Salmon crudo with orange and lemongrass

28 Dec

Written By Antony

Uugghh. Cooking. If you’re thinking nope, nope and ABSOLUTELY nope, we feel you. There’s cricket to watch, there are lawns to neglect and there are beaches calling your name. Stuff the kitchen. In this golden week between Christmas and New Year, we’re all still working our way through festive left-overs and fashioning ‘scratch’ meals from whatever the fridge throws our way and we are so over planning meals and cooking. At Lazy Sunday Club HQ, it’s cold ham and turkey, with a few boiled potatoes and whatever easy, leafy salad we can be bothered to sling together at the mo’. The problem with this approach is that inevitably we crave something other than Christmas vestiges. Plus the familial chorus of “not ham AGAIN” is a real cue to change tack.

Enter… salmon crudo. The beauty of a dish like this, to state the bleeding obvious, is no-one has to cook anything. ‘Crudo’ means raw in Italian, where there’s a long tradition of yanking things out of the Mediterranean, cleaning them up, then thinking how good they’d taste raw, dressed with olive oil, lemon juice, salt and maybe some capers and fresh herbs. Clever people.

Here, we’ve gone a slightly Asian route, breaking out the punchy flavours of lime, fish sauce, sesame oil, lemongrass, coriander and an optional hit of chilli. You can adjust the dressing to taste, adding more sweet, salty or sour elements as you fancy. Try to buy your salmon skin-on and in a single piece for ease of slicing; a long, sharp knife held almost horizontally to the fish, and starting with your knife angled toward the thinnest end and working back, yields the best results. But if you’re not adept it doesn’t matter; just make thin slices at whatever angle works for you and if your fish slices are less than beauteous, just camouflage them under the salad topping. Remove any pin bones first and to do this, just run your fingers over the surface of the fillet to locate the bones, then yank them out using tweezers.

The dressing and salad garnish are enough for 350-400g of fish (use tuna or kingfish instead of salmon if you like), and it’s easy enough to double quantities for twice the fish.

SERVES 3

400g skin-on salmon, in one piece

Dressing

4 tsp lime juice

4 tsp finely chopped palm sugar

1½ tsp dijon mustard

1 tsp grated ginger

1 garlic clove, finely grated

2 tsp fish sauce, or to taste

100ml freshly squeezed orange juice

1 tbsp sesame oil

Salad

segments from 1 orange, halved widthways

2 makrut lime leaves, trimmed and finely shredded

half a lemongrass stalk, trimmed and very finely sliced

4 radishes, finely sliced

small handful coriander leaves

1 small red chilli, finely sliced (optional)

For the dressing, combine the lime juice and sugar in a bowl, then stand for about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally, or until the sugar dissolves, Add the mustard, ginger, garlic and fish sauce, whisk to combine well, then slowly whisk in the orange juice and sesame oil. Season to taste with freshly ground black pepper and a little more fish sauce, if needed.

Using tweezers, remove the pin bones from the salmon. Using a large, thin-bladed sharp knife and starting from the tail end and with the blade toward the tail, slice the salmon into thin pieces. Hold the knife as horizontally close to the salmon as you can and use gentle see-sawing motions to cut nice, even slices. NO PRESSURE or anything. Arrange the salmon over a large plate or serving platter, then drizzle over the dressing.

For the salad, combine all the ingredients in a bowl and gently toss to combine. Scatter over the salmon, then serve immediately.