Scrumptious salmon

I finally selected a recipe which would use up some of my leftover mayonnaise: salmon steaks with mustard and dill (p117). It's basically grilled salmon with a sauce made of mustard and dill mixed with mayo.

I chose to use a salmon fillet instead of a salmon steak, merely because the fillets were on special and the steaks weren't. I like the fillets better anyway. I'd purchased the salmon and got home before I thought about what veges I could have with it. Usually I'd eat salad with salmon, but I didn't have much in the way of salad makings in my fridge.

At this point I remembered the green beans I'd forgotten to put in the minestrone. They needed using, and there's a recipe for Italian green beans (p161) in the vegetable chapter. That gave me at least something green on my plate.

Italian green beans are cooked in tomato and garlic. The recipe is for 500g, but I only had a handful, so I kind of made up the quantities as I went along. I found a handful of sorry-looking cherry tomatoes in the fridge, blanched and chopped them, then chopped the beans and put them on to boil. Once they were mostly cooked, they went into a saucepan with the tomatoes, a little garlic, some oil and seasoning. A few more minutes cooking and they were done.

Meanwhile, I had my salmon fillet under the grill, and was making the sauce. Pretty simple really - just mayonnaise mixed with a dollop of mustard and some chopped dill. Some carrot (also unearthed in the vege bin and cooked in the water that was still hot from doing the beans)  and I had a reasonable-looking meal, all in the space of about 15 minutes.

The salmon was absolutely lovely with the mustard and dill sauce. The fillet I had was quite large, but it was so good I could have eaten twice as much. I also quite enjoyed the beans. It's a bit different to have them cooked with tomato, but it's nice as a change from plain boiled beans!

Salmon can be pretty expensive, and unless you have some in the garden, the dill's a bit of a waste of money too - you have to buy a whole packet in order to use half a teaspoon of it. Even so, I'd absolutely recommend trying this - especially if you already eat salmon occasionally. Of course, with all that mayo, it's not the healthiest salmon dish you could make, but you've got to treat yourself occasionally!