My staff meal

This is truly not meant to be disgusting.
Years ago I ate at Ocean Garden in Mount Pleasant SC and one of two options under the "Jaw" section was either Salmon or Grouper.
I got the Grouper that night. 5Bucks for a Grouper Jaw. Braised a lot like this, I think. = Soy Sauce and Brown sugar.
That's it.
I thought about that meal, a lot, in the years since. I wondered What skill it must take, what time and patience, what time is spent baisting?, how much liquid must be needed?, How much time?
The Grouper jaw I had that night was amazing. So many hidden pieces of soft, delicately sweet flavored pieces of meat, intertwined with teeth, cartilage, bone and fat. So......not ...eye appealing. But so wonderful in flavor and texture.
While breaking down some salmon this week, I threw all the scraps into a 6in' half pan topped of with (more or less) a Soy caramel. Wrapped with plastic wrap and foil into the oven for about thirty minutes.
There it was again. The wonderful flavors of freshness, saltiness and sweet. The amazing textures of fattiness melted into the unthinkable crevices in the face of a protein.
I have to admit, there was a slight selfish point when it came to the cheeks. I shared what I could and enticed those that hadn't seen the morbid images of "left overs" with butter soft and sweet morsels of parts unknown to them. But they tried it!


It's so important to me to...just try everything, but it's amazing when a paying customer won't eat certain vegetables that are key to a plate but yet, my dishwasher will enjoy braised Salmon head with me and really pick out the finer points in what he is enjoying. And get a little pissed when the cheeks are gone.

Heaven forbid that the man at table nine appreciate the wild, domestic and (locally) picked mushrooms that should be smothering his dried out piece of well done filet mignon.
Although....If A-1 had one real purpose, it was to help filet mignon.