Orange-harissa salmon
This isn’t our first slow-baked salmon rodeo, as you’ll know if you saw our recipe for Roasted salmon with dried tomato and walnuts a month or so back. Delicious. Because we loved the results so much, we’ve riffed off the same theme again, this time using harissa and some orange as complimentary flavours. (Our orange was a blood one but use whatever you have. We like the slightly spiky flavour of blood oranges and they look pretty too). This recipe is based on one that featured in the American food mag called Bon Appetit, although we’ve tweaked things a little.
The beauty of cooking the fish in a low oven is that it is incredibly easy and convenient. As much as we love Omega-3s, we want them in our brains and not splattered all over the stove top, so the oven method keeps things tidy. There are no fishy cooking smells, no anxiety around overcooking, or of ripping skin when you turn the fillet over (there is no skin in this instance, and no turning over either). It’s a fantastically hands-off process, requires few ingredients, and looks a million dollars when you bring it to the table.
While you CAN of course overcook this, it would be hard to do. Salmon varies in thickness, so we can’t give you a cook time down to the last, precise moment – you just need to prod around a bit to check it’s at the exact level of doneness you want. This is personal and we like ours still kind of underdone in the middle. The heat is pretty gentle; start checking your fish at around the 20 minute mark, give it a few more minutes if it’s not done to your liking, and you’ll be sweet.
We know extra virgin olive oil is expensive at the moment so instead of using that, you could use avocado oil or even peanut oil, but using a tablespoon or so less. These oils can be good, but they don’t have that same flavour (obv!) of EVOO and you don’t want them taking over. We haven’t made our own harissa but we probably should as it is rather a simple process; we use the Du-Cap Bon brand that comes in a tube, but any brand will work a treat.
SERVES 4
60ml (¼ cup) extra virgin olive oil
3½ tbsp harissa
2 tsp caster sugar
1 tsp finely grated orange zest
2 garlic cloves, finely minced or chopped
600-700g piece of salmon fillet, pin-boned and skin off
1 orange, finely sliced
1 lemon, halved
roast blanched almonds and coriander sprigs, to serve
Preheat the oven to 135˚C.
Combine the harissa, olive oil, zest, sugar and garlic in a bowl and stir to mix well. Spread about half of the mixture over a small baking dish large enough to fit the salmon, then scatter half the orange slices over. Season the salmon well with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper, then place on top of the harissa mixture in the dish. Use the back of a dessert spoon to spread the remaining mixture over the salmon, and tuck the remaining orange slices around and over the salmon. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until the salmon flakes when you cut into it using a spoon. Rest the salmon for 5 minutes, then transfer it to a serving dish. Use a spoon to break the salmon up, then pour over any liquid left in the baking dish. Tuck some of the orange slices in and around the salmon, squeeze over some lemon juice to taste, scatter with almonds and coriander, then serve.
