This dish can easily over-power any wine you pair it with, and the sauce can easily overpower the salmon! I've adjusted the ingredients to allow the salmon to remain in the limelight, but you may want to adjust further. Recipe feeds six.
Salmon is one of the more controversial fish you can buy these days. Mention "farmed salmon" to most foodies and you'll likely start a fight - the prevailing wisdom being that it's bad for the environment, cross-breeding with and weakening the wild salmon population and killing off all of the plant and ocean life directly under each salmon pen. And honestly, the things are huge.
But increasingly, inland aqua farmers are improving their animal husbandry techniques, as you can see on the latest version of the Monterey Bay Aquarium's Seafood Watch site, where a little browsing will bring you to the phrase - "Salmon farmed on land in “closed” or “contained” farms is a viable alternative that points the way to a more environmentally-friendly future for salmon farming." One of our favorites is the sustainably farmed salmon from Scotland's Loch Duart - it can be nearly as pricey as the wild-caught salmon, but we choose to make the sacrifice despite these tight economic times, as we figure it's an investment in our daughter's future.
Ingredients
2 - 2 1/4 pounds Salmon fillet
1/2 Cup low sodium soy sauce
1/4 Cup rice wine vinegar
1/3 Cup lemon juice (from ~ 2 medium lemons)
1 Tbsp hoisin sauce or oyster sauce
1 Tbsp sesame oil
1 tsp chili paste
2 Tbsp minced ginger
1 Clove garlic, minced fine
1 1/2 Cups panko bread crumbs
Aluminum foil
Procedure
Heat oven to 500. Line and 8X12 pan with the foil, and coat lightly with olive oil before laying salmon skin-side down. Whisk together all ingredients except the bread crumbs. Pour 1/3 of the liquid over the salmon, then with the bread crumbs. Pour remaining liquid onto crumbs, lifting fish to allow run-off to seep underneath. Allow to rest for 15 minutes before baking for 20 minutes.
Serve with wilted greens such as spinach sautéed in olive oil, anchovy paste and garlic, or bok choy steamed in soy sauce.
Wine pairings - a light pinot noir, sangiovese, or an aromatic white such as a Riesling, Vermentino, Gewurztraminer or Pinot Bland. But the best pairing may just be with a crisp rosé of Grenache.
