For this dish the salmon is marinated in lime juice (ideally made from round Persian limes) and the Persian-derived pomegranate molasses, seasoned with Persian blue salt (alright – that’s not essential!).

The marinade is then used to make a sticky, caramel sauce for the salmon.

There’s no waste and aside from half an hour’s marinating it only takes a couple of minutes of frying.

The blue salt and the green lime zest adds the final touch of zing and colour.

Recipe for Pretty-Damn-Quick Persian Salmon

Serves 2

Ingredients

• 2 x 250g/8 oz skinless salmon fillets – or you can use salmon steaks, but check all the bones are out – you will need fish tweezers to do this, which are very cheap, otherwise it will take you hours!
• 2 limes (round, Persian limes if you want to do this properly!)
• 3 tbsp pomegranate molasses
• Persian blue salt (well… smoked salt would do)
• Indonesian long black pepper
• 1 tbsp rapeseed oil (better than olive as you can cook at higher temperatures, better than other vegetable oils as it has a light, delicate flavour)

Method

1. Warm a couple of plain white plates
2. Marinate the two salmon fillets in the juice and zest of one of the limes, the pomegranate molasses and the pepper for half an hour – or, ideally, overnight.
3. Heat the oil in a frying pan, or on a griddle pan, until it’s good and hot (the rapeseed oil won’t smoke).
4. Slice half the second lime thinly.
5. Fry the fish and the sliced lime for a minute or two on each side, adding the marinade immediately after you have turned the second salmon fillet, it will become sticky as it reduces, almost immediately.
6. Zest the remaining half lime, and sprinkle over, along with the salt. Spritz over the juice of the remaining lime. Serve.

For a post about different types of salt, follow this link.