Warm Salmon & Squid Salad

Eaten warm as prepared or chilled for lunch the following day, this is a fast and easy salad to put together.

Simply put, it's whatever seafood you can find over whatever greens you can find, accompanied by whatever ... erm ... accompaniments you can find.

It's not complicated - follow your nose and simply put good food together.

Here's a few tips about maximising flavours ...

I began by slow poaching some salmon - a kind of ghetto sous-vide method whereby I have my fishmonger seal individual fillets of salmon. Once home, I boil some water, pour into a large pan and drop the vacuum packed fillet in, setting the heat as low as I can. Leave it at least an hour.

All the full flavour of the fish will remain with the fish, none leached out into the water.

Prepare whatever other seafood you have. I had some baby squids, so sliced them up and set them aside for cooking.

For a warm salad, I shredded some spring greens which are smack bang in season at the moment and once lightly steamed, just set aside.

To the overture ...

Warm some beef dripping in a frying pan. Squid seems to work well with beef dripping, so chuck in the tentacles to puff out, then the white calamari. Cook quickly and don't concern yourself too much about the liquid that is released - remove the squid pieces, as we don't want to broil them.

Chuck in a little more beef dripping and toss in the spring greens. The object here is to get this gorgeous vegetable covered in good fats and flavours from the squid. At this point, open the salmon pack and pour in the juices.

Keep tossing the spring greens until they are well dried and pack full of good flavours.

Serve out the greens into a wide-brimmed bowl, flake the fish over, toss over the squid and then load up with whatever accompaniments you have for fun flavours!

I went with hot peppers, olives, capers, pickled chillies, pickled garlic, spring onions, a good splash of olive oil and some Gevrik, a Cornish goat cheese. Top with an egg. Everything is made perfect with an egg. For a real boost, sprinkle over some shredded fried bacon or thin slices of chorizo, fried off.

Poached Salmon & Coriander Sauce

Whenever you have a surplus of something fresh that is going to be well past its best before you can use it all, best make up a soup or a sauce.

With a huge bunch of coriander, just wilt it in some fish stock, whizz it up with a hand blender and pour in some cream. Reduce gently.

Coriander is a wonderful healing herb, whose health benefits are numerous.

Meanwhile, poach a fillet of salmon and prepare some vegetables alongside - we had sauté potatoes and some asparagus.

The fish was garnished with some garlic cress.

Yorkshire Forced Rhubarb

Bang in season and an absolute must eat!

With just 12 growers in a small triangle of just 9 square miles between Bradford, Leeds & Wakefield in West Yorkshire, a county in northern England, Yorkshire Forced Rhubarb truly is the Champagne of rhubarb. This is the Rhubarb Triangle.

Brought to Europe by Marco Polo, rhubarb is a curious vegetable. With poisonous leaves, but a beautiful pink stalk, or stick, which has a tart, but appealing flavour, crunchy when raw, soft and sticky when cooked.

Forced rhubarb is a practice of forcing the growth by growing the rhubarb indoors, in darkness in the warmth. The rhubarb is cultivated for a couple of years outside, then moved into large sheds where the darkness prevents the development of woody stalks. Soft, vibrant thin sticks are then harvested by candlelight. You just can't make something like this up!

In 2010, Yorkshire Forced Rhubarb was awarded Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) status by the European Commission’s Protected Food Name scheme.

How to prepare these delicious stalks ...

Chop off the ends, paying attention to the top of the stick where the leaves grow off - trim back to where the vibrant pink colour starts.

You could simply eat the stick as is, perhaps dipped in a little honey - this was a traditional post-World War II sweet for poorer families.


There is an important note here about honey. Is it primal? Would something like agave nectar be better?

Well, I'll link to a few resources and you can make your own mind up:
http://www.marksdailyapple.com/the-definitive-guide-to-sugar/
http://www.westonaprice.org/modern-foods/agave-nectar-worse-than-we-thought
http://jonnybowdenblog.com/the-truth-about-agave-nectar-it%E2%80%99s-all-hype/

... and so:
http://www.marksdailyapple.com/is-honey-a-safer-sweetener/ ... I tend to think so.


You could chop down into short stalks and arrange in a box of puff pastry ... but that's not paleo. What is, is to simply chop the sticks right down and gently cook down.

Chop, put into a pan and set the heat on low; as low as you can. The rhubarb will now sweat in the heat, releasing its own juices and softening the fibrous stalk.

Rhubarb is very tart, but forced rhubarb has a much sweeter taste - it can still do with a little help, so given that these sticks came from within a 10 mile radius of my house, it seemed right to pair it with a little local honey from a farm just over the hill behind us. I used a mere half teaspoon, which is perfectly adequate - that tartness is part of the appeal.

After an hour, or so, or low temperature cooking you will have a vibrant, soft, inviting pink mess.

What now?

Rhubarb is a vegetable, so feel free to serve it with savoury dishes. Use as condiment alongside oily fish, like mackerel, bold flavoured fish like bass or tilapia, or heavy, fatty meat like lamb.

Perfect offset against the fattiness.

Rhubarb also works out well as a dessert. Served simply, with yoghurt, done posh in a wine glass with layers of yoghurt and cream or put under a crumble topping, the options are endless.

Perfect soft tartness against the crunchy nut topping or cool yoghurt.

Me? I served a helping alongside a simple Panna Cotta.