It’s been another busy week here. It is half term for the schools which means I’ve had a surge in requests for tutoring. The result of this is that many of my evenings have been spent with my A-level student doing exciting things like sketching graphs so I tend to get home late.

It was on my way back from one of these tutorials last night that I got a call from Goon. It seemed he was after my cooking that evening and was already wandering around Tesco looking for things he wanted to eat. I was seriously considering takeaway for the third time that week (yes, I know, I’m a bad, bad person) but since Goon has good (expensive) taste I could manage cooking if he was buying.

It seems that he must have been VERY hungry because, when I found Andy in the shop, this was thrust into my hands.

A whole side of salmon. Over a kilo of fish. To me, this seemed rather a lot for two people but Goon wasn’t convinced. I tried to get him to put it back and buy two reasonably sized fillets (there is not enough room in either of our freezers for that thing) but he was VERY determined to keep it.

It was only five minutes until closing time so I had to think fast to figure out what to do with the salmon. I did a quick run around and picked up a load of thai ingredients as that was the first thing that came into my head.

I eventually convinced Goon that half the great slab of fish would feed us both and then chopped it up into four bits. I rubbed the two for that night with a mix of cumin and ground coriander seed and marinated it in coconut milk, lemon, crushed ginger, crushed garlic and fish sauce.

While it was marinating I made a sauce which was essentially a reduced Tom Kar. This has got to be one of my favourite types of soup. It is made of vegtable or chicken stock simmered with coriander, green chilli, lime leaves, lemon grass with coconut and fresh lime added at the end. Its lovely and creamy but refreshing from the flavours of lemon and lime.

I grilled the salmon until the skin was crispy then served it with some egg fried rice, (into which I’d thrown a lot of leftovers), the sauce and some spicy baby aubergines. The sauce was just perfect. The flavours in the rice were possibly a little strong for the salmon-some steamed jasmine rice or noodles may have been a better accompaniment- but the aubergines were great. These little ones have such a fantastic crunchy texture!

Here is the thai salmon recipe, and a basic egg fried rice recipe.

By the way, does anyone else like their salmon cooked ‘rare’, or is it just me? This, in my opinion, is the best way to have it. Just cooked all the way through but still dark pink in the middle.