Salmon is my number one favourite fish. It cooks well, is never dry, can be undercooked or overcooked and it’s creamy, fatty, melt in your mouth texture makes me swoon. I’ll eat it raw, baked, fried, steamed, poached…you name it, I’ll eat it.

There is a couple who come into our workplace every week or fortnight with a box of fresh seafood. It is very, very hard to resist. I usually buy a “necklace”. It is a chain of vacuum packed smoked salmon portions. Probably the most delicious necklace I’ve ever owned.

I’ve also bought scallops from them, a bag of about 30 scallops for $26NZ. Fresh from Whitianga.

Here’s a roundup of salmon I’ve dished up in the last year:

Pan fried salmon with oregano and lemon slices. Potato mash. Beans and tomatoes from the garden stir fried with garlic and yellow capsicum.

Close up!

Baked salmon with lemon and tarragon.
Place a salmon steak in the middle of a piece of foil. Sprinkle with lemon zest, a good pinch of tarragon and a decent squeeze of lemon juice. Season well with salt and pepper. Bake at 150°C for 15-20 minutes.
Serve with potatoes dauphinoise and peas.

On a July Saturday, my little sister Joey and her boyfriend Dave came over for lunch. They brought smoked salmon: Sicilian red wine and garlic and some cos lettuce.

I whipped up some fresh lemon dressing for the salad, potatoes dauphinoise and some boiled eggs.

The salmon was awesome. It wasn’t salty like smoked salmon usually is. In fact it was quite sweet and the colour from the red wine was interesting.

I also tried out the egg press Gene got me. This one is the bear head press. The bunny head press didn’t work out so good as our eggs are a tad too big.

Inspired by reading the a Japanese food blog. So I, salivating over the Japanese adventure, whipped up 2 plates of food for our lunch. We didn’t have much in the fridge but this was calling to be made. It’s not like I had been shopping for this dish in mind. Kind of like a bento lunch box with smoked salmon, rice, steamed bok choy, edamame beans and a red cabbage salad.

Smoked salmon from the farmers markets, Cheese from the cheese factory, Bread from the bakery and herbs from the garden. Perfect!

Teriyaki salmon dinner. Marinate salmon pieces in teriyaki sauce, sugar, mirin and sake.

Fry on both sides until just cooked, serve with rice.

Broccoli – boil for a moment and drizzle with sesame oil, soy sauce and toasted sesame seeds.

This was a bit sweet. Might ditch the sugar and only use mirin next time.

Smoked salmon, rosemary and garlic roast kumara and potato chunks, cauliflower and maasdam cheese sauce.

Baked salmon with a generous smattering of Himalayan salt, herbs and lemon.

Smoked salmon with baked potato and pea puree. The pea puree was an experiment. No recipe, I just cooked the peas as normal then blended it with a little of the cooking water, salt, pepper and butter. It was very sweet and yummy. The colour was much lighter than the skin of the pea that we are used to seeing. I guess pea guts are just a different colour to their skin.