Finally An Excellent Meal: Salmon Dinner with Indian Flavors

While I've made plenty of tasty meals since being here, I could tell by M*'s expression after one bite that this one was a keeper. I searched for salmon and chard on CI, and I came up with a menu for an Indian meal: Easy Salmon Dinner with Indian Flavors. There were actually four recipes for the meal, and I made two: Tender Greens with Indian Spices and Grilled Salmon with Indian Flavors and Fresh Mango Chutney. I skipped the mango sorbet and Indian-spiced rice pilaf, as we already had brown rice and there are only so many loads of dishes that I can manually wash per day. Fortuitously the accompanying chutney for the salmon called for a mango. I've only bought one since arriving in Cambridge, and it was sitting in our fruit/ veggie bowl perfectly ripe. The marinade actually made the thawed, Tesco-boxed salmon steaks delicious.

It's such a good feeling coming across a recipe like this where I have almost all of the required ingredients: chard (from our weekly organic vegetable delivery), mango, fresh ginger, curry powder, garlic, ground cumin, ground coriander, onion, oil, salt 'n' peppa. I did have to pick up some a chile, cilantro (fresh coriander in the UK) and a lemon, and I just used a mix of chili powder and Spanish paprika for the 1/4 tsp cayenne pepper (which I have since bought because it is in many recipes). The Tender Greens recipe called for adding heavy cream and brown sugar at the end of sauteing the chard with the onion, garlic, ginger, chile, curry powder and cumin. Since M* is watching his cholesterol, I skipped the last step. Also, I didn't find heavy cream at the store, and I'm confused at the difference between all the creams anyway (clotted, single fat, double fat, whipping, etc).

In general this recipe is really easy. The sauteing of the greens with the above ingredients takes no time. The salmon just needs to be rubbed with some oil, cumin, coriander, ginger, salt and cayenne pepper and left to marinate in the fridge for about 1/2 hour. Then I placed the salmon in the bottom of the oven on what I believe was the broil setting for seven minutes per side. The only time consuming aspect of the chutney was peeling the mango. After that, one just has to add some lemon juice and cilantro. Will definitely make again and again.