Olive Oil-Poached Salmon with Indian Spices

This recipe was developed by Molly Stevens (author of the great cookbook, All About Braising) and it is just terrific. The salmon is moist and flavorful and perfectly seasoned. It calls for 4-6 cups of olive oil (so you can finally justify purchase of the large size EVOO at Costco) which Mollie says can be reused (not sure I agree since the oil takes on some of the Indian flavor).

Unless you have a pre-packaged Indian spice mix that you like, you will need some special equipment, specifically a spice grinder because the recipe calls for creating your own Indian spice mix. Which is fun.

Time-wise, the prep is really quick (simply making the spice mix -- about 5 minutes) but the spice-rubbed fish has to sit at room temp for an hour or the fish will not cook properly per recipe directions. Cooking time is 25 minutes so you need to start the dish about 90 minutes before you plan to eat. But the prep and cook are so easy -- and the flavors so good that I would serve this to company in a red-hot second.

I served this with jasmine rice and a red pepper and dried apricot chutney (from the the big yellow Gourmet cookbook) -- the chutney was a perfect accompaniment for the fish.

This article offers four recipes for olive-oil poaching fish (others are for halibut, shrimp, and tuna) and based on the taste of this one, I will be trying the others soon!

This recipe is also available at the Fine Cooking website. http://www.finecooking.com/recipes/olive-oil-poached-salmon-indian-spices.aspx

PS -- Lately I have been none-too-happy with recent editorial changes to Fine Cooking (which I used to love enough to subscribe to it), but this is a great issue (article on brioche, and a nifty guide to Asian noodles).