Tag Archives: salmon

Something Different

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We usually eat salmon once every fortnight.  It is cooked the same way each time – GMan grills it on the barbecue.  I vary the accompaniments – sometimes it is kale salad or coleslaw and sweet potato fries, other times it is a a bed of sweet potato mash or wilted bok choy plus other vegetables on the side.

The other day I came across this link on Facebook.  So, I decided that I would try one for a change from our normal grilled salmon.

I made the Tomato Pesto Salmon and this is what it looked like once I had assembled it.

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Cooked, served and ready to eat.

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Even better, was the fact that the basil, tomatoes, zucchini and sweet potato were all from the garden.

I know that fresh salmon is not exactly a budget meal but with almost everything else home-grown it means that we can splash out a little on good quality meat and fish.

Dinner – BBQ Salmon

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Some of our meals are very inexpensive, particularly those based on eggs (from our own chickens) or vegetables and dried legumes.  At the other end of the scale, tonight’s meal might seem quite extravagant.

We had salmon which GMan cooked on the BBQ.  I buy the salmon from a large fish and chip shop in Caloundra and pay about $36/kg for it.  I buy 4 large pieces at a time and freeze them.  It works out at about $10 per piece, however, 1 piece is sufficient to serve the two of us.

Tonight I served it with sweet potato chips, cherry tomatoes and a creation which I call Waldorf coleslaw.  It is shredded cabbage, chopped apple and chopped walnuts tossed with some mayonnaise.

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The sweet potatoes and cherry tomatoes are free from the garden.  I mean totally free – they cost nothing to plant – both came up self-sown in the compost and they receive no supplementary water or fertiliser.  If I allowed $2 for the coleslaw I would be being generous.  So, we end up with a meal that cost $6 per serve.  While that is relatively extravagant compared to many of the meals I make and possibly out of reach for someone on a really tight budget, I am very pleased with the quality and content of this meal.

Something from the Garden

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Back to one of my favourite topics – eating what is in season.

Last night we had salmon for dinner.  While the salmon is not strictly local, it does come from Australian waters.  It is farmed in the clear water of the Huon River estuary in southern Tasmania.  The salmon could hardly be considered a budget meal as it costs about $10 for enough for 2 serves.  We always barbeque the salmon and season it with a little salt and some lime juice to enhance the flavour.

Dinner
I served it with pumpkin mash, stir-fried pak choy, balsamic roasted cherry tomatoes and avocado slices.  I poured some of the balsamic/tomato juice over the salmon as a glaze to finish it off.  All of these ingredients came from our garden so you can’t get much more seasonal or local than that.  It also means that a meal of salmon is quite a reasonable price.  What would you pay in a restaurant for a meal like this? $30 – $35 perhaps?

Not every meal contains as much of our own garden produce but I do try to include it as much as possible.  Tonight we are having pizza which will be spread with mango chutney (made from the neighbour’s mangoes) instead of tomato paste and have balsamic roasted pumpkin as the main topping.

We have had a bumper harvest of pumpkins this year so I am constantly looking for creative ideas to use them.  As well as the ubiquitous pumpkin soup, pumpkin mash and being used on pizza topping I have also made some pumpkin scones recently.

What do you have a glut of?  Do you have any pumpkin suggestions?