This sake salmon dish was one of those new dishes that I couldn't wait to try; it looked so good when Nigella made it and also seemed relatively simple and quick to make. I bought some wild salmon yesterday from Costco that looked nice and fresh so I was eager to use it while very fresh. I basically followed her recipe with some very minor tweaks. To serve four, I used the entire 1.7 lb filet of salmon.
For the marinade, I combined in a gallon zip-loc bag with the salmon that I divided into four pieces:
- 2 TB of light soy sauce
- 2 TB of worcestershire sauce
- 1 TB of finely minced garlic
- 1 tsp of dijon mustard
- 1 tsp of wasabi paste
- 1 tsp of sesame oil
- 1 tsp of chili oil
- 2 TB of sake
- Bring 1/2 cup of sake up to a boil and then turn off the heat and add:
- 2 TB of light soy sauce
- 1.5 tsp of fish sauce
- 1 tsp of dijon mustard
- 1 tsp of wasabi paste
- 2 tsp of worcestershire
The fish was so good; definitely the best salmon that I have ever made, much better than the last time. The fish was cooked medium, which I think is the best way to enjoy really fresh, wild salmon. I'll definitely be cooking salmon this way from now on. The fish was so delicate, silky and not at all fishy and the sauce went great with the fish and the rice. The sauce wasn't too salty or overpowering; sometimes I have that concern with non-Asian chefs cooking Asian food; I worry that they think that the way to make it taste Asian is to use lots of soy. Maybe using light soy sauce also helped. The sauce was actually quite delicate and complemented the natural freshness of the salmon with just a little heat from the mustard and wasabi and umami savoriness from the soy. Go Nigella! I'll definitely be trying more of her recipes.
To go with the salmon, we had some Otokoyama sake, which was also the sake that I used for marinating the fish as well as in the sauce. It's a fairly common sake that is found on pretty much all sake lists; I personally prefer Wakatake, Kurasawa, Kubota or Hananomai (all also fairly easy to find), but it was perfectly fine with the salmon. It's always a safe bet to pair dishes with the same wines that you use to cook the dish with.
Sounds pretty tasty. I feel like furikake salmon now :)
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