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Wellspent Market founderJim Dixon has been writing about food and restaurants for Willamette Week for a long time. He wants our readers to eat well, and he shows them how with the recipes he creates just for us by using simple cooking techniques and easy-to-find ingredients.
Since it literally means suffocated, maybe it’s best not to focus on the French part of this dish. It’s borrowed from the Cajun crawfish étouffée, where the tails of freshwater crustacean are gently simmered in a flavorful sauce. Just what’s in the sauce, at least in Louisiana, depends on who you ask. Purists insist it’s just butter, onions, and crawfish “fat” (a mushy part of the crawfish head and a liverlike organ called the hepatopancreas). Some argue that you need a light roux, and whether or not you add tomatoes can lead to fisticuffs.
Let’s just agree that the kind of sauce normally used for crawfish is really good, and you can use it to gently poach things like salmon. The key here is gently. It’s too easy to overcook salmon, but sliding fillets into a barely simmering sauce slows down the process and makes it easier to prevent them from drying out.
My version uses the classic Louisiana mirepoix of onion, celery, and green pepper along with leek and just a bit of tomato paste, both for color and extra umami. Cooking the vegetables until they get brown adds even more flavor.
Recipe
1 small onion, chopped
1-2 stalks of celery, chopped
1 leek, halved and sliced thinly
1 jalapeño, finely chopped
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
½ teaspoon kosher-style salt
½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
½ teaspoon dried thyme
Red pepper to taste, optional
1 tablespoon tomato paste
2 tablespoons flour
1 cup stock or water
1 pound salmon fillet, cut into 2-to-3-inch pieces
In a heavy skillet cook the onion, celery, leek, and jalapeño in the olive oil with the salt, pepper, and thyme until lightly browned, about 30 minutes. Add the tomato paste and cook for a few minutes, then add the flour. Cook for a minute or so, then stir in the stock and bring to a gentle boil.
Reduce the heat to simmer and place the salmon pieces into the sauce skin side up. Check them after about 10 minutes, but don’t cook too much longer. Serve with rice and Crystal hot sauce.
