Wednesday 23 January 2008

Old ROTW: Salmon with basil infused butter

1. Make basil sauce. Chop 2 shallots finely.
Sweat with 1oz fine butter. Do not allow the butter to burn, and continue until the shallots are translucent.
Deglaze the mixture with 50ml pastis and cook until reduced by at least half. Add 120ml of fish stock (you can buy this in a tub in a good supermarket) and again reduce by half.
Cut 15 good size basil leaves into thin strips and add.
Add 60ml double cream and bring gently back almost to the boil.
Stir in 1oz of fine butter cut into small cubes and take off the heat. Do not allow to boil.

2. Take 2 250g or thereabouts fillets of line caught organic salmon (Alaskan is good). Season each piece with salt and pepper. Dry fry in a non stick pan over a high heat for 90 seconds per side. Make sure the pan is very hot before the fish go in and don't move the fish around too much before turning.

Season with more pepper and a squeeze of lemon juice, the pour the sauce over the fish.

Serve with lightly braised leeks and/or new potatoes. A great White Rhone, Grand Cru Meursault, or semillon driven White Bordeaux would be good with this. Older Ozzie Semillon would do at a pinch.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Definitely this should be titled Salmon with basil infused butter. It's a delicate, subtle sauce. And you should probably say this recipe is an order of magnitude harder than most of the others.