Today I'm making pan-fried salmon with creamy lemon spaghetti and courgetti.
Okay let's start cooking! So we've got around 350 grams of spaghetti that were
using here. I've got a pan of simmering water over there. I do find it hard
not to use a whole packet of spaghetti for four people, i am a little
bit of a carb addict, but we have got courgettes spaghetti
going in here as well so we can lower the amount spaghetti a little bit.
So that's about 350 grams gonna put that in there and then let that bubble away,
and then next we're going to turn the pan on and we are going to heat up a little bit
of olive oil about half a tablespoon should do it and then I've got a teaspoon
of butter as well in there, and lets go for a spatula. So here's the salmon we are going to use
for four people we're going to use 3 fillets of salmon, you could probably
get away with two fillets if you wanted to but I find that we're quite a hungry
family so three is good for us. Sprinkle with a little bit of salt and pepper
before we put that into the pan. You'll notice I've got this wrapped in
lovely grease proof paper like I've just picked it up fresh from the from the
fishmonger but I haven't just go from the supermarket really look nice okay so
that butter is just starting to melt and we're going to put the salmon into the
pan skin side down first. So in goes one, in goes two and there's
three.
Give My hands a little rince.
okay so we're going to go for about three minutes on each side that won't
cook it fully but that's okay because we'll be taking it out and shredding
them up and putting it back in later to carry on cooking so that's it
that's very nicely let's just leave that alone with a little bit so three minutes
on that side now we're going to make our courgetti, so let's get spiralizer
and we get our courgette here. Just a regular medium courgette what I'm going
to do is just get my chopping board and just chop the end of that so I'll move
that over there get a couple of things out the way find myself a knife so I'm
just gonna cut the end off there and that just makes it a little bit easier
to get into the spiralizer. Got to say when I first bought this spiralizer I
did worry that it was going to be one of those things that was just going to go
left in the back of the cupboard but I actually do use it quite a lot so it's
good not just for courgetti but you know even for making spiralized potatoes
for making those really skinny fries and for carrots things like that it's great
to put into salads really it gives quite like cougettii they prefer spaghetti
but I'm just about starting to get to it and get them getting them to eat it and
I think one of the things I like about it is that the the strands of the
courgette are massive you know you can get like a meter long strand there,
just stop that over flowing bowl
okay that bit off the end there get rid of this I have actually got a bin down
here I'm not just chucking rubbish on the floor. Then lets just put all that in the bowl
So whilst I'm here I'm gonna cut up the sugar snap peas, I have got about 85 grams of
sugar snap peas they're, that about a cup full, just just chop them roughly really just
into the nice little bite-size chunks.
that salmon is almost ready for turning
just finish these off first so it really rough don't worry about making them look
neater pretty
Right I'm going to turn the salmon over
Thats just starting to brown nicely on the skin side, we are going to be
removing the skin as well of course because this salmon is gonna get
flaked up nicely in the salmon dish and I'm just gonna get my tongues out
and agitate this spaghetti a little bit so it doesn't all stick together
so what we actually do with it spaghetti is we kind of cook the spaghetti so it's
almost doing it so it's about a minute from being cooked and then right at the
end we add in the courgetti and we'll also add the sugar snap peas into the
water as well and that's just to heat it through so they've still got a nice little bit
of crunch and they don't kind of come out all mushy, you want them to be lovely
and vibrant and green so now that I've turned the salmon over I'm also going to
add the onions into the pan so that they can start cooking so I'm going to turn
the heat down a little bit so I don't want to burn the onions let's just add
those around the salmon about here and that starts the onions cooking nicely so
the idea for this dish is to just try to get everything else cooking and prepared
and completed by the time the spaghetti is finished so there's a little bit of a
race against time but it's fine it doesn't take that long to do right so
now that I've got the sugar snap peas cut as well it's gonna put those over
here and oh there goes one in my cream but dont worry about it
Going to get my board out for my salmon
let's get a knife and fork that'll just help me get the skin off the salmon so keep
those onions moving you really want them to be nice and soft so you know kind of
five or six minutes and they should soften up nicely really
That salmon it's
looking pretty good it's just going to flake at the edges just at there at the
thin end so I'm gonna take that out in a minute
just whilst that is finishing up I think what I'll do is get my garlic cloves so
we're going to put two garlic cloves in with the onions wants the salmon comes
out so take those out here is that over to one side and just give them a little
bash with a knife just to help get the skin off and you should hear a pop when
that's when that skin is ready to come off and then we can peel it
hopefully peel it there we go.
