Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Simplicity itself: Honey mustard salmon

salmon

Lean in, I'll tell you something: this dish is my secret weapon.

Honey mustard salmon! It's simple, it's elegant, it's delicious. It's also ludicrously easy to make, and (incidentally) has been the star player in every successful seduction of my adult life, platonic or otherwise. I bring this up only because it's the week before Valentine's day, and if I were not going to be playing a show on the day itself (shameless plug 9pm at the National Underground, for all you New Yorkers! Ask for Autobahn da Fe! www.autobahndafe.com /shameless plug ), this is the dinner I would be making for Bench to usher in another year of his fealty happiness and harmony. I typically pair it with roasted asparagus, but it really plays well with most vegetables; most recently, I paired it with cauliflower and purple potatoes.

Aside from being texturally unimpeachable and just generally delicious, this dish has two major things going for it:
1. It has precisely four ingredients, including the salmon.
2. It takes approximately 45 seconds to assemble.

It's really the perfect meal for those days when you want to make an impression but have a thousand other things to take care of before you can do so. Go ahead and clean the bathtub! Run to the bank! Go to the nail salon! Live dangerously! All you need is ten to fifteen minutes to get this dish from fridge to plate (if you're using filets; slightly longer if you adapt it for a bigger slab o' fish), so you can get home (or emerge from your lair) with as little as twenty minutes to go time (I'm giving you an extra five minutes to actually round up the ingredients in your pantry). Your date will be putty in your perfectly manicured hands. I am not kidding. Putty.

Be sure to make him/her do the dishes.

Honey mustard salmon

2 salmon filets

1/4c honey
1/4c wholegrain mustard
1 tbsp soy sauce
  1. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees
  2. Mix the honey, mustard, and soy sauce.
  3. Coat the salmon with the glaze
  4. Put the salmon in a roasting dish and whack it in the oven until the center is opaque (5-10 minutes, depending on how rare you like it. I prefer it pretty much still flopping around, so I tend to give everyone else's portions a 3-4 minute head start before putting mine in.)

7 comments:

Culinary Wannabe said...

Roasting salmon in the oven is so much easier than cooking it on the stove (I'm always over or under doing it). Thanks for sharing - this looks so amazing and I love how simple it is!

Maggie said...

agreed on liking your salmon still flopping around. i'm afraid to make salmon for guests because I like it so raw they might be afraid.

pigpigscorner said...

Sounds really simple and delicious!

Lisa said...

Oh, yum. I love this combination so much.

Phoo-D said...

This sounds wonderful and simple. Sometimes I make something quite similar using a Wasabi mustard and miso for more of an Asian twist to the flavors.

Lo said...

Mmm... an added benefit of this dish is that it's not heavy! So, you'll still have room for dessert.

Stephanie Harsh said...

You could put honey mustard on anything and I'd be happy! This looks good!