I had a couple more pieces of salmon to cook, plus a bag of almonds, so I figured why not try almond encrusted salmon? That sounds fancy, right? I tried something similar with pistachios a while back, and it didn't go terribly well. That time, I put some olive oil on the salmon, then topped it with crushed pistachios and parmesan before broiling it. This resulted in burned pistachios, which wasn't the worst thing I've ever eaten, but it was far from good. Okay, it was pretty shitty. Whatever. 
So this time I decided to try something different. I seasoned the fish with some salt and pepper, then gave it an egg wash. Instead of my normal approaches of dunking or pouring, I brushed it on like a sensible fucking human being.
I stuck a few handfuls of raw almonds (without the shells, of course) into a freezer bag and then made use of one of my least utilized kitchen tools: my meat tenderizer hammer. I honestly have no idea if it works for tenderizing meat, but I can tell you that it does efficiently smash almonds. An added plus: it's been a shitty few weeks, so I got to burn off some stress by beating the hell out of the almonds. I scattered almond pieces all over the top of the salmon, praying the egg wash would help hold it all in place.
I melted a few tablespoons of butter in my pan, added some olive oil, and got to work cooking the salmon. I laid it in skin side down, then did plenty of basting to cook the top. No flipping, no fancy shit, just spooning simmering butter and olive oil over the top of the fish until it all looked pretty well cooked, at which point I moved the fish out to a plate and covered it with foil.
The next step was dumping a bunch of baby broccoli into the same pan. I let that get a good scorch on it because I love broccoli like that.
Anyway, once the broccoli had some nice black areas, I dumped in some thinly sliced yellow bell pepper, sliced garlic, and diced red onion. I ended up adding a little bit more olive oil to these veggies while I sautéed them until everything seemed pretty well cooked.
The pepper didn't take long, but the broccoli still needed a bit more time. I threw in a little salt (for seasoning), a bit of black pepper (for flavor), and about a teaspoon of red pepper flakes (because I fucking love red pepper flakes) while it all cooked up. Once everything was starting to get browned around the edges and the broccoli was soft enough to bend around, I scooped all of it out onto its own plate and got ready for the last part.
A little more butter melted and some halved baby bella mushrooms in the pan , and we were off to the races. I kept the heat low, so the mushrooms took some time to cook, mostly because I had to unload and load the damn dishwasher. I added a little olive oil, some salt, and a little bit of white wine, then let it all simmer while I took care of the dishes.
I also ended up throwing in a handful of almonds and capers, too. The capers because I love capers, especially with salmon, and almonds because I have a fucking bag full of them and needed to do something with them, plus I wanted to see what would happen.
I let all of that shit simmer until the liquid had thickened up a bit for a little sauce and the mushrooms had softened enough for me to call them "cooked."
I started off my plating by spooning a bit of the veggies into the center of my plate. I tried to make sure I had a good mix of everything: broccoli, pepper, garlic, and onion. I like having a variety of color, texture, and flavor in my meals; otherwise, I start to get bored while eating, and that's a fucking terrible feeling.
I laid a piece of salmon on top of the veggies, then spooned a bit of my sauce on top of it. I finished off by throwing a few pieces of mushroom to the side because at this point I was hungry and tired of trying to be fucking fancy. Boy's gotta eat.
Flavor wise, this turned out pretty well. The sauce was a perfect complement to the fish. Who knew wine, butter, and capers went well with salmon? Oh yeah, fucking everybody. The veggies were great, and the mushrooms were, well, fucking mediocre. Ah, well. They can't all be homeruns, right? It was a good thing that sauce kicked ass, though. Also, I didn't put any almonds on the plate, but I ate a few later on, and they were fucking killer, so at least that was another win.
Comments
Post a Comment