Salmon is one of my go-to ingredients for a fast day, when I focus on “mainly plants and protein” and I always have some fillets in the freezer. This recipe makes a good change from my usual technique of putting it on a pile of sliced vegetables and wrapping it in paper parcels. I will defrost the fish first.
This recipe is in my book 5:2 Healthy Eating for Life, but as I had included it in this week’s meal plan, and highlighted the photo, I thought I should share it here.
The original idea came from a New Zealand cook, Annabel Langbein, from her excellently-titled 2003 recipe book “Cooking to Impress without Stress”.
You can use walnuts instead of pine nuts and vary the herbs. I plan to serve it with a spoonful of tsatsiki (greek yogurt with salted, drained, finely chopped cucumber and mint), but it would be lovely with a chilli and tomato salsa or on a non-fast day, a hollandaise sauce would be super.
A rainbow of steamed seasonal vegetables and perhaps a few baked mushrooms add visual appeal, flavour and plenty of fibre. Today we will be having swiss chard and carrots, plus some slivers of raw vegetables – my new kitchen gadget, a super-duper Mandolin, is going to be put to use!
- 4 salmon fillets (each about 100g), skinned
- Finely grated zest and juice of 1 lemon
- 1 bunch flat leaved parsley, finely chopped
- 1 tsp capers, roughly chopped
- 2 tbsp pine nuts or chopped walnuts
- sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
- 6 lemon wedges
- Heat the oven to 220ºC (fan)
- Lay the fish onto a non-stick baking sheet.
- Cut a diagonal slash in the top of each one.
- Mix the parsley, nuts, capers and lemon zest together and stuff some into each piece of fish.
- Season with salt and freshly ground black pepper and squeeze lemon juice over.
- Bake for 6 – 8 minutes.
- Serve with a wedge or two of lemon to squeeze over.
- Defrost frozen fish before cooking - but you can slice the diagonal while still frozen, which speeds up the defrost time.
- Per serving: 186 kcals
- Carbs 2g Fat 10g Protein 21g