Salmon:
- Sprinkled salt and squeezed lime juice over skinless fillets, let sit.
- Cooked in smoking hot skillet with a little olive oil – hot enough to put some brown color on the fish.
- Cooked until the salmon was slightly less than half way to the temperature I like salmon cooked at, then flipped. In this case, I put fairly thick fillets on for 3-4 minutes per side.
- Removed from heat and seasoned with pepper.
Lentils:
- Rinsed off any remnants of cracked lentil shells, non-lentil material, etc. Then, soaked in cold water for an afternoon. Drained before cooking.
- Diced half a small onion and a garlic clove and added them to a pot with a tiny amount of hot olive oil.
- Added ground cayenne pepper, sauteed for 2-3 minutes.
- Added lentils, stirred.
- Added lime zest.
- Added soup stock to cover lentils. As the contents of my fridge would have it, I used a mixture of home made vegetable, fish, and beef stock, each of which there was too little of to use on it’s own.
- Boiled, adding water when the lentils were threatening to dry out, until the lentils were soft. I have no recollection of how long that took.
- Added salt.
Sweet Potatoes:
- My favorite preparation of sweet potatoes is baked, sliced in half, cut side oiled, then placed cut side down on a baking sheet in an oven at 400ºF. I usually serve it by putting it on a plate just like that. Or, if I feel like I need to impress my wife, I’ll peel the skin off…
- Yesterday, I put some dried rosemary in olive oil and let it sit all afternoon to soak up the flavor.
- When things came to it, I was pressed for time and decided to cut the sweet potato into quarters (spears) so that they’d cook faster.
- I rubbed the oil over the cut sides and put the sweet potatoes in the microwave/oven combo on convection oven setting at 400ºF for a half an hour.
Spinach:
- I washed it, de-stemmed it, then chopped it up.
- I heated up a tiny, tiny amount of olive oil and used it to saute one clove of minced garlic and a pinch of cayenne pepper for about a minute. Then, I added the spinach (the entire package) and put the lid on it (over low heat).
- Occasionally, I stirred the spinach to make sure there was no burning on the bottom.
- The water inside the spinach and residue from washing it provides plenty of liquid for steaming. So, I don’t see any need to add any liquid unless it’s for flavor.
- I seasoned it with salt.
Lentil Puree for putting on the Spinach:
- I poured off the liquid remaining in the cooked lentils into a small pot.
- To that liquid I added:
- mustard
- honey
- ground cumin
- turmeric
- salt
- pepper
- I put it all in a blender until it was super smooth.
- I cooked it over low heat for a few minutes to thicken it up or maybe just because I thought it might bring out a little flavor.
Serving:
I made a little bed with the lentils and put the salmon on top. I put the spinach next to it and dabbed small amounts of the lentil puree onto it. A sweet potato went next to them. I grabbed a beer, and then it was dinner.
What I liked:
I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to realize or witness that salmon and lentils compliment each other really well. The freshness and light flavor of the salmon vs. the earthiness of the lentils, the fish-fattiness of the salmon vs. the lack of any oils in the lentils. I also enjoyed the curry-ish honey mustard flavor of the lentil puree with the spinach.
Why I wouldn’t make this for you if you came over for dinner:
This was one of the ugliest presentations I’ve put together in quite a while. The flavor combination of lentils and salmon was pretty good. But, I really didn’t do it right. I know there’s a better way. Also, the idea of pureeing the lentils to make a sauce for the spinach was to mix earthy flavors and to find more than one use for the lentils. But, maybe I should have made it a lot thinner so I could drizzle flashy zig zag lines of it over the spinach or something. As it was, I looked like a baby threw up his Gerber’s all over the spinach and I really would have hesitated at the sight of it had I not put made it myself. Also, baking the sweet potato in spears is fine when your in a hurry. But, it shifts the balance of baked-on skin and tender insides, and really isn’t as good as baking them as halves.
