Poached Salmon with Creamy Caper Onion Sauce

Whenever I get home from a holiday, I reminisce by looking through my photos and remembering all the people I’ve met or visited with and all the places I’ve been.  I also reminisce about the meals I have eaten.  I’m going back through my summer photos of food because there are so many dinners and salads and desserts that got made, photographed and eaten with relish, but never got posted.  I am not even home yet and I am already feeling nostalgic for wild salmon, which I have yet to find in Cairo.

Wild salmon is much drier than its farm-raised brethren so poaching is an excellent method of cooking it.   Add on a creamy caper onion sauce and you can’t go wrong.   I cooked this, along with a cherry tomato tart, for my in-laws and it was very well received.  My father-in-law has been ill and had not been eating very well for a couple of weeks when I served this and he cleaned his plate!  We were all very excited.  Seriously.  To the point that we took a photo of his empty plate.  Looking back now, that seems weird, but it felt right at the time.  Any small victory!

Speedy Salmon Tikka with Cucumber Raita

We were blessed in the last two locations to have our daughters attend two of the best schools in Southeast Asia.  Both ISKL – the International School of Kuala Lumpur - and SAS – Singapore American School – are part of an intercollegiate league called IASAS.  This dish brings back happy memories of hosting IASAS friends and players when we were living in Singapore.  It’s quick and so delicious.  I think the last time I served it was for a softball/baseball exchange or perhaps even tournament and we had a house full up to the rafters.  Along with a bunch of girls from JIS in Jakarta (one of them a former ISKL student whose mother also stayed with us), we had one ISKL team member’s mother, father and sister staying with us too.  So many people to feed and I was in my element.  But after working all day at the SAS Booster Hut, selling food and spirit wear with my fellow Booster Club moms, I couldn’t have a complicated meal waiting to be prepared at home.  This quick salmon tikka, adapted from Jamie Oliver’s Ministry of Food, was perfect.  

I made it again last night, but with homemade naan. You can find that recipe and those instructions here.  It was just as tasty as I remembered.

Ingredients

4 small naan breads or two big ones cut in half

For the raita:
4 medium cucumbers

1 fresh chili pepper

1 thick green onion

1 lime

2-3 heaped tablespoons natural plain yoghurt

Sea salt

Black pepper

1 teaspoon ground cumin

Cayenne pepper (optional)

Small bunch of cilantro or fresh coriander

For the salmon:
2 salmon fillets – about 90-100g or oz each

1 heaped tablespoon curry paste – almost any one will do.

Olive oil

In these amounts, you can feed two.  Multiply this as many times as is necessary for your crowd.

Method
Preheat your oven to 110°C or 225°F. 

Pop your naan into the oven to warm through.  Or, if you have time earlier in the day, make them fresh yourself.  It’s easy and homemade are so much tastier than the store bought. Again, complete instructions are right here.

First, the raita.  Halve your cucumber lengthways, and then halve it again.  Use a sharp knife to cut off the watery seedy part.  Chop the cucumber diagonally into about 1/2 inch or 1cm pieces.  Put them in a bowl with room to stir.

My helper and I share the inside seedy bits.  One for him, one for me.  Until they are gone.

Then he loses interest in helping and I get this face.

Finely chop your chili, cilantro and green onion.   Add them to the cucumber bowl.

Halve your lime and squeeze the juice from one half into the bowl.

Add a good sprinkle of salt and pepper and the cumin.  Mix well.  Now add the yogurt.  Give it a taste and if you would like the raita spicier, add some cayenne pepper and add more salt, if necessary. 

Slice each salmon fillet across lengthways into four equal slices.  Thinner is easier to accomplish if the salmon is slightly frozen.  

Jamie’s original recipe calls for skin-on salmon.  I choose to take the skin off mine by slipping a sharp knife between the skin and the flesh (skin side down on the cutting board) because 1. I find it very difficult to cut through the skin, especially when I am trying to cut thin slices and 2.  I like to fry it up crispy, sprinkle it with sea salt and eat it just like that.  Delicious. 

Spoon the heaped tablespoon of curry paste into a small dish and loosen it with a little drizzle of olive oil.  

Use a pastry brush to spread the paste all over each piece.

One side

The other side

Heat a large non-stick frying pan over a high heat.  Once hot, put the salmon into the pan and cook for about 1½ minutes on each side, until cooked through.  

Serve on the warmed or fresh naan, topped with your cucumber raita and a squeeze of juice from the other half of the lime.   We folded ours up like tacos and ate them with relish.  Do lean over your plate though, because these can get drippy.  

Enjoy!

Salmon Potato Cakes

It’s three days after Thanksgiving and your family is tired of leftovers.  And you STILL have mashed potatoes.  Here’s a recipe that will fool them into thinking they are getting an entirely new dish, while you get to empty the refrigerator just a little bit more.   This is so tasty that it is worth making extra potatoes the next time, so you will have leftovers.

Ingredients

Leftover mashed potatoes – weighing three times as much as your salmon – Today, I had 540g or 19 oz.

Salmon filet  - weighing a third as much as your potatoes – so I bought a salmon filet of 180g or 6.3 oz.

Handful of green onion tops (with a little extra for garnish)

50g or 1 3/4 oz sharp cheddar cheese

1 egg

Bread crumbs

Sea salt

Black pepper

Cayenne pepper

Olive oil

Method

Salt and pepper the salmon filet and gently pan-fry it with a little olive oil, in a non-stick skillet.  Put the lid on and keep the fire low.

You are going to get some color but you don’t want a hard crust.

Turn it after about five minutes and cook on the other side for another five minutes, still covered.  

Turn the fire off and let it rest, covered, in the pan while you get your other ingredients ready.

Chop the onion tops very, very finely.   Grate the cheddar cheese.  Lightly beat your egg.

Remove the salmon from the pan and, using two forks, flake the meat off of the skin.  (Some people throw the skin away.  I pop it back into the non-stick skillet and fry till it is crispy, crispy, crispy.  Then I eat it.  Crunch, crunch, crunch.  Delicious.)

Put the mashed potato into a large mixing bowl and fluff it around with a fork.  Add the onion, cheese and salmon.   Add the egg and mix well.  

You can add pinches of salt and black pepper at this point but remember that your mashed potatoes were already seasoned, as was your salmon.   But do give the mixture a good sprinkle of cayenne pepper and mix again.

Sprinkle a plate with breadcrumbs.  Carefully shape a big spoonful of the mixture into a patty.   Put it in the breadcrumbs.  

Using a spatula, push breadcrumbs up the sides of the patty and then flip it gently over to coat the other side. 

Meanwhile, wipe out your non-stick skillet and add a little more olive oil.  Put it on a medium heat. 

Still using the spatula, slip the patty into the skillet.

Form the rest of your patties the same way and gently slip them into the skillet.  These are quite soft and may mash up a little when you try to turn them so cook on a medium to low heat until a good crust forms on the bottom.  Possibly 7-10 minutes. 

If your pan is too small to maneuver in easily, you can remove one patty before trying to turn the others, as I did.

Flip gently and cook until you have a crust on the other side.  You can serve these with a side vegetable or a salad.  Either would be delicious.  Enjoy!

(Despite the photos, this actually made six good-sized patties.  I ate the first two before I took the pictures.)

Enjoy!