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pan-roasted salmon with purple sprouting broccoli and anchovy-rosemary sauce

main courses | serves 4
Pan-roasting is one of my favourite ways to cook salmon and trout because it really brings out their incredible flakiness and richness. It goes well with the delicate steamed broccoli and intense zingy sauce I’ve served it with here.

Apart from salmon being a pleasure to eat, it’s also high in omega oils, so it’s very healthy for you too. A wild salmon lives only on natural food, of course, and is an amazing athlete that has to work very hard to make its way from the deep sea all the way up the rivers. If you ever see it on a restaurant menu, please order it because it’s very different from farmed salmon both in flavour and texture. But farmed salmon has come a long way in the last five to ten years and it is probably going to be the more accessible and affordable option for you. If you’re going to buy farmed salmon, always go for organic if you have the choice.

Preheat your oven to 200ºC/400ºF/gas 6, then make your anchovy-rosemary sauce. Pound the rosemary in a pestle and mortar until you have a paste. Add the anchovy fillets and pound again until the paste is dark green. Now add the lemon juice, a couple of glugs of olive oil and some pepper, and mix together until you have a sauce with a good drizzling consistency.

Get a large, ovenproof, non-stick frying pan hot. Pat the salmon fillets with a little olive oil, season them with salt and pepper and cook them in the pan, skin-side down, for 2 minutes. Flip them over, then place the pan in the preheated oven for another 3 to 4 minutes, depending on the thickness of the fillets and the way they’ve been sliced.

Just after the salmon goes into the oven, put your broccoli into some boiling, salted water for 3 to 4 minutes until perfectly cooked.

To check if the fish is cooked all the way through, you can pull the fillets apart a little bit and look inside. Salmon goes from being an orangey colour to an opaque pink, so that’s what you’re looking for. Please do not overcook them, because, as simple as this dish sounds, it’s your mission to ‘just’ cook the fish so you’re rewarded with a soft inside and a slightly crispy outside – heaven!

When the broccoli’s perfectly done, drain it, toss it in a little of the anchovy-rosemary sauce and divide it between your plates. Place a salmon fillet on top of each and drizzle with some more sauce.


• from Cook With Jamie