So Many Ways With Salmon

About author / Amy Powell

World traveler; gourmet 30 minute meals; lover of exotic ingredients; winner on FoodTV's Chefs vs City; graduate French Culinary Institute. Her recipes will tantalize your taste buds.

Salmon is one of those few fish so ubiquitous that one can almost forget just how versatile it really is. Cooking it on any given night is almost a cop-out. It’s a fish so forgiving on the stove and widely available in the market place you can easily default to it on those nights when cooking inspiration is limited. Yet there is good reason to remember from time to time that salmon deserves its fame, and part of the celebrity comes from just how versatile it can be.

I cook salmon regularly, which in my world amounts to about once per month. My love of crispy salmon skin results in my default for cooking set at sautée. However a few weeks back a friend made me a nice salmon dinner, so surprising in its method that it knocked me out of default and sent my creative juices flowing.

This friend had been impressed by a salmon dish she ate at the New York restaurant Jeffrey’s Grocery, the sort of hip hangout where the food is deceptively uncomplicated. When the restaurant’s recipe for slow-poached salmon was published in a magazine she was determined to master the technique.

The technique turned out to be nothing more than letting a few thin fillets sit off the heat in hot chicken broth until the flesh is just cooked enough to be flaky. Save for heating the broth, no real cooking is involved.

I happen to be a fan of slow cooked salmon. Fresh out of the oven (or in this case, the chicken broth bath) it has a silken, custardy texture. It is cooked, but looks so brightly pink it is easy to think it is still raw. Cooked in this fashion the fish retains an incredible moistness that is a joy, even if this method robs you of the texture of crisped skin.

In some ways, poaching, or simply baking in a low oven, is even easier than other salmon techniques. Once it is in the poaching liquid, or resting in a low oven, there is nothing to do aside from check occasionally and remove the fish when it is barely cooked through.

What I was also reminded of while eating my friend’s salmon leftovers, is that salmon poached or slow cooked stays moist much longer than I have found with sautéed salmon. This makes the slower cooked variety perfect for eating cold tossed in a salad with asparagus, mixed greens, and maybe some prosciutto. It also works when reheated just barely, as when tossed with spaghetti and simple sauce.

Rediscovering the joys of slow cooked salmon repurposed, I have used it in a couple different pastas of late. One, a spaghettini tossed with mascarpone, lemon zest, pecorino, the salmon, and plenty of black pepper. Another, a spaghetti with homemade almond pesto and one leftover fillet broken up in small pieces.

The joy of the many uses of salmon now has me thinking ahead not just for that evening’s meal but for the days to come. An extra slow cooked fillet could sustain me over several more days of eating. It turns out there is more than one way to cook a salmon, and really, a fish this good deserves all the creative cooking methods I can dream up.

Serves/Makes: 4

• 1 pound spaghettini
• Kosher salt
• 1 cup packed basil leaves
• 1/3 cup raw almonds
• 2 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
• 1 lemon, juiced
• 6 tablespoons olive oil
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 6 ounces cooked salmon, preferably poached or slow cooked, broken up into flakes