« TGRWT#10: Round-Up | Main | Veal Cheeks with Mashed Purple Potatoes, Roasted Carrots, Reduction Sauce »

April 14, 2008

Salmon, Sweet Beet, Five-Spice Carrot

Bright colors and deliciously rare fish. A delicious, healthy meal that doesn't take too much fuss (at least not compared to a lot of stuff).

Atlantic Salmon, skin-on, pan-seared on high heat with a bit of canola oil until not really even rare inside. For good salmon like this, I like nice browning on the outside, but still just North of raw on the inside. The carryover cooking will ensure that the inside is plenty warm.
Beets, diced and then roasted at 400 F for 20 minutes or so with a healthy amount of sugar, some salt, and a bit of canola oil.
Carrots, chopped, then boiled for a few minutes in just enough salted water to cover, then pureed with some five-spice powder.

While plating, I accidentally dripped some of the beet oil (bright red canola infused with beet during the roasting process) on one of the plates, and liked the way it looked. So I dripped it all over the plates in a pseudo-random way. Very cool, spotted design (see above). Then, after Jeanette and I finished eating (cleaning our plates), and the dirty plates sat for a couple minutes, I noticed a beautiful, vivid red, fractal-like design on the plates where the beets had been. I photoed that, as you can see below. Very cool, fresh.

Oh, I was also going to add something bright green (blanched asparagus, or perhaps some mache), but forgot about it in the final plating. Speaking of which, I probably forgot some element of what I planned to plate every two days. It's really annoying when it's something I've prepped, but when it's just a few leaves of mache, it's no biggie, except for the photo. So, really, it only affects you guys. Sorry.