Baked Herb Salmon

Quick one for those days when you come back from work, too tired to whip up something elaborate yet feeling hungry and guilty enough for a proper home cooked healthy meal. This one takes less than half an hour (if you have the stuff ready). Just pop in the oven and by the time you are back from a jog/ swim/ long shower, it's ready-Herby and healthy. Mmmmm


Ingredients (Serves 4):

Salmon fillet: 4 - 150 gms each (I prefer the tail, as they are thinner and one of the leaner cuts, which cook fast)
Olive oil: 2 tbsp
Vinegar: 1 tbsp
Honey: 1 tbsp
Oregano: 1 tsp
Rosemary: 1 tsp
Pepper: 3 tsp, coarsely ground
Dill: 4 sprigs for garnish
Salt to taste




Preparation (Time: 5+ 25 mins):



Set oven to pre-heat at 200 C. Clean fish, set aside to dry.

Mix vinegar, honey, olive oil in a small shot glass. Throw in a pinch of salt. Keep aside for glazing.

Now baste the fillets with a small portion of the glaze, sprinkle with salt, rosemary, oregano and of course, crushed pepper. Wrap in foil and pop into oven (at 180 C) for 15 mins. Turn over, and bake for another 10 mins at 150 C. You will know the fish is done when it becomes opaque and flakes off on a fork.

Garnish with a few sprigs of dill. Serve hot with mustardsauce.

Tips:

Guessing that you would not want wine on a week night. Accompany with a chilled glass of water with a quarter of a lemon and a couple of sprigs of mint. No sugar, no salt. The ice-cold water will open up your palate to the herby flavor of the baked fish.

 

Hilsa baked with mustard

The perennial Bengali fishà Hilsa is back again. Strange that even in Muscat, you manage to find Hilsa. As my fishmonger Nizam put it, “Bhai, absolutely fresh from the Padma. Only two months on ice.” But then what else could a Bengali guy do when faced with Hilsa.

To top it all, there’s this new chappie in office, who had been eating my ear’s out with stories of home cooking, lau-chingri, posto bata, sukto, einchorer dalna, note shak bhaja. So there I was standing with a kilo of tucked under my arm and no idea of what to cook.

In the end I decided on “Illish Paturi”. Back at home, the hilsa would have been swathed in layers of fresh banana leaf and left to cook in the embers of a dying wood or coal fire, but Muscat being as removed from Calcutta as fish from the desert, what follows is my modified version.

Ingredients (Serves 1):

• Hilsa- 250 gm
• Mustard seeds- 3 tbsp
• Green Chillies- 6 large
• Mustard Oil- 2 tbsp (You can cut it down for a diet h ilsa bake, but it does leave something lacking).
• Salt to taste

Preparation (Processing 10 mins+ Baking Time 25 mins~Total Time 40 mins)

Soak mustard seeds in warm water for half an hour. Cle

an fish in fresh water. Grind mustard seeds, 4 green chillies to fine paste. Add mustard oil and salt to the paste. Spread this paste evenly on the fish. Slit and place the remaining green chillies on top of the fish. Wrap the fish in double layers of aluminum foil. Seal the packet from the edges, as you see in the pic below, so that steam does not escape. Do not wrap the fish too tightly as otherwise the pack may burst in the oven.

Set oven to 250 C and bake for 25 mins. If you have time on your hands, I would recommend cooking at 150 C for 40 mins. The longer time you can give it low temperatures, the better do the flavours mingle.

Serve hot with rice.

Tips:

• Though we are using a lot of mustard and green c hillies, the baking process tempers down the spices. So if you want to have it really spicy, I would recommend serving green chillies on the side for accompaniment.