I love recipes like this, ones that marry fresh ingredients with pantry staples. And KEEN’S Curry Powder is a classic Australian pantry staple. When they asked me to come up with a new recipe I couldn’t wait and this one is a winner: Ready in 15 minutes and full of flavour.

Baking salmon is such a reliable and easy way to cook it. You end up with minimal mess, perfectly cooked salmon and your whole house doesn’t smell like salmon. A real plus when you’re still convincing your partner to eat fish (he was a fan of this one!).

I love serving this with coconut rice and green beans or any other green vegetable. A little wedge of lime and some fresh herbs and you have an easy and delicious dinner on your plate. You can make the paste for the crust with a mortar and pestle or just blitz it all in a food processor, it’s totally up to you and how much of a work out your arms are in need of;)

The flavours in that paste are zesty and punchy and all tied together with the curry powder flavour. The mix of fresh and dried ingredients makes for a really addictive crust on that salmon, one that works as a sauce when you’re eating it over rice. I’ve gone with a 125g portion serving of salmon as that’s what I find filling. Adjust as you please it will just mean a thinner layer of the crust on your fillets. You could also double the recipe if need be. Don’t crowd your tray though!

Makes 4 portions

Ingredients

2 x salmon fillets (sliced in half lengthwise to make 4 smaller fillets)

½ lemongrass stalk, roughly shopped (remember you only use the softer base part of the lemongrass, discard the outer dry bits)

1 x 4cm piece of ginger, roughly chopped

1 garlic clove

1 Tbs coriander stalk, roughly chopped

½ tsp chilli flakes (increase if you want it spicy)

2 tsps KEEN’S curry powder

⅓ cup almonds

½ tsp sesame oil

1 tsp soy sauce

1 tsp fish sauce

2 tsps lime juice

2 Tbs coconut cream (use the rest to make coconut rice!)

Directions

Preheat the oven to 200C. Line a tray with baking paper.

Either use a food processor or pound together using a mortar and pestle the lemongrass, ginger, garlic, coriander, chilli, curry powder and almonds. If using an M & P add the almonds a Tbs at a time to make it easier. Once these are all broken up and combined and the remaining liquid ingredients. Blitz or pound to further combine until you have a paste. 

Smooth the paste over the top of the salmon fillets. I press them all together so you’re just working with one uninterrupted surface. Make sure it’s even and then transfer to the prepared tray leaving some space between each fillet. Bake for 8-10 minutes or until cooked through. You should be able to lightly squeeze a fillet to check how ‘done’ it is. 

If you don’t know what it should feel like: do this half way through the cooking time so you can learn the difference in how it feels as it cooks more. I like it to be medium rare so am going for quite soft, it firms up as it cooks.

Serve with lime, I also love it with steamed green beans and coconut rice.

HH. x