Baked Whole Salmon
A slow stroll on a sunny day to the 'back alley in china town' where I get my seafood yielded an excellent result - the freshest pink salmon that i've seen in a while. I had a bunch of fresh coriander at home and my basil was doing well, so while the fishman was cleaning my selection I decided on my recipe ...
... stuff them with a mixture of chunks of lemon, lime zest (finely grated skin), basil and coriander, salt, pepper, olive oil, and a couple of fresh chilli's for my spice loving partner.
I made it home and started preparing my recipe, taking some photos along the way with a specific lens to get a beautiful short depth of field across the skin and throughout the cooking process. A few days later, I still hadn't copied the photos to my computer, the dreaded 'FOR' message appeared telling me that the entire memory card had been corrupted. These photos are from the olympus and not quite as good. Lets never speak of it again... on with the recipe!
Ingredients
- 2 x small whole salmon
- 1/2 a lemon, flesh cut into small cubes
- Small bunch of basil, washed
- Small bunch of coriander, washed
- 1 - 2 teaspoons of lime zest
- Salt
- Pepper
- Olive Oil
- Chilli's (optional)
Method
- Your fish supplier should be able to clean and cut the fish for you so that you have a neat pocket in the center to put your ingredients. If you have this option and are not experienced at scaling and cleaning a fish, get them to do it - you don't want to scale and clean your first fish in your kitchen, it is just not worth it!
- For the next step we are preparing the filling by mixing lime zest, lemon chunks, salt, pepper, 2 tsp olive oil, coriander and basil in a bowl. You can either finely chop the herbs or just add the whole leaves.
- Place the fish on a baking tray and stuff generously with the mixture. Pour the remaining juice over the top of the fish, making sure they get a little olive oil over them - you could rub the skin with some of the mixture too.
- Bake in a moderate over for 1 hour, checking occasionally to make sure they aren't drying out. If you want crispy skin make sure it is covered with olive oil then start and finish the cooking procedure with 10 minutes in a high oven.
Sauce
I simply took the liquid from the baking dish after the fish were cooked and mixed it with 4 tablespoons of whole egg mayonaisse and a little extra lemon juice. The sauce is delicious either drizzled over the top when served or in a dish on the side as we did here.
