Maple-glazed salmon with apple, fennel, cucumber and mint salad
List of ingredients
Serves 2
40ml maple syrup
1 tbsp dark soy sauce
1 garlic clove, crushed
Salt and pepper
2 salmon fillets, skin on or off
1 tbsp rapeseed oil
Juice of half a lemon
4 tbsp olive oil
2 tsp wholegrain mustard
Salt and pepper
1 bulb of fennel
Half a cucumber
1 granny smith apple
A small bunch of mint, leaves picked
Sommelier’s tip
Chablis
Chablis is an excellent all-round white for pairing with food – it’s fairly light and fresh, so won’t overpower your dishes. It’s particularly good with light cheeses, seafood and white meats, although you can basically drink it with anything.
This dish is quite rich, given the butter and the meaty scallops, so you need the flinty, mineral finish of Chablis to cut through all that, and both wines perform the job very well.
Although the salad cuts through that unctuous salmon nicely, the crisp bite of Chablis lifts everything and turns this into a real treat dish. Serve it very chilled with the just-baked, piping hot, syrupy salmon.
METHOD
First, marinate the salmon. Mix together the maple syrup, soy, garlic and some salt and pepper in a shallow dish, then add the salmon and coat well in the mixture. Cover and refrigerate for 30 minutes to an hour, turning occasionally.
To assemble the salad, whisk together the lemon juice, olive oil, mustard, salt and pepper. Finely slice the fennel using a sharp knife or a mandolin. Halve the cucumber lengthways and scoop out the seeds, then cut into thin slivers. Cut the apple into thin matchsticks. Toss with the dressing, then shred the mint leaves and toss these in too. Taste and check the seasoning – you may want a little more lemon juice or salt.
To cook the salmon, pre-heat the oven to 180C. Heat the rapeseed oil in a frying pan over a medium-high heat, then sear the salmon (remove it from the marinade but reserve the marinade) for a minute on both sides if it is skinless, or just on the skin side if the fillets have the skin on. Put the salmon in an ovenproof dish, spoon over the marinade, and cook for around 8 minutes or until the salmon is still a little pink in the middle (this will depend on the thickness of the fillets). Serve the salmon with the salad, with the glaze spooned over.
The author of this recipe
Elly McCausland is the winner of the Chablis Blogger Challenge 2014. She is a PhD student in children's literature and food writer based in York. Her culinary interests include breakfast, British puddings, south east Asian and Middle Eastern cuisine, which she explores on her food blog 'Nutmegs, seven'.
www.nutmegsseven.co.uk / @nutmegs_seven
