I’ve seen a whole salmon for sale in the fish area of the supermarket before and was a bit intimidated by the size of it and the process of cooking it. It was huge, somewhat expensive (although I got this for only £10 just after Christmas) so it seemed risky. Out of my comfort zone.
I got lucky and found this for £10 and thought… f*ck it I’ll give it a shot! (… and document it here.)
After some googling for ideas this is the original recipe followed:
http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/fish-recipes/whole-roasted-salmon-stuffed-with-lemon-and-herbs/
It’s a Jamie Oliver. It’s pretty simple but as with my experience with most recipes you never have all the ingredients and the fish you get isn’t quite what you expect.
Lessons learned: The fishmonger doesn’t always gut and scale your fish. Ask before you buy. The lazy fishmonger at the Asda gutted it but I had to scale it. That sends little scales all over the kitchen and adds 20 minutes of pain to the prep process.
If the fish is too big, make it fit. I trimmed the tail and bent it with the head and tail flopping out of the glass dish.
Also… cutting the slices into it seemed to make for a speedy cooking process with making it super dry. Very nice. 0 to Yumtime in 45 minutes.
The cooking time in the recipe was spot on.
Substitutes… for the herb and lemon paste I used about a tablespoon of dried oregano and dried basil along with fennel seeds that I crushed in a bowl and added lemon juice from a whole lemon. A bit of salt a pepper as well. It was pretty tasty so I think that did just fine!
All in all I’d give it 5 stars as a meal. It made dinner for 2 that night, lunch for 4 the next day and I’m still using the final salmon left overs tonight for fish cakes.
Will this happen again…YES!
