A few weeks ago when I was riding shotgun down Sunset I saw a bumper sticker that read “friends don’t let friends eat farm raised fish.”
It’s true.
Any real fish aficionado knows farm-raised have less color and flavor than wild fish. But wild fish is just too expensive for a college budget.
Can you afford $25 for a salmon filet? I sure can’t, but if you know how to cook salmon well the cheaper stock can still be very tasty.
Use this recipe and you won’t even know the fish is farm raised (well, almost).
Warm up a large pan and drop in about a tablespoon and a half of butter and let it melt.
While the butter is melting unpack your fish and lay it out on a cutting board. If it has skin on the bottom leave it there but put the fish skin-side down.
Mix a large bowl of finely chopped, fresh herbs including a good handful of parsley, basil, cilantro, oregano and a few stems of rosemary. Grab the rosemary from the top and run your fingers down the stem against the grain to get all of the leaves off.
When you’re using herbs, like most other greens, make sure you wash and dry them very carefully. I even put them all in a bowl once they are chopped, put a few paper towels on top, and then put a heavy bowl on top of that to get all of the water out.
By the time you’re done chopping it should look like fine, green mulch.
Meanwhile, be careful not to let your butter burn. Butter and fish ““ especially salmon ““ go very well together, but butter has a low cooking temperature before it burns.
So after the butter is mostly melted, drizzle in about a quarter to half a cup of extra virgin olive oil. Since the butter is too delicate to withstand the heat needed to cook the salmon, adding the olive oil will reinforce the butter and let you cook with it at a much higher temperature.
The last ingredient you want to add is some lemon zest, to infuse the cooking oil with lemon flavor without having to add lemon juice ““ which would crack and sizzle for about five minutes if you added it in at this point.
If you have a zester like I do, use that; if not, use the fine end of a cheese grater to get the top layer of the lemon rind out and into the oil. Save some of the zest and mix it in with your herbs.
By the way, if you can’t find all of the fresh herbs you need, dried ones work fine, too.
Now add a generous pinch of salt and a few grinds of pepper to the salmon and then coat both sides in the herb mixture.
Bring the heat up to medium-high and place your salmon in. Depending on the thickness it could take three to five minutes to cook on each side before it’s not pink in the middle.
When the fish is cooking, be careful when handling it because it gets flaky and falls apart in the pan easily.
Sometimes if I’m not sure the salmon is done cooking I will break it in half with a spatula while it’s still in the pan to make sure.
When it’s done, carefully take it out of the pan and cut a few wedges from the lemon you zested and drizzle the juice on top of the fish.
Serve with your favorite white pinot ““ the light wines go well with this dish.
Pesce means fish in Italian. If you like European fish, e-mail Pesce at apesce@media.ucla.edu.