Little tip for you if you do find that your hands
are smelling of garlic once you've grated the garlic or chop the garlic or
peel the garlic you can just run your hands under some cold water and just give
your fingers a rub against some kind of stainless steel so if you've got a
stainless steel sink or one of those little stainless steel soap bars that's
really handy for removing the smell of garlic so I'm gonna cut my garlic
crusher at the ready get the garlic in there alright and that is ready so now
I'm going to get rid of this rubbish try to keep the kitchen tidy as I go and
put the salmon onto the board
one two three just leave that on there for a minute so as you can see it's kind
of cooked at the bottom here and it should the skin should peel off quite
nicely but it's still quite pink in the middle and that's fine it will poach in
the cream in a minute anyway so let's give these onions a little
stir, the're now just starting to soften nicely and I will add in the
garlic, just get a knife to get that lovely garliciness out and that's just going to cook for another
minute or two before I put anything else in there so whilst those onions are
cooking let's give the spaghetti a little bit of a move around again that
is not far off from being ready and then let's get the skin off so that's peeling
off quite nicely you'll find it's a little bit harder at the thicker end the
skin wants to stay on there I always take this little brown bit off as well
because the kids complain when they see brown bits of fish even though it's
perfectly fine to eat, let's get that in the bin, and another one here
you can see that's just pulling off nicely and that little brown bit just
under the skin as well for that and now the a third one
so like I say three fillets is pretty good for four people I find four four
you know fairly hungry people but you could get away with to just stick a few
more veggies in there if you wanted to so let's give these onions a little bit
of a stir and now I'm going to turn up the heat a little bit and I'm gonna add
in just a little bit of white wine just to bubble away you only need a couple of
tablespoons really just gives it a little bit of extra flavor you can leave
it out if you want to it's quite optional and that's bubbling up nicely
with the onions and the garlic and once that's bubbled for a minute then we
can add in the cream
so I've got about five tablespoons of cream there and also
that sugar snap pea that jumped in there from earlier,
let's add that in give it a
little stir and then we'll just let that heat up slowly and I will zest the lemon
as well so I use about the zest of one whole lemon in this dish and then I also
tend to zest a little bit just to put on top as a garnish at the end it's also
quite nice to put a little bit of lemon juice in at the end as well it just adds
a little bit of extra flavor with that cream you might think it might split it
but it doesn't split the sauce at all it just cream kind of reacts with the lemon
juice and just creates a really lovely savory flavor so I think that will do
and then let's add this salmon back in and we can just flake it up in the pan
okay with that, move that out of the way and then just flake it gently with your
fork and that will just continue to cook through for a couple of minutes
with the cream with and with the onions so it you know really only probably needs another
two or three minutes and that'll be lovely and soft and tender, I might just
add another little pinch of salt and pepper there again that's totally up to
you I think that the spaghetti is about a minute away from being cooked so I'm
going to add our spiralized courgette into the pasta pan there we go and also
add it in the chopped sugar snap peas so they're gonna be lovely and crunchy
let's rid of that as well and clear our work area a little bit
Ok so, get my tongs just move it around a little bit that spaghetti is practically cooked so
just before I drain the spaghetti what I'm gonna do is take about a cup full of
the pasta water let's get a scoop here and this water is lovely and starchy so
if you're making any kind of pasta dish where you're going to be adding the
pasta into the sauce and you want to make sure that you know the pasta is
lovely the sauce is lovely and thick and kind of creamy the starchiness from the
pasta actually adds an element of creaminess to it as well so
you can use it to kind of loosen up the sauce without the sauce turning
really watery so I'm just going to put that to one side in case I need it a
little bit later turn this down a little bit let's give it a little stir and that
salmon is pretty much done so still a couple of little pink bits in there I'm
gonna turn off this spaghetti now and I'm going to go over to the sink and I'm
going to drain that carefully
let's just put that back in the pan so we don't dribble water all over the kitchen
and then now that can go straight in the pan with the salmon, so you
can see just how lovely and bright and vibrantly green the courgette and the
sugar snap peas are there so they'll have a nice bite to them a nice crunch
and that that courgetti wont all kind of fall apart it's only being
cooked for one minute so just as that it's kind of mixing together I'm going
to add in a little bit, just get my chopping board, a little bit of lemon juice
so I'm going to chop that zested one and what I find to do sometimes is and
you can use a juicer which I often do but if you just want to be a little bit
quick it's just to cook the very edges of the cheeks off the lemon because
there's often not very any seeds in there so you can just squeeze without
worrying about getting any seeds in your dish okay and I'm going to add a little
bit of that pasta water from befor just to loosen it up a little bit
there we go and then let's test the pasta together again so mix it all
together and then what I'm gonna do at the end there is I'm going to put it
onto a plate and I'm going to do a little bit of
lemon zest on top, some Grana Padano and some black pepper as well and serve it
with some lemon wedges, so let's get a plate out, over here this is the bit now
where you see how long this courgetti is because I won't ever be able to get
it on the plate in one go and try make it look pretty at the same time well let's
do our best here, so if you've never had a courgetti I would definitely give it a
go myself I don't tend to go with just
courgetti because I really do like my pasta so I tend to go half and half and
that works wonderfully so this you'll probably find the salmon is kind of gone
to the edges at the pan a little bit here and that's fine just grab a few
pieces of those really beautifully cooked pieces of salmon and then I'm
gonna bring it over here and let's add a little bit of a lemon zest to the top
it's just a beautiful lighter way to serve pasta really so we can see that a
little bit of Grana Padano and finish it off with some black pepper
and thats it, we're done