Phillip Searle

Roasted salmon with glazed eggplant

Ingredients

For the paste, fry the following in oil
1 tspn ground white pepper
1 tspn ground coriander (dry roast whole seeds then grind)
1 tspn shrimp paste.
Add
1 large chopped Spanish onion
1 one-inch cube chopped ginger
2 cloves finely chopped garlic.

Method

Cook until the onions are transparent, then add 1 tablespoon green masala paste and 2 tablespoons of tomato kasundi.

Continue to cook a further 10 minutes then reserve.

The eggplant

1 large eggplant for 4 people.

Cut the eggplant into lozenge shapes (salt them if they are green).

Sparingly smear some of the paste on the eggplant and fry to light brown on all sides. Take a large braising pan, fry one tspn of chopped ginger in it.

Add the eggplant and 100ml of tomato essence and 100ml of fish fumet.

Continue to cook with a lid on until you have a syrupy residue in the bottom.

Reserve.

Tomato essence

Take five kilos of very ripe tomatoes.

Puree them.

Place in a stainless steel saucepan and bring to the boil.

Line a conical sieve with muslin. Pour the hot pureed tomatoes into the sieve.

Cool.

Wring the contents to extract all liquid. Reduce to about 500 mls.

The Salmon

Take one side from a 4kg salmon.

Remove bones, scale and lightly salt the skin. Leave for an hour.

Dry the salmon and massage one heaped teaspooon of the paste into both sides.

Roast in a 250deg F. oven for 12-18 minutes until ‘set’.

The Sauce

Heat up the paste, add 300ml of fish stock, simmer gently for 10 minutes.

Taste for salt.

Add fish sauce if necessary.

Taste for acidity, add tomato essence if necessary.

Optional add 100g of butter.

Optional large tomato dice.

Serve a spoonful of sauce onto the plate, put the salmon on top, the eggplant alongside.