Salted Salmon with Tarragon Butter

This recipe comes from a fascinating book by award-winning food writer Sybil Kapoor called Sight Smell Touch Taste Sound which reveals the role our senses can play in the way we cook and eat.

This simple delicious recipe from a chapter on taste shows how salt can highlight taste and texture of fish like salmon.

Sybil writes: "Fish and meat in European cooking are traditionally salted to help preserve them – for example, smoked salmon or duck confit. In countries such as China and Japan, salting is also used to change the texture of food and, equally importantly, to remove fishy or meaty odours, partly by extracting blood and bitter juices.

Dry salting, such as here, is used for oily fish such as mackerel, herring and salmon. The longer any ingredient is salted, the more liquid is extracted and the saltier the ingredient will taste. The art is to allow just enough salt to develop the umami tastes, but not so much that all the tastes are submerged beneath the salt. The tarragon butter adds a tempting rich texture and depth of flavour."

Serves 6

6 x 175 g/6 oz salmon fillets with skin

3 tsp fine sea salt

2–3 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil

For the tarragon butter

1 tbsp finely chopped tarragon leaves

1 lemon, finely grated, plus 1 tsp juice

55 g/2 oz/scant 4 tbsp

unsalted butter, softened

salt and freshly ground black pepper

Place a plate or tray large enough to hold the fish on the work surface. Evenly sprinkle the surface of the plate/tray with half the salt. Lay the fillets skin-side down on the plate/tray, then sprinkle the remaining salt over the fish. Chill for 40 minutes.

Make the tarragon butter by beating together the chopped tarragon, lemon zest and juice and butter in a small bowl. Very lightly season to taste, as the fish is already salty. Spoon the butter onto some greaseproof (wax) paper to roughly form a sausage shape – roll up the paper and gently roll it under your fingers until it forms a smooth cylinder.

Chill until needed.

Preheat 2 non-stick frying pans (skillets) over a medium-high heat. Once hot, add 1–1½ tbsp olive oil to each pan, then add 3 salmon fillets, flesh-side down, to each pan. Fry briskly for 3 minutes, or until seared and golden, then turn and cook for 3–4 minutes, or until the skin is crisp and the salmon is just cooked through. Plate the salmon, topping each fillet with a round slice of tarragon butter. Serve immediately.

What to drink:

I particularly like chardonnay with tarragon (see What wine should you pair with herbs) so I'd probably go for a Chablis or other subtly oaked chardonnay but a crisp sauvignon blanc from the Loire such as a Sancerre or Pouilly Fumé would also work well.

For other salmon pairings see 10 great wine pairings with salmon

Recipe from Sight, Smell, Touch, Taste, Sound: A New way to cook by Sybil Kapoor, published by Pavilion Books. Image © Keiko Oikawa

Salmon burgers with goats cheese and sundried tomatoes

Burgers don't have to be beefy as these delicious salmon burgers from my book An Appetite for Ale prove, inspired by browsing the aisles of the Wholefoods market in Denver during the Great American Beer Festival a few years back!

Serves 3-6, depending how hungry you are

450g skinless filleted salmon, cut into chunks
80g young, unrinded goats cheese
4 spring onions, trimmed and finely chopped
80g Sunblush* or other roasted dried tomatoes in oil, finely chopped
A handful of fresh basil leaves
40g natural dried breadcrumbs
Salt, freshly ground black pepper and a pinch of paprika
Oil for frying or coating the burgers

Chop the salmon finely or pulse 4 or 5 times in a food processor. Break up the goats cheese with a fork and add it to the salmon along with the chopped spring onions and Sunblush tomatoes. Mix well or pulse again (keeping some texture - you don’t want to reduce the mixture to a paste)

Finely chop the basil and add along with the breadcrumbs. Season with salt, pepper and a pinch of paprika, mix again and set the mixture aside for half an hour for the breadcrumbs to soften and absorb the moisture.

Divide and pat out into six burgers. Fry in a little oil or rub both sides with oil and barbecue over an indirect heat for about 6-7 minutes turning once or twice during the cooking process. Or grill or fry them - that's fine too. I quite like them on their own with salad and a salsa but you could put them in a bap or bun with lime-flavoured mayo, sliced cucumber and shredded lettuce.

