Baked Salmon Recipe
An Original Recipe by Lorraine Elliott
Recipe Overview
Preparation time: 10 minutes
Cooking time: 15 minutes
Serves: 4
Ingredients Needed
Salmon and spice rub
- 1kg/2.2lbs salmon, cut into four even fillets
- 2 teaspoons smoked paprika
- 2 teaspoons lemon pepper
- 2 teaspoons garlic powder
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1/8 teaspoon sugar
- Olive oil for drizzling
Spinach artichoke filling
- 75g/2.6oz spring onion cream cheese
- 50g/1.7oz marinated artichoke hearts, drained weight
- 40g/1.4oz grated mozzarella cheese
- 30g/1oz grated parmesan cheese
- 45g/1.4oz chopped spinach, thawed and squeezed of water
- 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
Step-By-Step Instructions
Step 1 SPICE - Preheat oven to 190C/374F fan forced or 210C/410F conventional. Mix all the spices together in a bowl. Place salmon skin side down on a parchment lined tray. Cut a slit into the fattest end of the fillet making a L shaped cut so that one side remains closed. Drizzle salmon with olive oil and rub the spice rub into the flesh side. Set aside while you make the filling and the oven comes to temperature.
Step 2 FILLING - Place the flavoured cream cheese, artichoke hearts, mozzarella cheese, parmesan cheese, chopped spinach and garlic powder in a food processor and blitz until smooth. Scoop out and fill each salmon fillet with a heaped tablespoon of this filling (you may have a bit of filling leftover depending on how deep you've cut the salmon).
Step 3 BAKE - Bake for 15 minutes. Rest for 5 minutes after coming out of the oven.
Personal Note
I love salmon and I was talking to my friend Sophia about it. When I first met her she was a really fussy eater but we've known each other for a long time now and in that time, she has expanded her palate a lot. She still has her dislikes that are perhaps a longer list than most but I think she has come very far which is fantastic. She now enjoys salmon and salmon sashimi whereas she wouldn't touch sashimi when I first met her.
But it doesn't bother me as she is an easy going person to eat out with. Like yesterday we were going to go to a restaurant for lunch. As we reached the restaurant I realised that I had already been to it! "Oh no!!" I said. I didn't want to go again because I couldn't get a blog post out of it (and dining out in Sydney aint cheap!) but I knew that Sophia was very hungry.
"Could we go somewhere else?" I said to her. I had another place in mind but it was around 30 minutes away by tram and that meant that she would have to wait to eat even longer. But easy going Sophia agreed to go to the next restaurant and just bought a little cookie to nibble on on the way!
So tell me Dear Reader, would you have insisted we eat there or would you go to the other restaurant?