There used to be enough time in life to poach a fish, but at some point in the 1990s it all went up a notch, and now we are too busy coaching soccer and styling our homes into a pithy blend of Shaker shack and Bengal brothel to poach a fish. Of course Mrs. Helpful has indeed successfully poached a most delicious salmon, hailing from the Pacific Northwest, purchased from Citarella for the price of a year’s tuition at The Harvey School, in a French stainless steel fish poacher from Zabar’s, that Mrs. Helpful received as a wedding present in 1987.

A fish poacher is a piece of cookware that takes up a lot of space in your cabinets, can only be used for one thing, and must be washed six times to prevent the kitchen from smelling like Fulton Street. First you must make a court bouillon – a poaching liquid produced by simmering together aromatic vegetables and herbs and the uglier parts of other people’s fish dinners. Now the beast is stuffed with more aromatics and wrapped in cheesecloth – as if you have cheesecloth or even know what it looks like! Gently immerse the mummified fish in the court bouillon, which you will keep bubbling at an even low temperature, balancing the yard-long poacher across two burners. Cool the fish in the poaching liquid, carefully lift it out and unwrap it and somehow maneuver it onto an abnormally large platter, take a shower, clean your kitchen, and decorate the fish using cucumber and lemon slices to make little scales and other suggestively fishy designs.

If you think you have enough time to do this, you should be doing volunteer work for one of the many worthwhile agencies that help people with real lives and real problems. Open a can of tuna and mix in the Hellman’s, along with some peeled, seeded, and diced kirby cucumber and minced Maya sweet onion, serve on a nice fresh whole wheat bread, and get out there and see the world!

Helpfully Yours,

Mrs. H.