For lunch I improvised a salad topped with noodles and the salmon. The salad was cucumber and mixed lettuce with rice wine vinegar, soy, and sesame dressing. It tasted fine. The rice noodles had some soy sauce and vinegar as well as sauteed garlic and green onion. They tasted okay, but once again clumped together. Clearly, I don't really know how to handle them. But, "noodle cake" is not so bad although I did accidentally dump in a bunch of pepper. I need a new pepper shaker. The salmon was cooked in a skillet after seasoning with salt and pepper. I thought the magic of sockeye salmon would shine through. Here's my salad:
Alas, the salmon was much milder in flavour than I'd anticipated and could have used more. . . added flavour. But, the awesome thing was when I peeled the skin off the cooked steak and late crisped it up in a hot skillet. It was a crispy, fatty, fishy snack of great deliciousness to end the meal. Salmon skin really is a treat.For dinner I went with a "real recipe" and I followed it pretty closely. Really, I did. And I think it's a winner. The recipe is "Baked Sockeye Salmon with Bell Peppers and Capers" by Marcella Hazan and is available here on Epicurious.
This is how it looked out of the oven and just short of being fully cooked:
I made about 1/4 of the recipe. I roasted and peeled one small red bell pepper, used a few spoonfuls of capers, and put one whole clove of garlic in the olive oiled dish with a salmon steak. I found that the recommended baking time of 16 minutes was woefully inadequate for my thick steak. It actually took closer to 25 minutes (I think), but should you make the recipe you should check on your unique piece of fish. The recipe is actually recommended for a long skin on fillet.Anyways, let's talk about the flavours. I really think that the sweet, sightly smokey roasted bell pepper and the salty, slightly tart capers gave the salmon the flavour kick it needed. Actually, I really like roasted pepper and caper anyways. I also paired some bites of salmon with a bit of the garlic, which was also good. I don't think I ever would have thought to pair roasted bell pepper with salmon, but it's a great idea and I'm glad I found this recipe. It's a great on for baked salmon.
But, I am a bit sad that I couldn't have grilled salmon like we usually did at home because I don't have a barbecue. One of my favourite meals at home was a whole salmon (usually a wild pink salmon) stuffed with lemons and herbs and grilled wrapped in foil. If you have a barbecue and enough companions to warrant a whole salmon, I recommend trying that.
And finally, an update on a recipe that I posted previously here for some excellent blueberry muffins. I modified the recipe to make blueberry-maple-oatmeal muffins by omitting the lemon zest, reducing the oil to 2 tablespoons, using 1/4 cup packed brown sugar and 1/4 cup maple syrup for the sweetening, and adding a trace more baking soda. The results look pretty good:
They tasted pretty damn good too and had excellent muffin texture. However, I found the maple flavour to be pretty subtle. I don't think I could be sure it was there. Maybe, considering the expense of maple syrup lemon zest is a better flavouring option.
