Crispy salmon with Sicilian flavors.
Recipe:
Oven-Seared Salmon with Orange and Fennel Whole Wheat Couscous
Salmon, it’s a wonder food, right? Isn’t it the diet Dr. Perricone insists on? If you eat nothing but salmon and broccoli, you’ll be smooth-skinned, sleek, and gorgeous? Salmon is a lovely fish, but it’s a rich one, almost too rich.
After many years cooking it, I’ve come to understand two big truths about it.
The first is that salmon needs acid to break up its richness. Lemon is good, of course, but orange, which I’ve chosen for my recipe here, or tomato, or wine, or lemon mixed with mustard, capers, a touch of vinegar—those are all good options. I’ve never understood the French habit of presenting salmon in a cream sauce. That, to me, is the French palate at its worst. But a dish even more sickening than that, and one probably invented by my own people, the Italian-Americans, is a pasta version of that concept, sort of a salmon fettuccine Alfredo: salmon, either smoked or fresh, heavy cream, some type of grated cheese, garlic, and fettuccine, all tossed together into a bowl of throat-slicking fat. That was popular in midpriced Italian-American restaurants in the 1990s (and also at wedding buffets). The very thought of it gives me a gag reflex. (more…)
Erica De Mane 