Salmon

One of our favourite meats to eat is salmon.  It is light and flakey and always turns out just perfect.  It is a very forgiving meat if you leave it in the oven or barbeque a little longer than needed.  I have a few ways that I like to prepare Salmon, and here they are.

Simple Steamed Salmon:

1 nice single serving size of salmon fillet
Half a lemon
Drizzle of extra virgin olive oil
pinch of dill (dill is fairly over powering)
pinch of sage
salt and pepper

Place the salmon on some tin foil.  If there is no skin on the piece, put a little olive oil on the foil first, to prevent it from sticking.  Drizzle with a little more olive oil and the lemon juice and add the herbs, salt and pepper.  Fold the foil together and pinch the ends to make it air tight.  Place on the BBQ at medium high for around 12 minutes, or until done (I listen to the package, and if it is just sizzling away, chances are it is pretty done).  If you can't BBQ, throw it in the oven at 375 for around 15-20 minutes (I find that the oven takes longer).

Kicked Up a Notch Salmon:

In addition to the constituents listed above add:
Cream Cheese
1 finely chopped garlic clove
Half to one full shallot (depending on the size, and the shallot can be replaced with any onion you have)

Slice the salmon around every 2.5cm so that there are spaces to put the cream cheese, just don't slice all the way through.  Stuff the cream cheese in the slots.  Sprinkle the shallot and the garlic on the salmon and finish preparing with the ingredients from the simple steamed salmon and cook as stated above.

Maple Salmon:

Serving size of salmon
Maple syrup (has to be real maple, and not Aunt Jemima synthetic stuff)
pinch of salt.

Take a fork and pierce the salmon in a few places to help get all that good maple syrup into the salmon.  Drizzle with the maple syrup and the pinch of salt.  The sweet and the salty work nicely together.  Prepare as stated above.

We like to have this with spaghettini and Rose Sauce with steamed vegetables.

-d