With citrus currently being in season, I, naturally, as everyone does, acquired a 2kg bag of lemons from someone with a lemon tree. Which left me with the conundrum of what do you do with lemons that isn't a dessert, like lemon cheesecake, or a lemon tart or lemon custard or... I made a lemon sauce. That is what this whole dish boils down to really, I had a lot of lemons and needed to use them and ... the magics happened!
For convenience, I'll be splitting the recipe and ingredients into each of the components.
Lemon Sauce
Ingredients:
4 fresh lemons (juice and zest)
1 brown onion
2 tsp tumeric
2 tsp parsley
1/2 tsp of cardamon
1 tsp thyme
1 tsp bonox (it's concentrated liquid beef paste. 1/2-1 cup of liquid beef stock would be an apt substitute)
1 tsp oyster sauce
1 tsp cholulo hot sauce } AKA tabasco but tastes better
1-2 tsp sriracha hot sauce } Both of these can be to taste. Basically give you a nice zing.
1-2 Tbs worchestershire sauce
~ 2 tsp of raw sugar (up to 1 Tbs, basically to cut through the burn of the hot sauces)
1 1/2 cup shredded cabbage
1 large carrot, grated (~1 cup of grated carrot)
~1/4 tsp white pepper
Method:
Top and tail the onion, peel off the outer layer. Cut it in half, and roughly dice it up. Put it in a medium saucepan with some oil, cook until it softens on low heat. This lets you do other things while you're waiting, like get the zest off the lemons.
Now zest is both the oil from the lemon skin, and the lemon skin itself, but not the pith (that's the white stuff). So with either a vegetable peeler or the very fine side of a cheese grater, remove the colour from your lemons.
Chop the lemons in half, and juice them. They'll be quite soft with the zest removed. Your onions should be about ready by now, unless you do this step super fast in which case yay, free time!
Add the cardamon and tumeric to the onion, stir through. Mix the bonox with water in a glass (around 1/4 cup if that much) and add to the pot. This will keep your spices from burning, but not so much that they don't toast. Untoasted spices have no flavour.
Put the lid on. Simmer for around 5 minutes (Or while you shred the cabbage and grate the carrot).
Top and tail the carrot, peel the skin. Grate it. Finely slice and dice the cabbage.
Add the thyme, parsley, oyster sauce, worchestershire sauce, pepper, cholulo and sriracha. Top the pot up with 1-2 cups of water, stir the sauces through. Add the lemon juice and zest/rind. Add the cabbage and carrot, push into liquid until covered (add more water if need be). Stir through. Put lid on, leave to simmer.
After around 5-10 minutes, taste the sauce (Just the liquid mind). It should be POW in the face with lemon and everything. Add the sugar. Stir through. Taste 5 minutes later. Should be less POW but still lemony. You don't want it to be sweet, the sugar is just to moderate the lemon a little.
Stir it occasionally while you're doing the rest of the meal, but you can pretty much ignore it at this point. Keep the lid on. The cabbage will boil down into nigh on nothing, just add a bit of flavour and good stuff to the sauce. Be careful with the cardamon, it is quite a strong spice, so less is more with this baby. The tumeric adds to the colour, as does the carrot.
Do NOT add salt. There is enough already in the sauces and the bonox.
Coconut Rice
Ingredients:
Rice! ~1/3 cup raw rice per person. I served 3 people.
1/4-1/2 cup of coconut milk (About 1/4 a can that I had)
1-2 tsp vanilla essence
1-2 Tbs raw sugar
Method:
Put the rice in a small pot. Wash the rice. That is, add water to the pot, stir the rice through until the water becomes milky, drain water. Repeat until the water runs clear (~3 times).
Add coconut milk, vanilla essence and sugar to the rice, stir through.
Add water and stir through until well combined. Repeat this step each time you add water to the pot now.
Put a lid on, and cook rice on low heat. Check the rice after 5-10 minutes to check the liquid content, add more water if need be, stir through thoroughly. The rice will absorb quite a bit, and you do want this to be -almost- a risotto but not quite so sloppy. Return lid and pot to heat. Bubbles may filter up through the rice. This is normal.
When the rice tastes cooked, that is, you bite into a piece and it does not crack in your teeth -- even cooked they will be fairly firm, this is good because you're not making a porridge or risotto where you boil the daylights out of it) and there is no liquid left, turn off the heat, but leave the lid on.
Crunchy Fried Onions
Ingredients:
1-2 onions.
1-2 cups of plain flour
1-2 cups vegetable oil.
Method:
SUPER DIFFICULT this one.
Top and tail your onions, remove the outer skin.
Cut the onion into rings around 2-3cm thick (or a bit under an inch).
Split onion disks into rings. Toss rings in flour.
Put the oil in a wok (you have to use one, because the oil bubbles and there's more surface area and you don't have to use as much oil compared to deep frying in a pot)
Bring to medium heat.
Put onions in oil. Turn occasionally until they soften and the flour just starts to turn golden/brown.
On a plate put ~4 layers of paper towel, Put the cooked onions onto the towel to drain.
So much work. Like. Seriously. How do you even survive?!
Salmon Fillets
Ingredients:
1-2 tsp of butter
3 Salmon Fillets (skin on because that's cheaper than the pre-skinned ones)
Method:
Melt the butter in a frying pan. Put the salmon in skin side down. Put a lid on the fish.
Leave it to steam for around 10 minutes, while you're draining the solid from the sauce. Discard the stuff, retain the liquid.
Take a teaspoon of the sauce and drizzle it over the salmon fillets. Return lid to pan.
Check on the rice and keep an eye on your onions.
You'll probably want to drain the onions about now (if you put the rice and the onions on at around the same time).
Turn the salmon over so they're skin side up. Return lid to pan.
Stir the rice, taste it, if ready serve it onto plates. Make a disk or bed or whatever. This is the bottom most layer of your dish.
Take the salmon from the heat, using a pair of tongs and a butter knife, carefully remove the skin from the salmon -- the skin will be really soft and delicate, so if you're skilled you can remove it in one piece and feel clever.
Place salmon on rice.
Add crunchy onions.
Drizzle sauce over the whole lot.
Eat.
The sauce should be simmering for ~30 minutes before you sort out the rest of the meal, and everything will be done/ready in ~15 minutes from that point. You want to develop the flavours of the sauce and simmering it with the lid on lets that happen. Your sauce should be a dark-yellow colour, because hey, it's a lemon sauce. So lemon should be the primary flavour, but not the only one.
Deliciousness Delivered
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