Super Simple Salmon

Recently I bought a whole Atlantic salmon. It was priced at €5 / kg and weighed in at a smidge under 3 kg, so it cost me about €14.50. A while ago we acquired a fish kettle, kind of by accident. It sits on top of one of the kitchen cupboards and I hadn't previously used it.

Whilst I love salmon, Simon thinks it is boring, so I wanted to cook the salmon and break it up into portions that I could freeze, then use just for me if he didn't want to eat it. I thought what better way to do that than in the fish kettle.

You'd look a bit surprised too if you suddenly found yourself in a tight fitting stainless steel pan...

 My salmon came scaled and gutted by the supemarket fishmonger, but it still had its gills. I cut these out with scissors because I had read that they can make the flesh bitter. I also trimmed the tail with the scissors, as the fish was slightly too long for the kettle.

Then I added aromatics -- chunks of leek, quarters of lemon, crushed black peppercorns, lots of salt, a couple of bay leaves and a small glug of a friend's homemade rosé wine which has rather unfortunately turned to vinegar. I put the kettle over two gas burners and filled it up with water. Once it was properly boiling I turned it off and allowed the fish to sit in the liquid until cool. Then I lifted it out, took off the skin, removed the flesh, checked it for bones and divided it up into 200 g lots. The yield was 1.5 kg of cooked salmon meat.

So far I've used one portion to make a sort of Nicoise salad for two with a very lemony dressing and it was good.

Yum

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Update to Previous Post: I've updated the Humungeous Hornets Nest post as the nest has featured in the local paper. Go to the post to read my translation of the article and there is a link to a related post on Chris Luck's blog.

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A la cuisine hier: Walnut Treacle Tart made from homegrown walnuts. The mixture escaped but luckily didn't burn and we got to eat lots of treacley goo off the oven tray. This dessert was only made possible by the kindness of various British friends who keep us supplied with golden syrup and black treacle amongst other things. There is no French equivalent for either, although you can sometimes buy golden syrup in the supermarket here these days.

Sablés, from the leftover sweet shortcrust pastry. Simon loved them and scoffed most of them before dinner.