Simple rich flavours, quick to cook… this is my version of fast food. Fresh ginger and garlic are part of my regular store cupboard – they keep well and have so many uses! So the only shopping needed for this dish is to pick up some nice fresh salmon and some kind of stir fry veg like Pak Choi. Then – bish bash bosh … proper food 🙂
Ingredients (per person)
1 salmon fillet, skin on
Half a mug of Basmati rice
1 pak choi (or bunch of spinach, chard or similar)
Sauce
Small piece of fresh root ginger (about 1cm chunk)
1 clove garlic
1 tablespoon soya sauce
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon honey
First off, make your little saucey marinade thing:
Peel and finely chop the ginger. Crush the garlic. Mix together all the sauce ingredients into a small saucepan and leave it to sit whilst you prepare the rest.
Put your rice on to cook… use twice as much volume of water as rice. Add a sprinkle of salt, bring it to the boil, give it a quick stir. Put the lid on and turn down to lowest possible heat. Watch out for it boiling over – if it tends to do that even on the lowest heat, just leave the lid a little tilted to let steam out.
Check your packet for cooking instructions – ours cooks in about 12 minutes. After that, turn the heat off and leave it to sit whilst you cook the fish and veg.
To cook the salmon: put a drizzle of olive oil in a frying, put it on quite a high heat to warm up, then add your salmon skin side down. The heat should be high enough for the salmon to be sizzling but not spitting oil everywhere. I use a simple “all four sides” cooking method for salmon: Cook for 3 minutes on the skin side, then knock it on to its side and cook just for a 20 seconds or so on that side.
Meanwhile, start gently warming your sauce – it just needs to heat through for 3 minutes or so.
Back to the salmon: Turn it again so that the skin side is now facing up, and cook for 3 minutes. On the remaining uncooked side, you should be able to see the colour changing, with an small area of pink still in the middle. Finally flip it on to this last side and cook for 20 seconds.
Place the salmon on a warm plate with a serving of rice and pour over your honey and ginger sauce. Keep warm.
Finally, add chopped pak choi to your frying pan and stir fry for about 60 seconds until just starting to wilt.
