I don’t know about you, but it’s always about this time of year, that ‘dinner discontentment’ starts to rear its appetite-shifting head.
All of a sudden, ‘how about a nice salad?’ loses the appeal it had while the evenings were warm, and and the skies were light.
Instead, what seems to be tickling my end-of-the-day fancy most, is all those hot and hearty options that have been on the back burner since spring…
Risotto
Lasagne
Cottage pie
Hot pot…
To kick-start this return of comfort food to mainstream popularity - and also to mark the occasion of Seafood Week - I decided to cobble together a quick and easy cockle-warmer, using salmon (not cockles!) and sparkles as the main theme! The recipe inspo was courtesy of Ocado, but I've made a few tweaks which are explained below.
The ingredients you’ll need are:
Sustainable salmon fillets x 4
300g Wild rice
Onion (diced)
2 cloves Garlic (crushed)
200g Swiss Chard
1 pack Asparagus
100ml Alberto Nani prosecco
200ml Stock
75g butter
Fry off the salmon, skin side down until it goes crispy. Remove the salmon from the pan and set aside (remove the skin as well and set this aside too.)
Fry off the onions and garlic, then add the Swiss Chard and a drizzle of olive oil.
Add the rice to the pan, along with the prosecco, stock and butter. Put the salmon on top (with the skin removed) and replace the lid for ten minutes on a low heat.
After ten minutes, turn off the heat and leave to stand for ten mins with the lid on.
Meanwhile, blanche the asparagus and plunge briefly into cool water for 2 minutes.
After ten minutes, remove the salmon from the pan. Add the asparagus and stir well. Turn the heat up high until rice starts to sizzle!
Serve with the salmon (and the skin as desired.)
I’ve linked the original recipe here, but note this one seems to be missing a mention of how much stock to include. Also, they’re suggestion is to use only the Swiss Chard leaves, but we included the stems too. We also used olive oil rather than vegetable oil, and included one whole onion, and 25g extra butter (just because!)
So far as first forays into ‘Autumn eats’ go, this one manages to tick a myriad of boxes. Healthy, satisfying, *reasonably* quick to make - and just a little bit special, for the much-needed fizz it brings to these increasingly dark evenings!
Sponsored by Alberto Nani