Lentil salad with rosemary & garlic fried salmon

A divine dish with many cascading flavours, perfect for lunch or dinner most of the year round.  The meaty lentil flavour complements the pink salmon beautifully and the freshness of the lemon and herbs gives everything a little summery kick.  It’s simple to make and you can make the lentil salad in advance, always a bonus when you’re having lots of other things to prepare.

Serves 4:

  • 1 big red bell pepper
  • 300 g green lentils (Lentilles du Puy)
  • 2 lemon or lime leaves (fresh from the market or dried/frozen from asian supply store) –
  • 2 cloves of garlic
  • shallots
  • 1 teaspons Pimentòn de la Vera or sweet paprika powder
  • 5 tablespoons olive oil
  • 3 tablespoons of Aceto Balsamico
  • 5 sprigs parsley
  • 5 sprigs chervil
  • 2 sprigs of rosemary
  • 1 lemon
  • 1 kg salmon fillet on skin cut into 4 pieces
  • more olive oil for the pan

Preheat oven to 220° C upper heat and grill the bellpepper on all sides until the skin turns black and is completely covered with blisters (you can do this more easily on a BBQ, maybe the night before you cook this dish, but it also works well in the oven). Wrap the pepper in a wet towel or kitchen paper and leave to chill for 15 minutes. Afterwards peel of the blackened skin, remove seeds and cut into small dice and make sure you keep all the lovely juice. Set aside in a bowl.

Peel one clove of garlic and shallots and dice. Pick off Rosemary needles and chop finely. Put the olive oil into a pan and sweat the garlic and shallots at medium heat for two minutes. Add rosemary and Pimentón de la Vera and fry for another minute, for a deliciously flavoured olive oil.

Boil green lentils in salted water with the lemon leaves until they are “al dente”. Once you have strained them, add Aceto Balsamico, the flavoured olive oil and bellpepper cubes, stir gently and set aside.

Roughly chop parsley and chervil, only using the leaves and the finer parts of the stems. Juice half of the lemon. Add the herbs and lemon juice to the lentils stir through and add salt if required.

Heat olive oil in a heavy pan. Once it’s hot, throw the remaining rosemary sprig and a crushed garlic clove into the oil and let infuse for one minute. Then fry the salmon, skin side down, for approximately 3 minutes until 1/3 of the fish is cooked(which you can easily see by the lighter colour rising if you look at it side on). Gently flip over and fry another 2-3 minutes on the other side. Take the fish out the pan once there’s only a small darker looking line left in the middle. Slice the remaining half of the lemon. Serve lentil salad slightly warm or cold, place fried salmon on top and add a slice of lemon.

“Bon appétit from the Mirabeau kitchen and enjoy with some delicious Rosé, it’s a great pairing flavour and colour- wise!” Stefanie Köhler

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