Poached Salmon With Pasta and Wholegrain Mustard Sauce

Right, I've been promising to write this recipe up for ages now and, as usual, I've just been too lazy.

This recipe was a result of a lot of experimenting after buying a rather large whole salmon. I found that some of the steaks I'd cut were quite bony so decided to poach a couple of them, break the fish into chunks (picking out the bones while I was as it) and adding to pasta.

The problem was the sauce. It took about four attempts to get to this stage (it was a very big salmon) and I've done this twice now with success, finally getting the all-important 'thumbs up' from The Missus.

Well, I've rambled enough, here's the recipe, as always this serves two.

First, poach the salmon. I've used two steaks but you could use a couple of fillets. Put the fish in a frying pan deep enough to allow you to cover the fish with water. Chuck in a couple of bay leaves and four or five whole peppercorns. Cover the fish with boiling water and simmer for about 8 minutes. You can, of course, bypass this step and buy ready-poached salmon. M&S do nice poached salmon fillets.

Remove the fish from the pan and drain on some kitchen paper, allowing it to cool while you get on with the sauce.

Finely chop 1 shallot and a couple of cloves of garlic. Add this to a saucepan with a couple of glugs of extra virgin olive oil. Soften over a low(ish) heat, taking care not to brown, then add about a wine glass of dry white wine.

Point of interest here. Don't be fooled into thinking you can use rubbish wine for cooking. Rule of thumb, if you wouldn't drink it, don't cook with it.

Bring the wine to the boil and simmer until the smell of alcohol has gone then add about a tablespoon of wholegrain mustard. Stir this in then simmer for about 5 minutes or so.

While that's simmering away, go back to the fish. Remove any skin and break the fish into bite-sized chunks, making sure you pick out all the bones.

Now, cook some pasta in loads of boiling, salted water for about 10 minutes (check with the packet).

While that's cooking, finish the sauce off. Add a couple of heaped tablespoons of creme fraiche, season with salt and pepper, add the salmon, stir through and warm through over a low heat.

When it's cooked, drain the pasta and divide into two bowls. Spoon the salmon sauce over the pasta, giving it a gentle stir through, then scatter over a handful of roughly chopped parsley.

Goes nice with a glass of ice cold Gavi.


Cheers



The Bloke