poached salmon with herby potatoes

poached salmon, on a bed of potatoes in herby mayonnaise. completely and utterly inspired by/ripped off from a recent post on noodlepie about the incredible burrastow.

i've been drooling over the location and the food for the better part of a week now, so i thought i'd better do something about it. since it was easier to recreate the recipes than come up with $500k (burrastow's for sale!), i went for the salmon. pieman mentioned that the food was like "delia-gone-rough-around-the-edges", so i headed to delia, and found my starting point.

i boiled four largish red potatoes in salted water until tender, drained and cubed them, but left them in the pot to stay warm. i followed delia's recipe for the mayonnaise, but instead of the green herbs she suggested, i used what fresh ones i had: parsley, basil, dill, and mint. i folded the mayonnaise into the warm potatoes, and set them aside.

unfortunately, i didn't have scottish farmed salmon to work with, but that meant that i didn't feel so bad about cooking the fillet in the microwave--maybe sacrilegious, but it really works. i put the 1 3/4 inch thick fillet in a microwaveable dish, seasoned it with salt and pepper, topped it with 1 bay leaf, a generous amount of fresh dill, and a teaspoon sized pat of butter. it was then covered in clingfilm, and zapped at half-power in a 1200 watt microwave for 4 1/2 minutes. perfectly, barely cooked through--not a dried out bit anywhere.

mmmmmmmmm.mmmmf.mmm. i don't know if it's anything like what pieman and noodlegirl had, but it doesn't matter. still pretty darn good.