Coconut and Herb Slow-Roasted Salmon with Sesame Greens
Coconut and Herb Slow-Roasted Salmon with Sesame Greens
Sashimi-adjacent and extra flaky.
What is the opposite of Seasonal affective disorder (SAD)? Because I may have it.
The endless sunshine and warm weather take a toll on my introverted ways. The allergies, the puffs to my asthma inhaler, the social hangs, it’s all too much. But when I look at the garden that my friend Paola Reyes, aka tierrita en las uñas, helped us build, I try and embrace the sunshine responsible for the bed of greens growing like wildfire: sorrel, chives, cilantro, parsley, arugula, and all the lettuces. It’s like a salad bar in our backyard.
Not having an herby lunch feels totally wrong. I reached for handfuls of sorrel, and tarragon and whirled them in the blender with garlic, lemon juice, and olive oil. A splash of coconut milk gifted me a tropical moment: the nuttiness of the coconut tempered the sharp and herbaceous notes of the sauce, and I knew it would be perfect with salmon. Not any salmon, but slow-roasted salmon.
One of my very first cookbooks was Alice Waters’s ‘The Art of Simple Food.’ I love the narrative in the recipes as if you are chatting with Alice herself about substitutions, and tips for cooking. Thanks to Alice I learned that there really isn’t a better way to cooking fish than slow-roasting. Roasting it at a low temperature means that you will always end up with a succulent and just-cooked piece of fish. It’s pretty much sashimi-adjacent.
Alice writes about slow-roasting fish at 225 degrees for 30 minutes, but because I’m a punk, I’ve found that I can get a pretty damn close and quicker slow-roast at 325 degrees for 15 to 20 minutes. It pays off to annoy your fishmonger and ask them to show you the thickest center-cut fillets to pick out the best one. You want a minimum of a 1-inch thickness and trust me that it is worth the splurge to get wild salmon or halibut for such a minimalist dish.
Slow roasting the salmon with the herby coconut sauce not only acts as a protective barrier against the heat, but it makes it oh-so-tropical. A quick salad of kale and grapefruit segments tossed with sesame oil and sesame seeds made it this week’s dream lunch. Serve it with crusty bread and double the salad while you listen to this week’s recipe playlist and you have a dinner winner.