Salmon and lime in foil

Salmon in foil

This is a method of cooking salmon that can work for one serving, or ten.  The lime part of the title refers to an unusual set of flavours - fusion, probably - that I'm using in this recipe; I might do a later post suggesting other combinations of ingredients that also work well.  The foil method is perfect for all sorts of small, chunky fillets of fish and shellfish, although different species of fish may need different times.


Ingredients

• One salmon fillet per person
• One lime per two people
• Two - three spring onions per person
• Light soy sauce.  It's important to use light soy sauce here rather than dark, for the saltiness
• Sesame oil (roast is fine - it's what I use)
• Some sort of flavourless oil, such as corn oil.

What you do

First, you heat the oven to around 200 C.  To be quite honest, you could turn it down a bit.  Salmon doesn't need very much cooking.  Put a baking tray in the oven to get hot with the oven, so that the foil parcels you are going to make are put straight onto an already-hot tray.

While the oven is heating, prepare the foil parcels by doing the following:

• Take the rind off the lime.  You can do this by using a grater, or use a dedicated lemon de-rinder.  There's a picture of one underneath.  They don't cost much and they're absolutely brilliant. Put the rind to one side.
• Squeeze the juice from the lime into a small bowl or container.  Add a tablespoon (15 ml) of light soy sauce and one teaspoon of sesame oil.  This makes enough sauce for two - three fillets; you can keep any left over in a sealed container in the fridge for a few days (probably maximum three to four days).
• Top and tail the spring onion and chop the stem into 1 cm lengths, and slice the bulb into half cm slices. 

Here's a picture of the ingredients before the spring onions are chopped.  The lemon de-rinder is shown at the right of the picture.  I bought mine from Tesco.

• Take some foil - minimum 30 cm by 30 cm. 

You should probably brush a little of the non flavoured oil onto the centre of the foil at this point, just under the place where you'll lay the salmon fillet.  I forgot to do this last time I cooked salmon like this, and a little bit of the salmon had stuck to the foil when I unfolded the foil parcels; that's the reason for brushing with oil before cooking.  You can use a pastry brush, or your fingers, to spread the oil over the foil, and you'll need less than a teaspoon of it.

• Turn the corners of the foil up so that it makes a shallow dish.   
• Put the salmon on the oiled foil, diagonally,  and add two - three tablespoons of the soy sauce mixture. 
• Scatter the shredded rind of lime on and around the salmon. 
• Scatter two to three chopped spring onions, similarly. 

You should get something that looks like this:

• Now you make a domed parcel, to seal the salmon in and allow some space for the salmon to cook in the flavoured steam provided by the lime juice, soy sauce, rind and spring onion. 

I do this by bringing up the sides and folding them over. Here:

Then I bring the ends up and fold them over, making a blunt handbag shape like this:

You need to be careful to make sure that there are no little gaps where the steam can escape. 

• Now, take the heated baking tray out of the oven and plonk the parcel onto it.

The reason for heating the tray is to stop the bottom of the salmon getting soggy, especially if you've left the skin on.  You'll probably hear the parcel hiss a little, if the baking tray is hot enough. 

You can do similar domed-parcel techniques with baking paper for all sorts of fish, especially whole fish, but I prefer foil, especially for salmon, because of the immediacy of the heat transfer - I think it makes a better skin.

• Put the salmon parcel in the oven for ten - fifteen minutes. 

In my most recent cooking of this, I left the parcel for fifteen minutes, and I think the salmon was a bit overcooked.  About 12 minutes is probably best; more if you've lowered the temperature.  This is one recipe where you need to know your own oven very well and make the appropriate adjustments.

When you open the parcel (be careful - the foil will be hot), it will look like this:

The sauce is delicious.  I've served this with boiled new potatoes, but it might also go well with noodles. Use a serving spatula to lever the salmon off the foil and put it on a plate, and then tip the foil up to spill the sauce over the salmon and whichever carbohydrate you are using.

I'm pretty certain that you could also use the cook-in-foil method on a barbecue.