crispy fried salmon with spring vegetable broth
main courses | serves 4
There's nothing like a piece of perfectly cooked salmon with a crispy, crunchy skin, perfectly complemented by a spring veg broth. In the markets and supermarkets these days you can get some fantastic spring vegetables: baby carrots with tops, baby fennel with its herby leaves, baby turnips, peas and broad beans, fine green and yellow French beans, all really colourful and easy to cook with. Here's a nice little combination – it's all cooked in the same pot and gives you a lovely broth. The only thing you have to do is control the cooking times by adding the veg that need longer in the pot first.
First, make the aïoli. When you've done that, bring your stock to the boil in a large pan then add your fennel and allow this to boil for 4 minutes while you heat up a non-stick frying pan. Take your salmon steaks and, if you fancy it, you could finely slice a little of your mint and basil and push this into the score marks. Pat the salmon steaks with a little olive oil, season and place skin-side down in the frying pan. Leave them for 2 minutes to get really crispy then check how they're doing. They'll want around 4 minutes on the skin side and 1 minute on the other. You'll get an idea of how they're cooking as you'll see the salmon change colour.
When the fennel has had 4 minutes, add the green beans and the broad beans. Give them a further 2 minutes. By this time you will probably want to turn over the salmon steaks for their last minute. Add the peas to the other veg and cook for a final 2 minutes. Don't be tempted to overcook the salmon – remove it from the heat. Divide the vegetables between 4 bowls, rip over the mint and basil, ladle over some of your hot cooking stock and place the salmon on top. Serve with a dollop of aïoli. Fantastic!

• from
Jamie's Kitchen
ingredients
• 1 x aïoli recipe
• 850ml chicken or vegetable stock, lightly seasoned
• 8 baby bulbs of fennel, stalks removed and herby tops reserved
• 4 x 170–225g salmon steaks, scored
• 1 small handful of fresh mint, ripped
• 1 small handful of fresh basil, leaves picked
• extra virgin olive oil
• sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
• around 100g green beans, tops removed
• around 100g podded broad beans
• around 100g podded peas
Love your food!
best chef I know try to get some tips from you, have to face some thing I
would describe arrogant is a bit too sad. Thank you Jamie
ps. by the way what the fck "1 x aïoli recipe" means?
I used to despair when trying to cook according to cookbooks. But I grew to like cooking thanks to your easy and great recipes, Jamie. Thank you so much.
Matthias
Love your work Jamie!
love
shoma
i work as a chef C.D.P in lr royal hotel in amman jordan.
you can hellp mi. i wont to be laik yuoooooooo.
mi chef.
naseem najeh
I am addicted to Jamie's books . His presentation of fresh , instantly prepared food & the beautifully printed photographs opposite the recipes won me over .
I will be 80 this year & have struggled with dyslexia all my life .
It took many years to discover that I needed to SEE how recipes should look to be able to reproduce them .
An original Elizabeth David collection , Andre Simon's Encyclopedia of Gastronomy & Jean Conil's Haute Cuisine purchased in the UK in the 50's , have long ago been placed on my book shelf , still greatly valued , tho kept for reference only .