Cooking Seafood With Summer Vegetables - Salmon And Peas

The ingredients are for one person, so please scale up subject to the numbers you are cooking for. To give the dish uniqueness, only use fresh peas straight from the pod. You will need the volume of 250 ml of peas quickly cooked in lightly salted boiling water with a sprig of mint. Reserve a third of the peas for garnishing. In vegetable oil soften half a chopped small onion, a chopped clove of garlic and 75 g of chopped raw potato. Add 70% of the cooked peas with 250 ml of fish stock, bring to the boil and remove from the heat. Add a sprig of mint and allow to infuse for 4 minutes. Blitz the soup in a processor, and add 50 ml of cream. Keep warm.

For the garnish, wilt a handful of washed spinach leaves with a knob of butter and add the reserved third of the peas to warm. Place a 150 g of fillet of Salmon in a lightly oiled griddle pan. After 3 minutes rotate through 45 degrees to create a mark with a diamond shape. Turn over the fish and repeat the process. Check that the fillet is at 62 degrees Celsius with a digital thermometer.

Place the spinach and pea mix in the centre of a bowl and top with the cooked Salmon. Surround with the soup, and a poached egg per bowl. Garnish with roughly chopped mint, and serve with the accompaniments of your choice. You will have created a novel and light summer meal.

Comments:- only use home-made fish stock with no added flavouring. Most bought in stocks are high in salt, yours will be high in natural flavour. As part of the vegetable base for the stock use the roughly chopped pea pods. To lower the saturated fat level do not include the cream. The poached egg can be cooked in advance, and chilled. Just pop in the soup when serving to warm, and if available try a couple of quail eggs to add a sparkle to the dish. The contrasting colours of the Salmon, the Peas and the poached eggs help to make this dish look attractive. However you can try it with vastly different colour choices, such as a crispy fillet of Cod on a bed of wilted spinach surrounded by a traditional beetroot soup, or a yellow pepper soup with Red Mullet on wilted spinach. Surprise yourself and your guests with the fresh tastes of summer.

About the author:- Henry Lord is a fanatical enthusiast and lover of all things seafood. He has been a professional chef for nearly twenty five years. The website http://www.cookingseafoodathome.com is written by him. It provides lots of tips on all aspects to helping you put a great seafood meal in front of your family or friends. Additionally if you visit the website now and enter your name and email address, you will receive for FREE the e Booklet on "Home Curing Of Fish". Other FREE e Booklets will follow each month.