Salmon With Orange Salsa and Pomegranate Glaze
By: The Duo Dishes
Published: Saturday, December 5, 2009 - 6:04pm

Ingredients




Salmon
2 pounds salmon, cut into fillets
Kosher salt
Black pepper
Olive oil
Salsa
1 large avocado, chopped
1 medium red onion, chopped
1 large navel orange, chopped
2 vine tomatoes, deseeded and chopped
1 persian cucumber, chopped
Juice and zest of 2 limes
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 serrano pepper, minced
2 teaspoons agave nectar
1 teaspoon kosher salt
 cup fresh cilantro, chopped
3/4 teaspoon cumin seeds
Polenta
1 cup ground yellow corn meal
2 cups fennel bulb, chopped
4 ounces queso fresco, crumbled
 cup fresh cilantro, chopped
2 tablespoons kosher salt
Glaze
1 cup pomegrante juice
2/3 cup port wine
Juice of 1 large navel orange

Preparation

1 Mix all of the ingredients for the salsa in a medium bowl. Place in the fridge to meld. 2 Prepare the polenta according to the package directions.  Just after stirring the cornmeal to the water, drop in the fennel, queso fresco and salt.  Cook according to the package directions.  Stir in the cilantro just before serving. 3 As polenta cooks, mix all of the ingredients for the glaze in a shallow sauce pan.  Heat over a medium low flame until it thickens slightly, approximately 10-15 minutes. Stir occasionally. 4 As the polenta and glaze finish up, season the salmon on both sides with salt and pepper. 5 Drizzle a bit of olive oil into a grill pan.  When hot, add salmon.  Cook on both sides to desired taste, approximately 4-6 minutes per side. 6 Serve fish over hot polenta.  Top with a bit of salsa and drizzle with glaze.

About


We were late to the disco with this one, but better late than never.  We recently discovered the grandeur that is pomegranate juice.  Mind you, we’ve had our share of pomtinis and pomagaritas, but there’s more to this sweet, tart liquid than mixing it into a cocktail.  Well, we fully support mixing it into a cocktail, so maybe we should further explain.  What we mean is that the pomegranate is totally and truly delicious, and so is its juice.  We received a lovely box of samples from Molly at Pom Wonderful, and in an overzealous act of experimentation, we took to the kitchen to see what we could do with it.  What started as “Let’s make pom glazed salmon” turned into a full course meal with a cold drink to top it off.  Sometimes we get so excited about the possibilities that we end up testing them all.  That being said, an afternoon of phe-pom-enon was born!  Oh, and did we mention we made a lightbox too?  Truly pom-tastic.
It should be noted that the idea to make our own lightboxes came about well before we even knew we’d be making so many pom infused dishes.  Because we don’t have an SLR or any sort of fancy camera, we really wanted to find a way to take better photos for cheap.  Less than $25 actually.  And low and behold, we did it!  If you want to invest an hour of time to upgrade your work, peep this site.  There are many sites out there that will run you through the process, but that’s the one we used.  You really don’t understand just how excited we are about this!  We feel like Jessie Spano on caffeine pills!  We’ll be testing the lightboxes to see how our skills improve.  From these pics alone, we can tell a change is comin’.  But bear with us as we’re still newbies.  Now back to the pom…
These dishes really knocked our striped socks off.  First off, the cocktail.  We’ve seen granitas all over the net, and we’ve wanted to give it a try for a while.  This was so good, we shared it with no one.  We finished off everything ourselves in two days.  Talk about the summer slushie!  The galette was literally a last minute creation.  We made one last month, and we had leftover dough in the freezer.  We pulled out the dough and got to work stuffing it with sweet apples and tangy pom juice.  It was just enough for two people to share.  As for the salmon, well it was supposed to be a very simple dish, but we got a bit out of hand…in the best way.  The final dish was literally a mouth explosion of flavors and textures–sweet oranges, tangy pomegranate, tender salmon, buttery avocados, crunchy fennel, zesty cumin seeds!  This was undoubtedly one of the best meals we’ve had in a long time, and we feel the need to share it with everyone.