Week 4: Marinated Salmon

This was a really easy one, especially when you do it my way and leave a few things out :) This is meant to be an Indian dish when prepared according to the recipe. I went without the tandoor spice, but still feel like it was a good meal - a little different, but in a good way. This is better than the roasted garlic chicken, I'm sure of that!

Marinade Ingredients
2 cups yougurt
3 tablespoons honey
2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
2 tablespoons tandoori spice
2 tablespoons chopped fresh ginger
4 (6-ounce) salmon filets

Preparation
Combine the yogurt, honey, lemon juice, tandoori spice, and ginger in a bowl and mix well. Place the salmon in a shallow baking dish and pour the marinade over, turning to coat evenly. Cover and place in the refrigerator for 4 hours.

Preheat a gas grill to high or prepare a hot fire in a charcoal grill Remove the salmon from the marinade and dry with paper towels. Spray the grill rack with nonstick spray. Place the salmon on the grill rack and cook, turning once, for about 4 minutes on each side, to desired doneness.

My Notes:
I learned just how much I really am in Central Minnesota on this one. Tandoori spice is an Indian spice, not to be found in any major grocery store in my town. So I skipped it! I was able to find Tandoori paste, but I couldn't figure out how much of that to use whent he recipe called for the spice. Oh well.

Instead of 4 filets (which we would never eat all at once) I made the marinade and only had one larger filet in it. Still worked!

Also, it's winter here and my grill is under about a foot of snow. I broiled this instead. The marinade made this incredibly moist, even after broiling. I'm sure it would have been absolutely awesome if I had grilled it!

The cookbook recommends serving this salmon with an eggplant mash and drizzled with a pomegranate vinaigrette. The eggplant mash I managed to make (see below), but not the vinaigrette. It calls for pomegranate molasses, another item I could NOT find in a store in this town. I skipped this part completely, and instead experimented. I had some raspberry vinaigrette dressing, so I drizzled that on the salmon and eggplant mash instead. I thought it was pretty darned good!

The eggplant mash is easy to make and has a nicely different taste to it. The girls each took one bite and said no thanks. But I liked it. To each his own! So here's that part:

Eggplant Mash
3 small Italian eggplants
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 small onion, diced
juice of 1 lemon
salt and freshly ground black pepper

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Place the eggplant in a baking dish and roast for 45 minutes, until soft on the inside. Remove from the oven and allow to cool completely. Scoop out the pulp onto a cutting board and chop well. Place a saute pan over medium-high heat and add the oil. Whent eh oil is hot, add the onion and saute for 3 to 4 minutes, until soft. Add the eggplant and cook until the mixture is a chunky mash. Stir in the lemon juice and season to taste with salt and pepper.

My Notes:
Okay, I'll admit it...I had NO idea how to roast an eggplant, so I did a little research. Turns out the eggplant is actually a very large berry. Who knew! I cut the top off (like that of a strawberry), then cut the eggplant in half lengthwise. I put some foil on a cookie sheet and sprayed it with no-stick spray, then put the eggplant halves meat side down onto the foil. They could have been done at closer to 35 minutes instead of 45, but they weren't over done at that point.

Once I let it cool, it was easy to scoop out the meat and chop. I took my Pampered Chef chopper to it just a couple times then put it in the pan. I cooked the mash while the salmon was broiling. It worked out pretty well!