Crispy skin salmon with lemon star anise sauce. Delicious and light (Salmontastic!)

After last week’s Tuesday tip, I figured I should try to post something related to crispy skin fish somehow, and since my wife’s out of town, I figured a nice light salmon fillet was probably in order. I’ve been thinking about this star anise lemon sauce for a while. In my mind they seemed to combine quite well. Which they did, my only comment is, the sauce seemed to cry for an unhealthy thickener, a roux, cream or butter! It tasted lovely, just really needed some added richness to make it shine.

Serves 2

2 x 200ish g of fresh salmon fillet with the skin on, prepared in line with this (very useful) blog entry

1 shallot roughly chopped

1 cup of chicken stock

1/4 cup of dry white wine

1 pinch of fennel seeds

1 star anise

juice of half a lemon

1 tbsp of honey

A lug of olive oil

1 tsp of arrow-root dissolved in a dash of water

While the salmon fillet’s skin is salting in preparation for cooking, you can make this quick and easy sauce; in a small saucepan, heat some olive oil over a medium high heat and add the shallots with the fennel seeds and cook for 3-4 minutes until the shallots are transparent but not browned. Add the white wine and star anise and allow the alcohol to cook off for about 5 minutes. Add the chicken stock and lower the heat to medium and allow the sauce to simmer for about 15mins. Strain the sauce into a bowl to remove the bits of shallots and fennel seeds, then re-add to the saucepan. Place the star anise back in, whisk in the arrow-root slurry, the honey and the lemon juice and allow to sit and warm on a low flame while your salmon cooks.\

To cook the salmon, get a nice large pan with a couple of tablespoons of olive oil heated on a medium heat. Once you’re sure the oil is hot, place the salmon fillets in, skin side down. You will need to cook them for about 41/2mins, check the skin side before flipping, making sure that the skin is a nice brown color. Flip the salmon over and let  cook through for about 2mins (salmon is an oily fish, especially if it’s a thick fillet).

Plate the salmon and pour the sauce all round. Hope you enjoy!