. Woody. Citrus. Slightly sweet.

Then I left the bedroom alone.

Fifteen minutes before, I lit the Nag Champa.

The music was already playing.

The overhead lights were not.

Ten minutes before he was due:

I preheated the oven to 400°F.

The vegetables were already finished.

The potatoes had been boiled.

Everything had been cut.

The herbs had been pulled from the garden.

The tomatoes were sliced.

The salmon was completely dressed and waiting.

The knives were put away.

The bed was made.

The house smelled exactly the way I wanted it to.

And so did I.

Then I poured two margaritas.

Cold.

Fresh.

Waiting.

---

There Are Always Flowers

The door opened.

There were flowers.

Of course there were.

There are always flowers.

I took them with a huge smile and a long, soft, lingering kiss.

He came inside.

I handed him his margarita.

Then I put the salmon into the oven.

Twenty minutes.

And that was it.

There was nothing left for me to do.

No vegetables to cut.

No herbs to chop.

No sauce to finish.

No pan requiring my attention.

Nag Champa curled through the house.

Palo Santo and Pomelo burned in the bedroom.

My ancestor candles had almost run its course.

The sheets were clean.

The margaritas were cold.

I was freshly showered, oiled, barely dressed beneath my robe, and wearing adorable pink fuzzy slippers.

And a man who had supposedly broken up with me on Monday was standing in my kitchen on Tuesday.

The timer could mind the salmon.

I had other things to do.

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Move Slowly

That was really the point of preparing everything beforehand.

Once he arrived, I stopped doing.

I moved slowly.

Walked slowly.

Reached slowly.

Sipped slowly.

Let my hips find the music.

Let him look at me.

There is something incredibly sensual about having absolutely nothing left to accomplish.

Dinner is cooking.

The house is clean.

The bed is made.

The drink is cold.

The man is here.

You don’t have to perform sensuality.

You don’t have to constantly entertain him.

You don’t have to fill every silence.

Sometimes seduction is simply the way you inhabit your own body when you aren’t rushing toward the next thing.

So don’t rush.

You did all that preparation specifically so you wouldn’t have to.

The oven can mind its business.

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The Twenty-Minute Problem

It turns out twenty minutes is a surprisingly useful measurement of time.

It’s enough time to cook a beautiful piece of salmon.

It is also enough time to make a breakup increasingly difficult to defend.

We drank our margaritas.

And we made rather efficient use of the cooking time.

Then the timer had the audacity to interrupt us.

Dinner.

Right.

The salmon.

The balsamic glaze had already cooked into the horseradish mustard, Creole seasoning, and everything bagel crust.

The vegetables were waiting.

Fresh basil.

Garden tomatoes.

Everything warm and fragrant and ready.

And while I was standing in the kitchen making plates for the man currently naked in my bed, my phone lit up.

The Wounded Boy:

I miss you.

I stared at it.

Sir.

I am making your plate.

I had been gone for approximately the amount of time required to put salmon and potatoes onto ceramic.

Apparently this constituted an unacceptable separation.

Monday: breakup.

Tuesday: flowers.

There are always flowers.

Margaritas.

Twenty minutes.

Fresh sheets.

And now I miss you from one room away.

So I brought dinner back.

We ate.

And eventually the candles burned lower, the plates were forgotten, and the Wounded Boy stayed exactly where he’d apparently wanted to be all along.

He spent the night.

No dramatic speeches.

No negotiations about what any of it meant.

Just two naked bodies curled together beneath freshly washed but newly soaked sheets until morning.

Which is perhaps the appropriate ending for a recipe born from a breakup that lasted approximately as well as you’d expect.

The salmon took twenty minutes.

The breakup didn’t take at all.

The salmon was perfect.

The margaritas were cold.

The sheets were clean.

The flowers were on the table.

And by the end of the night, the man who had broken up with me on Monday was asleep naked in my arms on Tuesday.

There are recipes with more reliable outcomes than relationships.

Fortunately, this is one of them.