Salmon on a bed of white beans, fennel and orange salad accompanied with a spinach sauce is an attempt to make a crispy skin salmon dish… sadly, the skin wasn’t a success… I’ve burned it. Although the rest of the recipe turn out pretty good, maybe a little excess of sauce… This is the same spinach sauce I’ve used from the prior post; the gnocchis on spinach sauce recipe. This element is optional, of course, the original dish idea was actually without it.
Fennel have a quite particular taste to it, a delicate anise flavour. I find raw fennel to be great vegetable to crave on, in summertime, there is a certain refreshing feeling to it, similar to mint. This mediterranean veggie is actually one of the primary ingredient to absinth and is filled with health benefits. When eaten raw, the fennel bulb needs to be cut finely, otherwise its taste can be overwhelming. I’ve used the mandolin and slice 2 mm slices of it and marinate it with the rest of the salad ingredient, to let all those flavours develop together.
Orange goes particularly well with raw fennel, they balance one another to perfection. Without saying… it makes the dish even more summerish and fresh. As for the rest, it’s a simple red quinoa and white bean for the protein intake of the day, a few extra veggies and the orange marinade. All this, topped with a great source of Omega 3; salmon. A healthy to the core recipe.
Let’s make this refreshing salmon!
Salmon on a white bean, fennel and mandarin salad and spinach sauce
Makes 2 portions
Ingredients
- 2 pieces of salmon
- salt and pepper
- 2 tbsp of olive oil
The bean fennel salad
- 100g fennel bulb
- 250g of cooked white beans
- 50g of red quinoa
- 1/2 cucumber thinly sliced with the mandoline 2mm cut
- 1 carrot shaved with a peeler completely
- 1 orange cut into supreme quarters
The salad marinade
- 1 tbsp of orange juice
- 1 tbsp of olive oil
- 1 tbsp of apple cider vinegar
- salt and pepper
The spinach sauce *optional
- 100ml of chicken broth
- 100g spinach
- 1 tsp of cornstarch (diluted in 1 tbsp of cold water)
- 1 tbsp of heavy cream
- 1 tsp of lemon juice
- nutmeg
- salt and pepper
Directions
Spinach sauce *optional
- Add the homemade (preferably) broth to a small sized pot and reduce (cook high heat) until it loses a quarter of its liquid, about 5-6 minutes
- Add the spinach and salt and let them melt into the broth
- Blend the sauce with an immersion blender
- Add the cornstarch mix, nutmeg, salt and pepper and reduce until slightly thicker
- Add the lemon squeeze and cream at the end of coccion
- Adjust the salt and pepper
The bean and fennel salad
- Cook for 10 minutes the red quinoa (al dente)
- Make the salad marinade by whisking the orange, olive oil, vinegar, salt and pepper together
- Add all the salad ingredients to a bowl, add the marinade and mix
- Let marinate in the fridge for 30 minutes
The Salmon with crispy skin
- Cut the salmon into portions, take out the bones, also take out the scales of the skin (if any) with a scaler or the back of a chef’s knife
- Pat dry the pieces of fish
- Add salt and pepper (generous on the skin side)
- In a non stick pan, add the olive oil, medium high heat, cook the fish on its skin side for 4-6 minutes (depending of the thickness of your fish) or until the line of coccion on the side of the fish is 2/3 of the way (80% of coccion on the skin side)
- Turn the fish and cook a minute more
- Serve on a bed of the bean, fennel salad and a touch of spinach sauce
Enjoy!
Smooth gnocchis on a smooth spinach sauce topped with crunchy cured ham, a perfect balance of textures and flavors. If you are a spinach lover, this is the meal for you, also gnocchis, those italian silky potato dumplings are a great compliment to the spinach sauce. A traditional recipe made of spinach already exists; the green spinach gnocchis. I’ve simply separated the gnocchis from the spinach and made a sauce with it. The sauce under the gnocchi makes this dish look better in my option, to see the nice form of each gnocchi opposed to a mix of green balls.
Reducing a good handmade broth goes with everything already, it was just missing some good old vitamins, which, in my opinion, is necessary to any meal. I’ve ended up taking the easiest of vegetables to work with and also the healthiest on earth; spinach. A touch of cornstarch and cream to thickens the sauce and a squeeze of lemon to finish it. So simple yet so tasty and healthy. Talking health… vitamins C (lemon in this case) helps iron getting absorbed into the body, which means, all those dark green vegetables will always benefit your body with a squeeze of citrus.
Ingredients
2 zucchinis grated
push down the pulp with a spatula to get rid of all the juice, keep the zucchini water for the tomato sauce (reducing it by half before adding your favorite tomato sauce to it) or discard
them)
them with sauce
Cured ham and sage chicken rolls with mediterranean veggies like zucchinis, yellow pepper, tomatoes, onion, garlic, rosemary and thyme casserole is a light, packed with flavor, easy meal. I know… it’s a long… long… title for such a simple dish. A beloved “under 30 minutes meal” recipe, and filled with mediterranean flavors, who can resist that?
The cured ham enveloping the chicken breast is my version of a Canadian recipe called in french: tournedos de poulet. Which consist of a chicken breast enrolled circularly (supreme) with bacon and holds with the help of a string, so it stays round during coccion. Since living abroad in Spain, I have to reproduce those recipes the best I can, so… for this particular recipe makeover, I’ve took a leaner than bacon meat; cured ham. Then add a little sage leaves in between the slices of ham and the chicken to give it a extra mediterranean flair. I’ve topped it with little pepper and voila!
Chicken
1 zucchini thinly slices (5mm cut with the mandoline)
The difficult part in this soup is to keep the broth clear, although fully packed in flavour. This means, pre boiling the bones at first and rinsing them, then never boiling, a good filter and really low coccion help with this. In my last
2 kg beef bones
ng Hang (rice noodles)
Once the charring is done, cool the ginger and onion before peeling off the skin
Couscous is a western African meal, the origin isn’t known exactly but it goes back to around 200 b.c., created by the Berbers. I’ve met that nice Moroccan guy and he told me that the couscous we eat in our “westerners” life isn’t the same as the real couscous. The real one is pick up by hand, broken into those smaller balls, then dried up. It’s actually the hard part of durum semolina, it’s traditionally a process made by woman over a couple of days, then they dry the fine semolina they’ve subtracted and cook it way longer, than our “5 minutes” versions. I’m no professional, so in my case I’ll stick to the 5 minutes version.
mom etc. It a mix of at those asian flavours in one pot, some powders are spicier than others, the ingredients tends to change depending of the company. I use this curry powder on popcorn, with butter, it’s delicious!