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
- Warm a couple of plain white plates
- 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.
- Heat the oil in a frying pan, or on a griddle pan, until it’s good and hot (the rapeseed oil won’t smoke).
- Slice half the second lime thinly.
- 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.
- 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.