Honey-glazed salmon with watercress salad

 Every now and then I flick through our local magazine. I used to read them quite thoroughly a few years ago, but they never really had anything useful and so I stopped. But sometimes there is a good recipe in there and I was lucky to spot this one the other day. It contained the magic ingredient watercress, so I had to try it out. I had a colleague who has a watercress farm at the end of his road and he would bring freshly picked watercress at lunch. It is a wonderful thing and this recipe reminded me of my colleague and the fabulous watercress.

Ingredients
2 portions

1 small red onion
3 tbsp cider vinegar
¾ tsp salt
1 ½ tsp sugar
2 cloves of garlic
50 ml honey
1 tsp chilli flakes
2 salmon fillets (around 250 g in total)
1 avocado
½ lemon
80 g watercress

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 200°C.
   
2. Peel and slice the onion thinly. Place in a jar together with the vinegar, salt and sugar. Close the lid tightly and shake well, then set aside.
3. Peel and press the garlic into a small saucepan. Add the honey and the chilli flakes, then heat up gently to infuse the flavours. Don't let it get too hot, just warm it up.
4. Glaze the salmon fillets generously, then wrap in aluminium foil and bake in the oven for 20 – 30 minutes, depending on their thickness.
5. Divide the watercress between two large plates.
6. Cut the avocado in half lengthwise, remove the stone, peel each half and then slice thinly. Place on the two plates.
7. Cut the lemon into wedges and divide between the plates.
8. Give the onion jar a shake now and then.
9. When the salmon is ready, place a fillet on each plate on top of the watercress and add pickled onion on top.
10. Serve immediately with carbs of your choice.

The original recipe says to fry the salmon in a hot pan. This is a very bad idea, which I suspected, but did anyway. What happened was that the honey burnt quickly and the salmon went almost completely black. It was OK to eat, but the charcoal flavour was a bit too strong for me. So bake in the oven is the way to go. 

I boiled quinoa and it combined quite nicely with this salad. Lundulph was quite pleased with the result and the really nice surprise was actually the pickled red onion, it was delish! Well worth making for regular salads.