What to drink: A Blonde or golden ale or lager pairs well with these burgers or you could drink a Chardonnay.

Photograph © Vanessa Courtier

Cauliflower curry, boiled eggs & coconut crumble

Cauliflower and eggs are two of my favourite things, here ingeniously combined by Dan Doherty of the Duck & Waffle in his brilliant book Toast, Hash, Roast, Mash.

Dan writes: "I fell in love with vegetable curries while spending time in India and Bangladesh – cauliflower curry being one of my favourites. The coconut works really well, adding flavour and a rich creaminess, with a crunch in the topping."

Serves 4–6

Preparation time: 10 minutes

Cooking time: 30 minutes

olive oil

1 cauliflower, broken into florets

1 tablespoon cumin seeds

1 tablespoon coriander seeds

1 teaspoon ground turmeric

1 teaspoon onion seeds

1 tablespoon curry powder

1 onion, finely chopped

2.5cm (1 inch) piece of ginger, grated

4 garlic cloves, crushed

1 red chilli, finely chopped

150g (5 ½ oz) cooked yellow lentils

2 x 400ml (14fl oz) cans of coconut milk

sea salt flakes and freshly ground black pepper

2 tablespoons desiccated coconut

8 eggs, hard-boiled and shelled

a large sprig of coriander

Heat some olive oil in a frying pan over a medium heat and brown the cauliflower florets on all sides.

Meanwhile put the cumin seeds, coriander seeds, ground turmeric, onion seeds and curry powder in a dry frying pan over a medium heat and toast for a few minutes, shaking the pan, until you can smell the aromas and the spices look toasted.

Add the onion to the cauliflower pan and cook over a medium heat without letting it colour for 5–6 minutes, or until soft . Add the ginger, garlic and red chilli and cook for a further 3 minutes, again without letting them colour. Stir in the toasted spices and cook for 3 minutes, then add the cooked lentils and pour over the coconut milk. Season with salt and pepper, then reduce the heat and simmer for 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, in a dry pan, toast the desiccated coconut over a medium heat, shaking the pan, until golden brown.

After the final 10 minutes cooking time, the cauliflower should be cooked but retain a little bite. Add the eggs and cook for 3–5 minutes more. Roughly chop the coriander, stalks included, and stir through.

Transfer to a serving dish and scatter the toasted coconut all over, like a crumble, then serve.

What to drink:

Assuming you manage to resist the temptation of having this for breakfast (I would be sorely tempted, personally) a glass of dry white wine such as a chenin blanc, (not too oaky) chardonnay or viognier would be delicious with it. And if you're having it for brunch, why not a glass of champagne or cava?

See also The Best Wine Pairings for Cauliflower

Extracted from Toast Hash Roast Mash by Dan Doherty, published by Mitchell Beazley, £20 www.octopusbooks.co.uk. Photograph ©Anders Schonnemann

Salmon in pastry with currants and ginger

This is one of my favourite recipes ever - made famous by the late, great George Perry-Smith and faithfully reproduced by one of his most talented protegés Stephen Markwick.

Aware that he thinking of stepping down back in 2009, I persuaded Stephen to share his best-loved recipes in two small books 'A Very Honest Cook' and 'A Well-Run Kitchen'. The first has unfortunately sold out but you can still buy the second which also contains Stephen's Scallops with Shellfish Risotto, Roast Chicken with Cream and Tarragon and Summer Pudding from the Culinaria website.

Stephen says: "The marrying of sweet ginger and currants with fish must go back to medieval times. George’s unique twist was to serve it with a light herby sauce, (sauce messine, below) which lifts what could be thought of as a slightly heavy dish to one that is so pleasurable to eat. We had customers who asked to be phoned up when we had it on the menu!

Although the recipe is incredibly simple the trick is to wrap the salmon in the thinnest of pastry and cook it in a sufficiently hot oven to keep the pastry crisp while keeping the salmon slightly pink in the middle.

The salmon should be wild or organic farmed if possible (Glenarm, Clare Island or Loch Duart I find the best of the farmed). I remember when we started at Bistro 21, late February always brought the first of the wild Wye salmon at a price you would laugh at now. It is best to use the middle or thick part of the fish - if you have a whole side of fish you can cut off the tail end and use it for another dish like fishcakes. It needs to be filleted, skinned and pin boned.

