Fast & easy dinner
This is another salmon recipe… The easiest dinner ever? It might be 😉
Sometimes, cooking is about solving a need – hunger – really fast. I have been talking about oven baked dinners for a while, and for a reason: they are the easiest way to get dinner on the table fast. They are also low maintenance, allowing you to do other chores while the food gets itself ready.
The base: protein and veggies
My trick to making these dinners work is to combine one protein with one or two vegetables that roast well, choose one seasoning that complements the mood of the dish and place in a pre-heated oven for 15 to 30 minutes (depending on what you’re cooking).
The extras: some carbs
When I’m very hungry – or I sense the kids as being ravenous, as it often happens – I also cook either rice or quinoa at the same time, on the stove. Noodles, rice or buckwheat, are also a pretty good trick up my sleeve, as they take a minimum amount of time to be ready.
Or salad!
If we are all in the mood for a little diet, I only add a green salad, seasoned with the best possible extra virgin olive oil, lemon or lime juice and a pinch of dried oregano. I don’t use salt on green salads very often…
The dish today: baked salmon
Today I’ll be sharing one of the most frequent dinner “solutions” chez Glow Chef: Salmon with Cherry Tomatoes and Asparagus.
These dinners are also very versatile regarding portions: you adapt the number of units of each ingredient to the number of people you’ll be feeding.
I find the asparagus the perfect counter-balance for the salmon richness and the cherry tomatoes add just a tad of sweetness, making this light, low carb, meal very satisfying. My daughter is not very fond of cooked tomatoes so I keep a few of them raw, especially for her. Mommy’s love!
It’s almost arrogant to call it a recipe, so easy it is to put together. Anyway, here it goes.
Salmon with Cherry Tomatoes and Asparagus
Ingredients
per person
- One salmon fillet (about 150 grams and preferably the wild variety)
- Five cherry tomatoes
- Five asparagus spears
- A pinch of dried dill
- Sea salt
- Black Pepper
- Half a lemon, to squeeze (lime works well too; I rotate both)
- One teaspoon of extra virgin olive oil
Method
Pre-heat the oven to 180º C (350º F).
Line an oven tray with greaseproof paper or aluminum foil. These will make cleaning so much more manageable 🙂
Dry the salmon fillet with kitchen paper and place it on the tray.
Wash and dry the cherry tomatoes and place them around the fish.
Wash the asparagus spears. Trim the woody stems either with a knife or just by snapping the spear with your hands – it will break naturally at the right spot. Scatter them around the fish, also.
Season the salmon fillet and the veggies with the dill, salt and pepper and the olive oil. Squeeze a bit of lemon juice over the whole thing.
Place in the oven and bake for 15 to 20 minutes, according to your preference: 15 minutes will produce a slightly pink fillet; 20 minutes will cook the fish thoroughly.
After taking the tray out of the oven squeeze a bit more lemon juice over it before serving, for a little bit of added freshness.
As you see, this dish is easy to make but will not lack in taste.
You can use this technique to cook any fish you want.
You can also rotate the vegetables you bake with the fish. I also like to combine broccoli with cauliflower, for example. Or carrot sticks with fennel.
Other salmon recipes here on the blog:
Salmon: 3 easy and quick recipes for dinner.
Other oven tray dinner recipes:
Ginger and Lemongrass Chicken.
