Instructions: Mix sugar and next 3 ingredients in bowl. Brush salmon with water to moisten. Sprinkle salmon on both sides with all of sugar mixture.

Melt butter in heavy large skillet over medium-high heat. Add salmon and cook until crusty on outside and just opaque in center, about 4 minutes per side. Transfer salmon to plates.

Add clam juice and cream to skillet. Boil until sauce thickens enough to coat spoon, scraping up browned bits, about 4 minutes. Spoon sauce over salmon. Sprinkle with green onions and serve.

This recipe yields 4 servings.

Comments: As a kid, Id accompany my mother to her job at the racetrack, where she would lead the horses out to the starting gate. Eventually I was helping out in the stalls, and when I got older, I became a jockey. My mother was also the person who, in a roundabout way, inspired my other passion: cooking. Id come home from school, and she would have prepared something from a box or can. I didnt always like what was on the dinner table, so one day I asked her to buy me a cookbook. Pretty soon I was making dinner for us almost every night. Now, after seventeen years of racing horses and cooking for family and friends, Im making the jump to professional cooking.

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