Рецепт Salt and Pepper Salmon with Smashed Potatoes and Peas
I’d go back to Ireland in a New York
minute, but it wouldn’t be for the food. We never got anywhere near Darina Allen's Culinary Course and aside from a wonderful
Thanksgiving feast that we prepared ourselves, a dinner at Fallon and
Byrne in Dublin and an Irish Breakfast at Merv Griffin’s St. Cleran’s Hotel, we
basically had dreadful food. So imagine my surprise at discovering that
when Tyler Florence
was working on a recipe for Salt and
Pepper Salmon, his reference point was “Colcannon”. According to
LaRousse, “Colcannon” is “a very popular Irish dish made from mashed potatoes
and green cabbage, mixed with butter or milk and strongly flavored with chives,
parsley and pepper”. Since there is virtually nothing easier to cook than a salmon filet, it is a perfect dish to serve now while the heat is rising and you want to get in and out of the kitchen fast. I strayed a bit, both from Colcannon and Tyler. But the result was spectacular: Crispy seared salmon liberally seasoned with salt and pepper on a bed of new potatoes, sweet peans and crunchy pearl onions topped with fresh mint, all of which was on the table in about 30 minutes.
There’s something so lovely and green
about this whole meal that it does remind me of Ireland-- so beautiful
and, as these pictures taken in November show, so green! We stayed only a night
at now defunct St. Cleran’s Hotel in County Galway. The place was
formerly the home of John Huston, whose daughter Anjelica Huston, grew up there. TV host
Merv Griffin re-imagined the place as a lavish country house hotel. It
was, as you can see from these pictures, a glorious Georgian house. It
also had a kitchen of some renown, run somewhat incongruously by a Japanese
Chef. For some ridiculous reason, even though we were hotel guests, we
couldn’t be accommodated in the Dining Room and instead were hustled off to a
truly dreadful meal at a second or third rate hotel nearby. But my Salt
and Pepper Salmon almost makes up for the hotel’s gaffe and brings back a lot
of happy memories of the Auld Sod. Here’s the recipe:
Recipe for Salt and Pepper Salmon with Smashed Potatoes,
Peas, Lemon, Pearl Onions and Mint
4 Salmon Filets, 8 ounces each, skin on, 11/2 -2 inches
thick 2 lbs of new potatoes
Kosher Salt
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Freshly ground Black Pepper
2 10-ounce packages of frozen peas
1 10-ounce package of frozen pearl onions
3 tbsp. unsalted butter
2 shallots, finely chopped
Grated zest of 1 lemon
¼ cup of fresh mint leaves
Put the potatoes into a large pot, cover
them with cold water, and add a large pinch of salt. Bring to a boil and
simmer until the potatoes are fork tender, 20 to 30 minutes. Drain. Stick a
fork into the potatoes, 1 at a time, lift them out of the colander and peel
with a paring knife. Toss the potatoes into a bowl and roughly crush them.
Drizzle with olive oil and season with salt and pepper.
Put the frozen peas and onions into a
colander and run then under cool water until they are just thawed. Heat 2 tablespoons
olive oil with the butter in a medium saucepan over medium heat until the
butter melts. Add the shallots and lemon zest and cook until the shallots are
softened but not browned – about 2 -3 minutes.
Then add the pearl onions
and peas, season with salt and pepper, and toss to warm the vegetables.
Add the vegetables to the potatoes in the bowl, drizzle with extra-virgin olive
oil, add the mint leaves and taste for salt and pepper. Set aside and
keep warm.
Heat a 2-count, about 2 tablespoons, of olive oil in a
large skillet over medium-high heat until the oil is almost smoking. Season the
salmon with pepper, and rub about 1 1/2 tablespoons butter on the skin side of
each fillet. Add the salmon to the pan, skin-side down. To get super crispy
skin, cook the salmon almost to completion, about 6 minutes.
Flip the salmon and cook until flesh side is nicely
seared, 1 to 2 minutes.
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Transfer the salmon to plates and serve with the
Smashed Potatoes. Almost makes me want to go back to Ireland to try the
Colcannon.