My boys absolutely love this recipe. I tend to make this meal on a bi-weekly roster and you can hear the excitement in their voices when I tell them we are having pesto salmon for dinner.

I tend to make my own pesto for this dish, as I’ve stood and read the back of every pesto jar in my local grocery store and found they all contained seeds oils. Whether it was combined with olive oil or just on it’s own, it was enough to put me off and start making my own.

It’s actually very easy to do, and only takes a minute or two. You can use a blender or a food processor to make the pesto and you get a beautiful, green and fragrant sauce to use on your salmon (or anything else you fancy).

Ingredients:

600g Fillet of Salmon

Pesto
1 cup of basil
1/4 cup Extra Virgin Olive Oil
1 tsp of salt
1 clove of garlic
1/4 cup pine nuts
1/2 lemon (juiced)
40g of Parmesan

Toppings:
Cherry tomatoes
Olives
Artichoke hearts
Feta cheese

Notes:

Feel free to purchase the pesto, I do like to make my own but I know it can be easy to just pop a jar open. If you are going to buy the pesto, I would recommend one that has been made with only olive oil. So please do read the ingredients list. This pesto contains only basil, olive oil, nuts and parmesan and is available on amazon fresh.

Some things that you may like:

Making The Pesto:

If like me, you would like to make your own, I recommend using a blender or food processor to speed up the process. I love my Ninja blender and it really does speed up the process a lot, but sometimes I prefer to use my food processor if I want a slightly textured pesto.

To make the pesto, just chuck all the ingredients listed under pesto into your blender, give it a good blitz and your done. You may need to add a little more olive oil if it is too thick. If you like it chunky, blitz for only a few seconds. If you prefer more of a smooth paste, keep going until your reach your desired consistency.

The Salmon

I like to buy a big fillet of salmon and I usually get mine from Kuhlbarra, I like their Newzeland King Salmon fillet as it melts in the mouth. The salmon arrives fresh, filleted with the bones removed. So all I need to do is spread over the pesto and then top the salmon with our favourite Mediterranean style toppings.

For the toppings, I’ve used sliced cherry tomatoes, Kalamata olives, green olives, artichoke hearts and feta cheese. You can add whatever you like, capers, spinach, pine nuts, no cheese, courgettes? The list is endless.

I then cover the salmon with foil loosely, but seal the edges, this stops the steam from escaping and you are left with a soft and tender salmon, rather than a dry fillet of fish.

The salmon is baked in the oven at 180c for 20 minutes. When you take the salmon out of the oven, careful when opening the foil as some steam may escape and it’s bloody hot.

I love to eat this salmon with cauliflower rice and the kids love having it with pasta.