Mediterranean Salmon

In my last post I was talking about the great salmon deal I scored at my local market and ended up buying 5 lbs of it!  Even though salmon freezes well, I don’t want to freeze too much of it because I find that I can forget about what’s in there if I’m not paying attention so it was time to come up with another salmon dish in a hurry.

In keeping with the theme of budget month, I was looking in my fridge deciding on dinner the other night and decided I had all the ingredients for a Greek salad and planned on making it as a side dish to a lemon baked salmon.  Then it occurred to me that all these flavours would blend beautifully with fish and why not toss them all together – and that is just what I did.

In doing some reading, I found that I was certainly not the first person to come up with this idea but I love that there are so many fun variations on this.  I kept mine fairly simple but you could add olives, red peppers, beans – whatever you think will enhance the flavours.

If you are a little nervous about cooking fish, this is the perfect starter dish for you.  It simply involves chopping up your veggies, adding some fresh lemon juice, garlic, salt and pepper and wrapping them up in foil with the salmon.  Easy, right?

You can buy frozen salmon if you can’t find fresh on sale.  I would not recommend buying farmed except on the rare occasion.  Farmed salmon has more than 3 times the saturated fat than wild.  There is a lot of debate on the top of farmed vs fresh but this chart from prevention.com sums it up pretty well.

When you bake this with lemon juice and the veggies in foil, it results in a creamy salmon with complementary flavours.  I sprinkled a little feta cheese and topped with fresh basil and that finished the dish off beautifully.  A side salad or rice go well with it.

PS – The salmon was $5.99 per pound and if you serve 4 oz fillets to a family of four, that is a very reasonably priced seafood dinner!

Mediterranean Salmon

Author: Robyn @ simply fresh dinners

Prep time: 10 mins

Cook time: 20 mins

Total time: 30 mins

Serves: 4

Ingredients

• 4- 4 oz boneless salmon fillets
• 2 cloves garlic, minced (or use jarred)
• 1.5 cups grape tomatoes
• 1,5 cups diced zucchini
• 4 spring (green) onions, diced,
• 2 tablespoons lemon juice
• 1/4 teaspoon of salt and pepper
• 4 tablespoons of feta cheese
• handful of fresh basil, chopped
• OPTIONS
• olives, white navy beans, chickpeas, red bell pepper
• ALSO:
• tin foil sprayed with olive oil – 4 sheets

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 425 F.
2. Combine tomatoes, zucchini, onions, lemon juice, garlic, salt and pepper in a bowl and mix well.
3. Place salmon on separate foil pieces and spoon mixture over top. Fold each foil piece into a slight tented but tightly sealed packet.
4. Place foil on oven racks and bake for 20 minutes. (may require longer if salmon is particularly thick) Let sit for 5 minutes.
5. Open packets (careful, they are hot!) and garnish with feta cheese and basil and serve immediately.

 

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