grilled king salmon with favetta

Editor's note: This is the first installment of a miniseries on salmon. There are three salmon recipes in the book all in a row, so the posts will all be in a row, as the artist intended.

I've seen fresh fava beans at few produce stands around here, and every time I see them, I feel like they aren't the fava beans I'm looking for. So I had been putting off this dish. Then I was in New Orleans, and went to a farmer's market, and they had favas that looked like this …

 

… so I brought them home and bought some salmon.

I've never been too interested in favas, because they seem like a lot of work. And I hate a lot of work. First you open up the pods and pull out the beans.

That leaves you with a couple of piles that look like this.

Then you dunk the beans in some boiling water, shock them in ice water, then peel them. Every freaking one. With your hands. And it looks like this.

 

And it leaves a bowl of crap that looks like this. Well, compost. Not crap. But it's a fine line. 

I started out with about 2 pounds of favas, and I got about 9 ounces of beans.

For this recipe, the favas get pulsed with some olive oil, salt and pepper, until, as the book says, it looks a little like guacamole. Which is a good description.

Then I took some celery that I picked up from a Sweetwater Organic Farm in Tampa … here is a photo of the celery in its natural state …

… and mixed it with radish and a citronette of lemon and olive oil. Cooked the salmon medium rare and put it all together.

And that photo at the top of the post is probably the best-looking dish of the project so far. If there is a better looking one later, I can't wait to see it.

AND … it tasted great. Despite having salmon. The favas were really good, and the lemon dressing on the celery and radish was spectacular.

Up next: planked king salmon