5 of 6

Write now Article Tools

If I was going to cook this dish then I would do it in the following way.

You would need:

A piece of salmon, part of a fillet, skin on but no bones.

A dash of olive oil

One fresh lime

Some fine diced shallots

Fresh dill

A little butter

Salt and pepper

First get your salmon. Now if you are going to roast a piece of fish like this you want to take a bit from the middle of the fillet on one side. This way you have a good thick bit to cook that will not dry out in the oven.

Take a good cast iron skillet or frying pan that you can put in the oven and get it on the stove top and heat it as hot as you can. The reason for this is that you want to make your skin that is still on the salmon as crisp as possible. If you get this pan hot then it will start to cook the skin with its fierce heat and you will have a nice skin side up presentation to your fish.

Run the skin I only a little olive oil and season the fish then get it on to the heat . as soon as you have got it in to the pan leave it for a few seconds so that you can see the flesh of the fish starting to cook threw the skin and them place it in a medium hot oven .

Now this will give you some time to get the sauce ready. Take some finely chopped shallots, chopped as fine as you can and soften them in a pan with a little butter. Add the juice of a lime.

Allow this to cook so that the shallots start to look translucent. Then add a little wine and allow this to cook away. You want to reduce the wine by half.

Once you have done this you have the base of your sauce ready to go. So in to the oven and see how the salmon is doing. If the salmon is firm and very little movement in the fish it is ready.

So all you have to do is finish your sauce. Now you can strain the liquid out of the pan so that you do not get any of the shallots in the sauce and just the flavour. Another thing you could do is just take a hand blender and blitz every thing up together as well. But I do not mind this so much as it gives it a little body.

So take your sauce base and get that back on the heat and add a little butter. Small bits at a time as you watch the butter melt you will see it start to thicken the sauce. Wait till you have a very nice reduced and thick sauce for the fish and then at the last minuet add the fresh chopped dill to the sauce and it is finished.

Then to present the dish serve the salmon skin side up. This way you can see the lovely crispy skin and the pink of the salmon underneath. Then spoon some of the sauce over and around the fish.

If you have made a sauce like this resist the temptation to pour it out of the pan onto the fish. The heat in the pan tends to reduce the sauce even more as you pore it over the hot side surfaces of the pan reducing it even more. It has been known that you end up with the sauce that you have made reduced to nothing but a few splatters and very little else.

My suggestion for this would be some skin on new potatoes and spinach. Boil the potatoes and wilt the spinach in a pan quickly place the salmon over the wilted spinach and place three new potatoes around it, the spoon the sauce over the dish. You could finish with a sprig of fresh dill if you like.

Learn more about this author, Marcus Bentley Wise.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.

Add your voice

Know something about Recipes: Roast salmon with dill and lime?
We want to hear your view. Write now!