Everybody needs a simple supper in their repertoire that can be easily assembled, doesn’t require too many ingredients, cooks quickly, and tastes better than the sum of its parts. It should be more of a riff than a recipe: endlessly adaptable, and forgiving too.
When you find one of these, and the whole family actually likes to eat it, you hold on to it, and cook it often.
Mine is a sort of Asian-inspired baked salmon thing. It doesn’t really have a name; you can call it whatever you like, if you like it. Chances are, you will. It’s a bit of an ugly duckling, but it tastes great.
Here is what you’ll need, and how to make it:
Salmon steaks or darnes
Soya sauce
Roasted sesame oil
Fresh ginger, finely grated
Sesame seeds
Shichimi togarashi (optional, or a dusting of any chilli pepper)
Take one salmon steak or darne, per person (organic, if possible) and cover it in a mixture of light soy sauce and toasted sesame oil, three parts soy to one part sesame. About three tablespoons of soy and one of sesame oil is enough for two or three portions of salmon.
Dust the salmon with a very liberal coating of finely grated fresh ginger. I store ginger in the freezer and it grates easily from frozen, coming off the Microplane like a dusting of snow. Leave the fish in the fridge to marinate: overnight is best, but a couple of hours will do too.
Top the salmon with a sprinkle of sesame seeds and bake until just barely cooked through. (I’ll admit, I’ve often overcooked it, and it is not a disaster as the salmon caramelises in the sticky marinade ). Once cooked, dust the fish with some shichimi togarashi, a Japanese spice blend of chillies, pepper, ginger, black and white sesame seeds, orange peel and nori that you’ll find in Asian food stores. That’s it: six ingredients, massive flavour.
Serve with noodles or rice with some spring onions chopped through, and some pak choi, tenderstem broccoli or other green vegetable. Translucent slices of pale pink pickled ginger are a great addition to the plate, as is a dollop of Katie Sanderson's White Mausu Peanut Rayu sauce, or the Nutney condiment from Jackrabbit chef Ian Marconi (soon to launch an online shop at jackrabbit.ie).
What is your stand-by six-ingredient supper, and how do you make it? Send us your recipe for an easy mid-week meal you make and tell us why it’s your go-to simple supper. Please include a photograph and no more than 400 words by email to magazine@irishtimes.com with six-ingredient supper in the subject line.
The best will be published online during Food Month.
