Poached Salmon

Poaching involves cooking in liquid.  It is one of my favourite ways of cooking because there are a lot of variations, there is very little clean-up afterwards and it is great for those days when you don't want to eat out but you also don't want to spend a ton of time cooking.

This particular recipe is salmon poached in vegetable broth with nugget potatoes, garlic and spinach.  Normally when I poach fish I will just use water, and add something citrus like lemon juice or orange slices.  Cooking in liquid makes whatever you are cooking super juicy and everything you cook with it (like the potatoes and spinach) absorb the flavour of the garlic, juice, broth or whatever else you put in there.  Any kind of fish would be awesome with this recipe, and it doesn't have to be a huge filet, you can do the single serving filets as well.

Ingredients:

4 cups of liquid (I used vegetable brot, but you can use water as well)
Fish (This is a salmon filet, but any kind of fish would do)
Basil (We had some fresh basil from our garden, but you could use dried herbs as well, Dill is great with fish)
Salt and Pepper to taste
3 or 4 cloves of garlic 
15 Nugget Potatoes
2 handfuls of Spinach
2 TB Olive Oil

Directions:

1.  Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

2.  Place fish in a large oven-safe pan.  Pour liquid over fish.

3.  Salt and Pepper to taste.  You want your liquid to be flavourful because it is going to be absorbed by everything in the pan.  If you are using water make sure to add something flavourful, such as lemon juice.

4.  Chop up garlic and cut nugget potatoes in half.  Place these in the broth.  Place spinach on top, making sure most of it is submerged in the liquid.  Drizzle oil on top and add more salt and pepper if desired.

5. Cook for 20 minutes and then stir the spinach so that the rest becomes submerged.  The spinach will float at first but once it has cooked awhile it will begin to wilt.  You want to make sure that it does not spend all 40 minutes of the cooking time above the surface of the liquid or it will get dry and crunchy. 

6.  Place back in oven for an additional 20 minutes making it 40 minutes total.  Check to make sure the liquid is bubbling at this point, if it is not you may want to consider turning your oven up to 425.

7.  Once the time is up take the dish out of the oven.  Poke the potatoes with a fork to make sure they are cooked through.  Also check the salmon, you will know that it is fully cooked when it flakes with a fork, as shown below.

Enjoy!