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Harissa Salmon and Kebab Rice
Introduction from Jonas Cramby
One of the best things on this Earth is that buttery, umami rice you sometimes get as a side dish in kebab joints. It’s actually known as şehriyeli pilav and is a Turkish rice dish that goes with most of the recipes in this chapter… well, the whole book actually. It’s particularly tasty alongside the Scandinavian classic of oven-baked salmon. In this version, you bake the salmon slowly at a low heat while jazzing it up with harissa and a basic tzatziki featuring dried mint.
Ingredients
Method
Set the oven to 135°C (275ºF) fan, gas 1. Salt the salmon and coat with the harissa. Lay lemon slices on top and bake in the middle of the oven for about 15minutes. Remove from the oven and ladle the harissa and salmon fat over the fish before returning to the oven for another 10–20 minutes until it starts to flake.
Tzatziki: mix together everything except the olive oil, then put it in the fridge.
Kebab rice: toast the orzo or risoni in olive oil until it’s taken on plenty of colour but hasn’t burned. Add the rice and toast it. Once the rice is golden, add the water and chicken powder and bring to the boil. Reduce to a low heat, add a lid and simmer for 15 minutes. Turnoff the heat and leave to stand for 10 minutes. Add the butter and use a fork to fluff up the rice immediately prior to serving.
Serve by placing large chunks of salmon on a plate. Pour the wonderful harissa fat over it, then top with lemon slices and sprigs of dill. Drizzle the olive oil over the tzatziki and dig in!
Hot tip
If you want to make a more authentic Turkish rice pilaf, lookout for baldo rice and sehriye pasta in your local Middle Eastern supermarket. And make sure to ignore this food philistine’s advice and cook it in chicken broth rather than chicken powder.
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