Salmon fillet with citrus and wild honey
History:
Just a last-minute omega-3 food, which yx and I presented to her housemates in Madison. It started off with XT's great attempts at pan-frying salmon with lemon, and I experimented with some honey. Surprisingly, the mellow sweetness of honey flushes well with the wild, fierce flavour and sweetness of good salmon.
Ingredients:
Just a last-minute omega-3 food, which yx and I presented to her housemates in Madison. It started off with XT's great attempts at pan-frying salmon with lemon, and I experimented with some honey. Surprisingly, the mellow sweetness of honey flushes well with the wild, fierce flavour and sweetness of good salmon.
Ingredients:
- Salmon fillets, with skin if possible. Scale the fish first!
- 1 lemon
- Wild honey - use only those that are semi-solid/solid at room temperature, not the liquid ones spiked with molasses.
- Cooking wine/Chinese cooking wine
- Olive oil (do not use extra virgin!)
- Salt and pepper
- Fresh dill - salmon's never complete without this!
- Light soy sauce
- Salt and pepper
- Butter
Method:
- First, coat the salmon with rock salt for 5-10 minutes, then wash away.
- Marinate the salmon fillets with the juice of 1 lemon, a teaspoon or 2 of honey, olive oil, 1 tablespoon of wine, roughly-chopped dill, 2 tablespoons light soy, pepper and a pinch of salt. Leave to stand for at least 10 minutes - about 30 minutes would be excellent.
- Lightly grease a frying pan, and melt a little bit of butter and some olive oil under medium heat.
- Sear the salmon fillet on the side without skin first, until 40% of its thickness turns a bright pink.
- Flip over, skin-side down, and until most of it turns pink. The trick to cooking the perfect salmon is never to cook until the flesh flakes off - once that happens, you're screwed. So slightly undercook it at first - the residual heat most often does the rest of the job, leaving a nice juicy interior.
- For a bit of extra crunch, lightly smear the skin-side with a layer of eggwash, then powder ever so lightly with flour before pan-frying.
- Serve with a drizzle of liquid honey over the salmon, a sprig of dill as top-garnish, and a slice of lemon by the side.
- For presentation freaks like me, an easy sauce can be made to lay as the base of your serving plate. After the salmon's been cooked, leave aside for a moment (do not place on serving plate yet). Add a quarter cup of boiling water to the pan in which the fish was fried, let boil and pulverise any residual fish crumbles in the pan. Reduce to 3/4 volume, add a pinch of cornflour to thicken, 1 teaspoon of dark soy sauce, a splash of worchestershire sauce and a pinch of sugar. Ladle on to an empty plate till you cover an area just slightly larger than the fillet itself. Then present in the usual manner above.
