Baked Salmon with Oyster Sauce Glaze and Miso Broth – Recipe

Salmon with cracked pepper, oyster sauce glaze

As much as I love to cook, no one likes to make elaborate meals all the time, so we normally have our “Go-to” recipes that we can rely on, to come home and quickly make, with only 1 pot and 1 baking tray needed to make the dish, it’s all about convenience.
This is one of the recipe that always goes down well, especially since it can be made in 20 minutes from the time you’ve turned the oven on, to when you’re serving up the broth.
What it consists of is a lovely cold soba (buckwheat) noodle bed with a hint of sesame seed oil, which is brilliant if you can only eat gluten free noodles, coupled with the slightly sweet glaze of the oyster sauce, and both dark and light soy sauces, the darker is slightly sweeter, while the lighter is saltier in taste, adding to a balanced flavour to the marinated salmon fillet.
When I cook the salmon, I like to bake it for no longer than 8 minutes, where the flesh is cooked properly on the outside and just done on the inside, a problem that I find some restaurants that over cook the fish or stand the dish under a strong heat lamp,  destroying the texture of the fish.
Contrasting nicely with main hot and cold dish, the umami savouriness of the broth, gives you that happy belly feeling that a broth brings.

Prep time 5 minutes, total cooking time 20 minutes.

 

MAIN INGREDIENTS
4x Salmon strips (approximately 250-500 grams)
250 grams of Soba noodles
A pinch of sesame seeds
3x tablespoons of toasted sesame seed oil

MARINATE
4x dabs/teaspoons of oyster sauce
2x teaspoons of light
1x teaspoon of dark
1x teaspoon of sesame seed oil
Cracked black pepper

BROTH
4x tablespoons of white miso paste ((1x tablespoon per serving)
720 ml water for the stock (180 ml per serving)
2x sprigs of spring onions cut into 0.5 cm chunks
3-4x shallots, chopped finally
2x garlic bulbs
1x teaspoon of toasted sesame seed oil.
A small handful of wakame (dried seaweed) flakes
A handful of sliced shitake mushrooms (if dried, let them soak for 15 minutes)

DIRECTIONS

Preparing the noodles:
– Add water to your pot and bring to boil, then add the soba noddles to the pot, allowing to cook for 5 – 8 minutes on a high heat.

Soba – Bundles of Buckwheat Goodness

– To prevent the noodles from sticking together, once the soba noodles look ready, pour the contents of the pot into colander over a sink with cold water running.
– Spinning the colander around with the running water, separate out the noodles, until cool, this will stop the starches from binding.

Crashed cooled soba noodles

– Once you’re happy it’s nice cool and drained, you can transfer the noodles to a large bowl and add a dash of toasted sesame seed oil. Not only will this stop the noodles from further binding, it’ll add a light nutty flavour to the noodles.
Marinating the Salmon:
– Preheat the oven to 200 degrees for 10 minutes
– De-scale the salmon, place in baking tray shaping the cooking foil to surround the salmon as closely as possible to prevent the marinate later from evaporating to quickly and to marinate the salmon properly.

The Naked Salmon

– Mix the light and dark soy sauce, with the sesame seed oil together, which will provide a slightly umami/savoury taste,
– Pour the marinate over the salmon, providing a coat then by dragging through the marinate, you should have a nice flavouring covering the salmon.
– To offset the saltiness of the marinate, a dab of oyster sauce is now added ontop each piece of salmon, approximately 1 teaspoon worth each.

A dab of oyster sauce

– Using the back of a spoon, coat the top of each salmon piece, forming a barrier which will help lock in the moisture of the salmon
– Once that is done, crack some fresh black pepper over the salmon, to provide a little heat to the dish.
– You can now place the salmon in the oven to bake for the next 8 minutes.

Naked no more – Getting it’s coat on.

Preparing the broth:
– Heating the pot you’d used and cleaned for the noodles, add a teaspoon of sesame seed oil to when hot enough, sauté the garlic followed by the shallots.

Selected for sauté

– Add the water to form part of the broth, how much you add comes down to how many servings you think you will make.
– Add 4x tablespoons or however many servings you think you will make, ie (1 tablespoon = 1 bowl)
– Add the wakame flakes and mushrooms to the broth

Wakame (dried seaweed) flakes

Rehydrated shitake slices

– Add crack black pepper to taste

– Hopefully if you’ve timed things well, your broth and salmon will be ready at the same time, in which case it should just be a matter of plating up, by serve a portion of soba noodles on a plate with a sprinkling of sesame seeds, and strip of salmon ontop, and accompanying the main dish with a tasty portion of the broth into a bowl and enjoy.

Miso broth

Salmon with cracked pepper, oyster sauce glaze