Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Green lava for salmon and trout

When I cook, I now and then stumble upon a perfect combination of tastes. Last time it happened was today.
I made baked salmon for dinner and served it with a pea sauce, and it was marvellous! This is definitely something I will make again.
The pea sauce is inspired from a cooking show with Nigella Lawson. She served this pea sauce with lamb (she also added some dry mint to it which I omitted for this recipe).
I decided to try and mix it with fish and it paired perfectly with baked salmon. Since salmon and trout share many of the same qualities, this delicate sauce goes with both.

I baked my salmon in aluminum foil in the oven (400F) for ten minutes. Before I baked it, I sprinkled my salmon with some fresh lemon juice, a little salt and fresh dill on top.

For the pea sauce, you will need the following ingredients:

1 garlic clove, peeled
1 to 2 cups of peas
2 tablespoons parmesan sauce
3 to 4 tablespoons creme fraiche (- or mascarpone cheese)
Salt and pepper to taste

Heat a couple of cups water in a pan. Add the peas and garlic clove, and cook until peas are done. (I used frozen peas so it only took a couple of minutes.)

Drain the peas and add all the ingredients in a food processor. Blend on high for a fev seconds, then scrape down the edges of the bowl with a spatula, add the lid and blend for a few seconds more.

I served the fish and pea sauce with baked potatoes and steamed asparagus (- asparagus being the vegetable of the season right now.)

3 comments:

Kitty said...

that sounds very delicate and yum.

yknow I should send you a recipe I tried recently that was something of a flop. I wonder how you would remedy it?

It's a pasta casserole that called for onion, bacon, cheese, zucchini tomato soup and a carrot. The sweetness of the zucchini and carrot overpowers the saltiness of the bacon and cheese.

Then we added tabasco sauce which seemed to help for a moment, until it didn't!

Eva said...

Hmmm, this is strange. Usually, it's the bacon that overpowers everything else.

I will need a little bit more information before I can determine what is wrong in your recipe, because the casserole in itself sounds delicious!

How many carrots did you use? And how much bacon? Did you use smoked bacon or regular salted bacon?

I *think* that the tomatoes are in it to give it acid. If you use very sweet tomatoes, they can add more sweetness to the casserole than desired. One says that a complete dish consists of something sweet, something salt, something bitter and something acid (I often don't bother with bitter thoug...). Often, when a dish goes bold, it lack's acid. You could try to add some lemon juice or vinegar. Also, freshly ground black pepper gives most dishes an edge without overpowering it. Black pepper and tomatoes are a great match, by the way. :-)

Kitty said...

there's no saying for when a dish goes bland or blah, lol?

I am intrigued by your skill of not adhering to recipes. It sounds very cool.

I'll have to send you the recipe to have you try it out and experiment. There was only 1 carrot, 1 onion, three regular bacon rashers (which I take to mean pre-cooked?), one can of soup, two zucchini, 1 1/2 cups grated cheese and 1/3 cup sour cream.

It's sadly a meh dish. Everything cancels out everything else. Maybe you could go around and doctor every bad dish out there and start a service?

For instance, Mark and I are dying to make a tasty Indian dish. We've gone through 1 cookbook and several internet recipes but so far it's been mediocre. We have given up!

I'll send on the recipe over the weekend. (Have a wonderful one, btw!)