This week’s offering from Angela Hartnett’s ‘Midweek Suppers’ in the Guardian is ‘the ideal quick meal’. The other main ingredient is calabrese/broccoli.
Serves 4
Preparation and cooking: 20 minutes
Ingredients
1 cucumber
25ml soy sauce
75ml sesame oil
10ml white wine vinegar
2 heads of broccoli cut into florets
2 tbsp olive oil
4 salmon fillets, skin removed, 120g each
½ bunch of dill, chopped
salt and pepper
horseradish cream, to serve
Method
Leaving the skin on, cut the cucumber into 8cm long strips, discarding any seeds. Place in a bowl and add the soy sauce, sesame oil and white wine vinegar. Season to taste with salt and pepper and allow to marinate.
Bring a saucepan of salted water to the boil, add the broccoli and cook for five minutes until just cooked. Drain and allow to cool.
Heat the olive oil in a frying pan and cook the salmon for two minutes on each side, depending on the thickness (up to a maximum of five minutes in total). Remove from the pan and allow to cool until it is cold enough to handle. Then break it into flakes.
In a large bowl, mix the salmon, broccoli and marinated cucumber, tipping in as much of the marinade as you like. Finish with the chopped dill, mix well and check the seasoning.
Serve on a large plate with spoons of horseradish cream or grated fresh horseradish. Serve immediately.
Serve this as a side dish with curries or simply as a dip. This recipe is from Sarah Raven’s Garden Cookbook. Without the turmeric and with a bit more garlic and a tablespoon of olive oil, you’ll have Greek tzatziki. And the Turkish cucumber and yoghurt salad cacik is pretty much identical too.
Draining time: 30 minutes
Preparation time: 5 minutes
Serves 4-6
Ingredients
½ cucumber
¼ teaspoon fine salt
200g mild natural yoghurt
small bunch of mint
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
small pinch of ground turmeric or paprika
Method
Grate the cucumber – you don’t need to skin – and put it in a sieve over a bowl. Sprinkle it with the fine salt and leave it to drain for half an hour. Pat the cucumber dry with kitchen paper. Mix with the yoghurt, mint, garlic and just enough water to give you the consistency you want, usually in the region of 100ml. Add a pinch of turmeric for extra flavour and pale yellow colouring or sprinkle paprika over the top.
Notes
I didn’t find it necessary to add water! There are many variations on this recipe: Delia Smith slices rather than grates the cucumber and adds a finely chopped spring onion, 2 pinches cayenne pepper and 1 pinch cumin seeds; Madhur Jaffrey doesn’t bother with draining the cucumber and uses 1 pinch roasted cumin seeds. But whichever way you make it, it’s a refreshing and cooling dish.
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