Fascinating fish

I've said previously that I'm a recipe-driven cook, which is a mixed blessing at the moment. Recipes give ideas but they also bring frustrations when shopping isn't simple (next week's challenge will be about that in fact). So I've been trying to find new recipes that aren't too bonkers for ingredients. Also, shifting stuff around to make my office and create replacement yoga blocks has meant displacing my big stack of cookbooks, and Supra floated to the top. That's the Georgian cookbook about feasting which I don't use for feasting.

I love the Georgian recipes as they are often only slightly twisted from the kind of thing I'd cook normally, but they still taste wildly different due to different herb or spice combos. There's a whole load that are flavoured with blue fenugreek and marigold, which if you've got them (and I have - online spice people often sell them as a paired offer) otherwise only need some meat, onions and maybe some vinegar.  But today, it's fish, and no fenugreek. This is really just poached salmon and sauce, but it knocked my socks off a bit. Not only because of the radical approach to raw garlic.

Seethe the salmon gently

Salmon in green garlic sauce (serves 2)
2 salmon fillets
Allspice berries
Bay leaves
An onion, halved

Boil a kettle, pour the contents into a pan, add a couple of bay leaves and allspice berries (no, I don't have berries, I had to use powder), and the onion halved. Bring it to the boil, add the salmon fillets and turn it down to simmer for 5 minutes only. Drain the salmon but retain a bit of the water, you will need it.

Meanwhile...
Dill sprigs
Coriander sprigs
1 tbsp cider vinegar
4 cloves of garlic
Salt

Pound to a sauce (or put in a blender tbh, although it meant adding some oil). Even though I cut down the garlic (I never, ever cut the garlic), it looks quite formidable when blended. Considering how much green is in there, it's quite white... which is allll garlic.

Love my small herb blender

This is where the fish-cooking liquid comes in. That allspice and onion is not wasted on only 5 mins cooking, it's an integral element of the flavouring. The sauce really, really changed with just a few tablespoonfuls of cooking liquor. And the allspice/dill/garlic/coriander mix is amazing.

Then leave to cool and serve. Wait, WHAT? Why wasn't this mentioned earlier?

Reader, I ate it warm. Not hot, cos I had to wait for my spuds to cook, but still.

I have so many leftover herb stalks. The dill especially was super stalky. But it'll be nice on the potatoes.

I shall report tomorrow whether it's radically different when cold. Possibly with an urgent addendum here to on no account eat it hot.

Really really nice warm tho.