Monday Night Was Gourmet Night!

I hate that sinking feeling on a Monday morning as I go off to the freezer to try and get inspiration for that night's dinner.  Monday comes hard on the heels of having to say goodbye to the weekend with a return to work, and, at least in my house, the near apocolyptic destruction a full Sunday dinner can cause to the kitchen still to properly come to terms with.

Yesterday, however, I was in luck!

There at the back were two nice pieces of salmon fillet just begging to be turned into deliciousness.  Best of all, on closer scrutiny they were smoked salmon fillets - quite unusual.

Armed with a handful of Anya potatoes, a bag of leaf spinach, a small pot of double cream, some white wine, garlic and prawns, yummy smells were wafting around before I knew it.

So then:

Pan Fried Salmon in a White Wine, Dill and Cream Prawn Sauce Servied with Garlic Spinach and New Potatoes

You will Need:Butter
Olive Oil
Salmon fillet (one per person)
Handful of coldwater prawns (pre-cooked absolutely fine)
Small onion finely chopped
Small pot double (heavy) cream
Glass of dry white wine (make it something nice; you can drink the rest!)
Large pack of leaf spinach
New potatoes (any variety) thickly slived
Plain flour for dusting
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Zest and juice of a lemon
Bunch of fresh dill (finely snipped with scissors - saves so much time!)

Method

Put new potatoes onto a slow boil.

Finly dust skin side only of salmon with plain flour tapping of any excess and season well with salt and pepper.

Melt knob of butter with a couple of table spoins of olive oil (to stop it burning) until foaming.  Places salmon fillets in the pan SKIN SIDE DOWN first and cook for three minutes.  Turn and cook for 2 minutes (or longer if you prefer it well done).

Meanwhile heat some olive oil in a saucepan and fry the onion until soft.  Add prawns and lemon zest, season with salt and pepper and cook gently for a couple of minutes.  Throw in the glass of wine and let it boil off for a couple of minutes.  Add the dill and the pot of cream and cook gently until reduced and slightly thickened.  (Do not let it boil too much and stir frequently.  This will quite happily cook away letting you get on with other things).

Wash spinach and shake well.  Heat a knob of butter in a pan and add finely chopped garlic while it melts - this will stop it cooking too quickly.  When butter has melted, mix in half the lemon juice, add the spinach, season well with salt and pepper and gently turn the spinach over until it has started to wilt and fits more easily in the pan!  Cook for a few minutes until the spinach has wilted down - turn it over frequently - do not overcook.  It should still have some substance to it and be a nice bright green.  Nothing worse than slimey spinach done too long!

Drain and toss the potatoes in salt, pepper and a little olive oil.

To Serve

Put a pile of spinach on each plate and arrange the salmon fillet across it.  Put generous, loving spoonfuls of the creamy sauce over the top of the salmon letting it ooze unctuously into the spinach.  Add some potatoes on the side, serve and enjoy!


This worked so incredibly well and was amazingly quick to prepare.  Start to finish was no more than 20 minutes excluding the washing up of course!

Where to Start?

For me the answer to that is easy. You can only get out of cookery what you put into it; i.e. ingredients. Where we source our food is becoming an ever more popular and hot subject of debate. It seems to be a total minefield of green issues regarding how many ‘food miles’ our food travels before we pick it up in the supermarket and what has been sprayed on the food before we get it, ethical issues over whether farmers and their workers are being paid a fair wage for what they do, monetary issues with the fact being many people find it increasingly difficult to actually afford their weekly shop and husbandry issue concerning how we treat the welfare of the animals we raise to eat.


Yes ingredients are key to it all.

I am not saying all food must be locally grown, organic produce, but all food should be fresh and tasty and not have an invisible cost associated with it. It truly IS possible for everyone to cook at least part of their diet from scratch without costing the earth. It may seem impossible for some to imagine, but you will learn to love cooking for its own sake as well as for the rewards at the end. I still do not know whether I enjoy the actually cooking of the meal, eating it myself or watching anyone joining me eat what I have made for them the most. Tough call!

I did not always cook but it has become a true passion for me. Long may it continue!