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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.

11 comments:

Hi Santos,

Love the salmon...and the fluorescent green potatoes. =) You always make everything look so delicious!

hey reid

thanks for the gracious compliment. if you think *that's* fluorescent, you should see my pesto!

despite contradicting myself from a previous post, I'm still leery of microwave for cooking, but I feel inspired enough to give it a try. Anyway did someone mention Herbie

hey mik

i've been losing posts all over blogger lately. i wonder if they'll suddenly show up, all at once, like a crazy tourette's syndrome-like stream....

i was actually surprised with how nice the salmon turned out. i've never actually cooked anything from delia, even though to me, she's sort of like julia--someone you go to to learn a technique or find a standard recipe. i may be heading over to her site more often.

hey anthony

did you bring up herbie before? because it was already in my cache, i've been to that site before. which is slightly wigging me out as 1970s disney props aren't high on my list of must-browse items. heck, it's not even on my list.

i have the HAL of microwaves. i don't use it much, but when i do, i'm amazed to find out what it can do. it even wishes me good morning and bids me to have a nice meal. it's worth making friends with. otherwise, it might kill me in my sleep.

Looks every bit an equal to the original at Burrastow to me. Would happily have munched this down.

One point - noodlegirl was in France on this section of the trip. I went to Shetland solo on a press trip, so all purely work you understand.

At Burrastow, I was very busy nattering to the only other diners, a potentially frightening married couple - 1 a clinical psychiatrist, the other a clinical psychologist... I was half expecting a prescription of pills for dessert. But, they they proved to be very good company, but my notes and snaps did suffer from our lengthy chat.

So, to clarify bits I didn't blog up. I started in the sitting room with a wee Highland Park. Pudding was an enormous light, fruity fresh Raspberry Pavlova and/or (yes - really AND/or...) a plate of Cashell Blue, Brie and Staffordshire blue with oatcakes. I also had the larger portion of a bottle of excellent 2002 Andre Stentz Gerwurtztraminer before sharing it with the shrinks.

I was satisfactorily stuffed - Noodlegirl, much like the salmon, was gutted.

Pieman
www.noodlepie.com

Hi Santos

seeing your poached salmon w herby potatoes has convinced me to actually cook something from my Delia cookbooks.Will not be telling my potential victims, oops I mean tasters abt the raw eggs though, not with all that bird flu thingy still around :)

ST
http://cheateat.typepad.com/blog/

hey mik

i just realised there's a link in your comment to pan fried salmon with pesto mash and browned butter. oh good gravy (literally), keep me away from the browned butter!!! i could drown.

hey pieman

i'm always suspect when someone mentions 'wee' and whisky in the same sentence. standard apothecary measurement says that a dram is an eighth of an ounce, and i'm pretty sure you had a (tiny) bit more than that :-). since guam is a popular destination for japanese tourists, we actually get some verrra nice single malts here. i think even the local market sells laphroaig.

and how exactly did you get the larger share of the gerwurtztraminer?

pavlovas added to the list of Things To Do.

hey st

i've convinced myself that since i added the mayonnaise to the hot potatoes that i actually cooked the eggs through, but don't take my word for it. it might partially account for the fluorescent yellowness of the sauce though....

did you bring up herbie before? because it was already in my cache, i've been to that site before. Ummmm no. Which is very weird, he says, spinning off into a space/time/identity/memory vortex.

"how exactly did you get the larger share of the gerwurtztraminer?"

No secret. I ordered it for myself - not thinking I'd finish the lot (honest...) - my fellow diners had finished their Cotes du Rhone and I did the decent thing and shared what I had left.

Noodlpie is nothing if not a charitable blog. Whose round is it?

Love the picture!

pieman

last time i checked, chika had a bottle of veuve clicquot open, i say it's her round.

hi zarah maria
the sauce was a little more neon in real life!