I think I got the inspiration for this from one of the weekend newspapers, but when I tried to find the recipe (even digging out the mags from the recycle bin) it was nowhere to be found. Luckily, my good old friend the Internet was there to help, and I found a few recipes which I took bits of in order to make this dish.

I’ve not ever really made any a crust for fish, and rarely do it for anything else. Some of the recipes I looked at used cheese and some didn’t and although cheese and fish don’t come high on my list of flavour combinations, there are some classics out with the two (omelette Arnold Benedict for at least one), so who am I to contradict these? I decided to try one with a cheesy herb crust and one without.

Making the crust is very simple. Stick some bread (2-3 slices for 2 pieces of salmon) with the crust removed into a blender with some mixed herbs  and some melted butter and blend. Voila. I used fennel, rosemary and chives for the herbs, only because I have all three growing in my garden, although fennel tends to go well with most oily fishes anyway. I grated some mild cheese from Austria (similar to gouda) to mix in for the cheese crust and just blended that in.

Pan fry the fish for about a minute on each side to get a bit of colour, then place on a baing tray and apply the crust with your hand, patting it down. The fish then goes in the oven at Gas Mk 6 (200C, 400F) for 10 mins to brown the crust and finish cooking the salmon.  I served with a tomato and onion salad and mixed leaf green salad.

The non-cheese crust actually looked and tasted better than the cheese crust (cheese crust one is on the right of the photo on the right), although if I had used a drier cheese like a mature Manchego or parmesan, this may have changed. I did like the herb crust and think it worked well with the salmon. Next time I would use a milder onion in the tomato and onion salad, as the onion I used kind of overpowered everything, which was a shame.