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Sex-noise Salmon with Seductive Veggie (s)Mash

This meal is seriously worthy of it’s kinky title. The salmon alone will induce the foodgasm of a lifetime. No joke, you’ll be hard pressed to contain the urge to happy dance in your seat and grunt with delight as you savour each flavour-bomb mouthful. Then you discover the seductive  bed of mixed vegetable mash. The playful side dish keeps drawing you back for more as you take time to appreciate the moorish creaminess, subtle spiciness, addictive sweetness and grounding saltiness. The crispy skin garnish takes the presentation and texture to another level – who doesn’t love a well-seasoned, absurdly crunchy and deliciously fatty salmon skin?

You could absolutely stick with the salmon element alone and serve with some coconut jasmine rice and steamed greens for a traditional Asian-style meal or alternatively just prepare the mash to liven up the plate when serving something basic like homemade rissoles or leftover roast meat. The separate elements work beautifully both together and apart.

This is the most fun I’ve had with recipe development in yonks – I hope you fall in love with this dish as much as Mamma bear did last night (she was my Valentine – is this cute or sad?). She reckons it’s the best Valentine’s meal she’s ever had!

Sex-noise Salmon

Serves 1

  • 1 salmon fillet, skin on
  • Sea salt to season skin, plus cold pressed extra virgin olive oil for frying
  • 3 Tablespoons Red Boat Fish Sauce (I like this brand because it’s made with a good quality sea salt, rather than refined table salt)
  • 1 1/2 Tablespoons rapadura sugar (you could substitute for coconut sugar)
  • A pinch each of garlic powder and onion powder
  • 1 teaspoon dried basil leaves (could use a handful of freshly chopped basil if you’d rather – we didn’t have any and I was making this dish as a spur of the moment thing, just using what we had)

Method

Using a sharp knife, remove the skin from the salmon. Pat the skin with paper towel until totally dry and season with sea salt. Set aside.

Dice the skinned salmon fillet into large pieces (about 3 X 4 cm) and place in a small glass mixing bowl.

In a small saucepan, bring the fish sauce, sugar and seasonings to the boil. It will start bubbling so stir constantly so nothing sticks. Before long you’ll have a thick “caramel”. Thin this caramel down with 1/4 cup filtered water to make a marinade and pour over the fish. Stir evenly to coat and marinate for as long as possible (I probably let it soak up the marinade for 4 or so hours before cooking).

When ready to cook, preheat the oven to 160 degrees C (fan forced) and line a small baking tray with paper (I love the environmentally-friendly and toxin-free brand “if you care”). Place each piece of fish gently on the lined tray, leaving a centimetre or so in between each piece and baste each piece with remaining marinade from the bowl so nothing goes to waste.

Before you bake the fish, heat a large non-stick frying pan (preferably a stone-based one so there’s no nasty teflon coating) over a medium high heat and pat the salmon skin dry one more time. Re-season just a little more and run the skin with olive oil. Place the skin, seasoned side down in the pan and turn the heat down to medium, letting the fat render and create a crispy skin.

While the skin is cooking, place the fish in the oven for 3-5 minutes, remove immediately – you don’t want to overcook it. Serve fish straight away, either with mash (below) or coconut rice and greens or even a humble baked organic potato and chunks of iceberg lettuce. When skin is golden and happy-dance-worthy crispy, drain on a paper towel to remove excess oil and place delicately over the rest of the dish as an uber chic garnish.

Seductive Veggie (s)Mash

Makes 3 side serves

  • 1 cup butternut pumpkin, diced in food processor (or chopped in to small chunks) – feel free to substitute for any other pumpkin variety or even sweet potato
  • 1 cup cauliflower “riced” in food processor or cut into tiny pieces (for some green goodness you could substitute for broccoli – yum!)
  • 1 teaspoon minced ginger
  • 1 Tablespoon cold pressed extra virgin olive oil
  • 1 diced onion (I used brown but red would be super yum too!)
  • 1 teaspoon ground organic turmeric
  • 1/2 teaspoon black pepper (this is approximate – I used 30 grinds from the grinder)
  • 1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper
  • 1 Tablespoon chicken broth powder* (all natural, either use Changing Habits or Broth of Life, these brands only use homemade bone broth that has been dehydrated … no nasty additives, sugars, salts, yeast extracts etc.)
  • Generous pinch (about 1/2 teaspoon) himalayan or sea salt (I used seaweed salt which is just salt combined with dulse** flakes … feel free to add in some dulse flakes if you have them on hand)
  • 5 small preservative-free pitted dates
  • 30g organic butter (can substitute for coconut oil or extra coconut cream to keep meal dairy free)
  • 2 Tablespoons pure coconut cream (my fave is the Ayam brand in the green tin)
  • Filtered water for simmering

*Chicken broth powder isn’t essential to this recipe. If you can’t source a quality brand, feel free to leave it out and just add an extra 1/4 teaspoon quality salt to the recipe instead. I just love adding broth to meals for the gelatine and collagen content, Mum’s osteoarthritis needs all the support it can get!

**dulse is a type of seaweed and an incredible food-source of iodine.

Method

In a large frying pan, over a medium heat, warm up olive oil and add onion and ginger to the pan. Sauté until golden brown and uber fragrant. Add turmeric, black pepper, cayenne, chicken broth powder (if using) and butter. Turn down the heat to medium-low and stir to coat onion and spices in butter.

Add the finely chopped cauliflower to the pan, stir to coat and add 1/4 cup water. Bring to the boil and turn down to a simmer – allow water to absorb and cauliflower to soften for 3 or so minutes. Repeat the exact same process with the pumpkin. When the veggies are soft, add dates and salt, stir to coat and leave to simmer on a low heat for 5 minutes or until dates are beautifully soft and break apart into sticky caramel chunks. Most of the water should be evaporated by now so you’re left with a “risotto” type consistency.

Turn off the heat and transfer the mixture to a food processor or blender (of course I used by beloved Vitamix). Add coconut cream and blend until you have a smooth and creamy puree.

Serve with salmon and steamed greens if you’re cooking the complete meal, or use as a side dish for a different protein source; rissoles, roast meat, slow cooked oxtail, pan-fried snapper, grilled barramundi, poached eggs, homemade veggie burgers etc. and add a side salad or lots of steamed greens.

You can also use this mash as a thick “soup” and serve with one of these beautiful homemade muffins on the side – oh stop it, THAT sounds like heaven!