Serves 6

Ingredients

375g (13 oz) shortcrust pastry (Stephen's own recipe is on p. 61 of A Very Honest Cook)

110g (4 oz) butter, at room temperature

3-4 pieces stem ginger in syrup

2 tbsp currants

A thick piece of wild or top quality farmed salmon (at least 700g/1 1/2 lbs) filleted, skinned and pin-boned

1 egg, beaten

Salt and pepper

You will also need a thin baking tray with slightly raised sides so that any leaking butter doesn’t go all over your oven!

Method

First make your shortcrust pastry and rest it.

Cut up the butter and put into a bowl to soften. Chop the stem ginger finely and add to the butter with the currants and some salt and pepper and mix well. (I find the easiest way to do this is by hand so it is well mixed and soft enough to spread over the salmon but you can obviously use a wooden spoon.)

Cut the salmon fillet in half lengthways so you have two pieces. (There is even a natural line marked on the fish indicating where to cut!) Season one piece with salt and pepper and spread half the butter mix onto the side that was next to the bone. Now make a sandwich with the other piece by putting it top-to-tail so the salmon is an even thickness. Season the outer top half and spread the remaining half of the seasoned butter on it.

Now roll your pastry as thinly as you can into a rectangle. (I usually roll a piece slightly larger than I need, then cut it to size and discard the edges which are usually thicker.)

Place the salmon at one end of the rectangle leaving an edge of just over 1 cm (1/2 inch) for the seal. Brush all around the four edges with the beaten egg. Now lift the pastry over the salmon and press the edges firmly together to seal. A very slight overlap is OK because you can trim it. (The ends do not have to look pretty as they will be cut off too. Mind you, they do taste pretty good as the butter and salmon juices tend to leak into them!).

Your salmon parcel is now ready but needs time to rest in the fridge - at least an hour but preferably longer. It is best to put it on a double thickness of well buttered tinfoil. (A useful tip that works like magic to stop the salmon from sticking to the foil while it is cooking: When you bring it out of the fridge peel the salmon off the foil, then, with your hand just smooth the foil before replacing the salmon - it sounds a bit far-fetched but it does work!)

Place the salmon and foil on a thin baking tray. Brush the surface of the pastry with egg wash and cook in a preheated oven at 220°C/425°F/Gas 7 for 20 minutes (slightly longer if there is anything else in the oven though it’s best to cook the salmon on its own to keep the pastry crisp). You’ll need to turn the baking tray round half way through to cook the pastry evenly unless you have a fan oven. Rest the baked salmon for 5-10 minutes on top on the stove so that the residual heat will finish cooking it. If you cut it straight away without resting it the middle might still be too pink.

To serve: Carefully peel off the tinfoil and trim the excess pastry off the ends of your salmon parcel. Divide the salmon into six thick slices (a bread knife is good for this). Serve with sauce messine (below), new potatoes and a cucumber salad (thinly sliced, salted and pressed then rinsed and dressed with dill vinegar and oil).

If you'd like to know what kind of wine goes with salmon check out 10 Great Wine Pairings with Salmon

Sauce Messine

A really fresh and vibrant herb sauce.

Serves 6

Ingredients

25g (1 oz) parsley

25g (1 oz) chervil

20g (3/4 oz) tarragon

2 small shallots or 1 large shallot, chopped

1 egg yolk

300ml (1/2 pint) double cream

1 dsp Dijon mustard

Juice of half a lemon

Salt and pepper

Method

Wash the herbs and pick the leaves off the stalks then put them into a blender with the other ingredients and blend well. Check the seasoning then tip into a heatproof bowl. Stand the bowl in a pan of boiling water and heat the sauce gently to avoid curdling it. (This should take about 10 minutes.) Serve with salmon or other fish.

What to drink: The butteriness of the salmon and the slight sweetness of the currants and ginger means you want a want a wine of some weight. Personally I think it's a great excuse to crack open a good white burgundy or other top class chardonnay but Viognier would work well too. If you wanted to drink a red I'd go for a Pinot Noir, probably burgundy again.