Slow roasted salmon with a fennel, clementine and olive salad

Silky salmon, crunchy winter salad.

Eat this in the sunshine, with a bitters and soda or crisp white wine.

I’m so happy to be writing after a couple of weeks away. In the spirit of transparency my brain is a bit fried today, with my sister Jenny (safely evacuated, thankfully) in fiery Los Angeles. We’re keeping a close eye, and sending so much love to our SoCal friends and family.

I went back and forth on whether or not to mention this, as most everyone is facing their own trials and traumas of some kind, but if I’m sharing dispatches from fun weekends away, and neighborhood dinner parties, it seems disingenuous to not mention when my heart and brain might not be 100% on the page.

But truly, I’m glad to be back in the kitchen, and sharing recipes that will hopefully make your week a bit brighter.

After a steady holiday diet of cookies and cocktails, I wanted to share something delicious and nourishing, but light, and full of good-for-you bits. And speaking of light, I wanted it to taste a bit like Sicilian (or California) sunshine, which we could certainly use more of here in New England this time of year.

If you’ve never slow roasted salmon before, it’s a nearly foolproof way to cook the fish without drying it out. Because some people like their fish more well-done than others, I recommend keeping a thermometer handy: 120 degrees is on the medium rare side, 130 degrees is my sweet spot, and 140 is pretty well done. I wrote this recipe to serve two (with a generous salad portion) and you could easily double everything to serve 4.

As for the salad, it’s a riff on that classic Southern Italian number with oranges, and fennel, and olives. But truth is, I couldn’t bear to ask you to “supreme” the oranges, which is that painstaking technique where you remove the peel and pith, segment them in your bare hands letting them fall into a bowl, and are left with nearly-membrane-less jewels of citrus in their juice.

True story, Jacques Pepin taught me how to supreme citrus when I was in Culinary School at Boston University. He was horrified by how much grapefruit my shaking hands were wasting. It was one of the most thrilling and terrifying culinary experiences of my life, having the opportunity to learn from him during “Jacques Week”, and it’s an experience that deserves it’s own post. Blurry screen-shotted photographic proof below!

Chef teaching an absolutely terrified 22 year old Catherine how to supreme a grapefruit

SO I chose clementines to save you from supreming! And also because I’m a parent of young children, which means there is always a mesh sack of Lil’ Cuties kicking around my kitchen this time of year, and I thought maybe yours too?

Peeling + segmenting clementines is a weekday culinary technique I can get behind.

RECIPE

Coriander slow roasted salmon with a wintery fennel, olive, and clementine salad.

Serves 2

Equipment:

• Parchment paper or tin foil to line the baking sheet

• Rimmed baking sheet

• Chef’s knife

• Cutting board

• Teaspoon

• Tablespoon

• Microplane or some kind of rasp grater for zesting the clementine

• A fork to juice the clementine

• A medium sized bowl, large enough to whisk dressing and mix the salad.

• A whisk to make the dressing

• Tongs to toss the dressing

• Soup spoon to spoon out dressing

Ingredients

3/4 pound piece of salmon

kosher salt

1 teaspoon ground coriander

1 tablespoon plus, ¼ cup olive oil

3 tablespoons red wine vinegar

1 teaspoon honey - please eyeball this, there is no good reason to endure the frustration of measuring out a little glob of honey into a teaspoon.

1 shallot

4 clementines

1 bulb fennel

¼ cup pitted green olives like Castelvetrano

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 300 degrees, and line a sheet pan with parchment or foil to make cleanup easier.

2. Put the salmon on the sheet pan, and sprinkle it with ½ teaspoon salt and the 1 teaspoon ground coriander. Drizzle on 1 tablespoon of olive oil.

3. While the oven is preheating, make the dressing: Zest 1 of the clementines into the bowl. Cut the zested clementine in half and squeeze the juice into the bowl, using a fork to get in there and get all the juice out. Whisk in 1 teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon honey, and 3 tablespoons red wine vinegar. Slowly drizzle in the 1/4 cup olive oil, whisking aggressively to form an emulsion.

4. Thinly slice the shallot and toss it into the bowl. This will take out a bit of the raw onion bite, and flavor the dressing.

5. Put the salmon in the oven for 15-20 minutes until it reaches 130 degrees. If you like your salmon well done, you may need to cook it for an additional 5 minutes.

6. Meanwhile, thinly slice the fennel bulb: lop off the top with the fronds (reserve some for garnish), and cut off the root end so you’re only working with the bulb. Remove any sad dried out bits, and cut in half from top to bottom. Put the flat surface down and carefully, thinly slice it. Throw the slices in the bowl.

7. Cut the olives in half, and toss them in the bowl. Lastly, peel the remaining 3 clementines, pull apart the segments and add those to the bowl. Toss everything together with the tongs and let it hang out until the salmon is done cooking.

8. When the salmon is cooked, remove it from the oven and let it rest for 5 minutes. While the salmon rests, divide the salad among two dinner plates. Leave some dressing in the bottom of the bowl to spoon over salmon.

9. Cut the salmon in to 2 portions (leave the skin behind if you like) and place on top of the salad, spoon the remaining dressing over the two servings, garnish with some fennel fronds, and then dig in!