Salmon steaks with majado – and building a vegetable garden (Part 4)
I don’t know if it’s happening to you, but for me, time is flying. Can you believe Lent starts this week? I had another recipe planned for this post, but I’ll postpone it, because I know you will be looking for fish recipes that are tasty and easy to make. These salmon steaks with majado are it: tasty, healthy, delicious looking and easy to make.
I like to look for steaks rather than fillets, and basically any accompaniment will work: depending on the season, you can use green beans, asparagus, or roasted potatoes or any other root vegetables (the majado will be delicious on them as well!). The main points to remember with these salmon steaks with majado are: use a very hot grill pan and serve the majado at room temperature.
Tomatoes are growing nicely
THE CREW
David spent many hours mulching
After a day’s work, time for some fun
Cucumbers and herbs
Looking back, the year seems to have been a blur, and yet, when I analyze month by month, even living in this pandemic we’re still immersed in, we’ve been able to do so much, accomplish so much. Sure, we had to cancel one thousand plans, but on the other hand, we replaced them with others we wouldn’t have otherwise done.
We haven’t seen friends or relatives we were used to visiting or receiving their visit every year. Yet, we have become more acquainted with our neighbors, and even our older children have spent longer periods at home than they would have otherwise. With the gyms closed for months, and the fear of using them even when they opened, many of us have taken up new active routines. In our family, cycling has become almost a way of life for some of us, to the point that when biking outdoors became almost impossible due to the winter weather, specialized devices and software made it so we could continue to bike indoors.
Checking on the many varieties of tomatoes
Zucchini growing into gigantic sizes
The extra hometime the pandemic provided us with also allowed us to tackle projects that were in the back of our heads for a long time, waiting for a time when we wouldn’t be rushed into accomplishing them. In our case, some of those projects involved organizing photos, performing live concerts on Instagram or learning a new language. But also, a major one, our vegetable garden, a dream of mine for many years, that I can assure you wouldn’t have happened hadn’t it been for most of the spring, summer and fall spent at home. And what a project that was! It involved the whole family, and the whole family is enjoying the fruits of our labor.
One of the first harvests
Veggies, cakes and friends. Life is good!
Just as time has passed quickly for me, I know that sooner than I know it, spring will be here, and I will be preparing the garden beds for the new crop of herbs and veggies. I want to be ready for it, plan for it and start it on the right foot, after the lessons learned last year. And in case you are inspired to start your own vegetable garden, I’ll pick it up where I left it a few posts ago and continue with part 4 of our vegetable garden: more progress on the fence.
What’s happening now
At this point, the veggies and herbs are growing by leaps and bounds, threatening to overcome us as we rush to build the fence around them. The posts are set and now the horizontal railings have to be leveled and attached to them. While Dave and Ethan work on the heavy stuff and young David takes care of keeping up with the rest of the garden (weeding, mowing, mulching, etc.), I prep and paint what will become the lattice. We don’t know yet if it will become squares or rectangles, but we still have some time to think about it before it goes up.
Peppers, tomatoes, zucchini, cucumbers, are growing into enormous sizes, thanks mostly to the very nutritious soil Dave ordered, and we can start to share some of them with our neighbors. By day’s end on hard-working weekends, we dine admiring our day’s work and play games with the backdrop of our garden in progress.
Majado was one of the first recipes I posted on Mama Ía blog (check here), and today it is combined with salmon in what I hope becomes one of your go-to Friday dishes this Lent, salmon steaks with majado. And sooner than we think we’ll be able to make it with parsley from our garden.
SALMON STEAKS WITH MAJADO
Equipment
Ingredients
- 5 or 6 salmon steaks
- 6 cloves garlic
- 1/2 cup packed parsley
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 cup extra virgin olive oil
- Juice of 1 large lemon
Instructions
- In a mortar, pound the garlic, salt and parsley with a pestle until a paste forms. Add the lemon juice and stir to blend. Add the olive oil in a slow stream while stirring to incorporate.
- Brush the salmon steaks with olive oil and sprinkle with coarse sea salt on both sides. Place the grill pan over medium-high heat. When hot, and working in batches, grill the steaks for about 1 minute per side. The steaks should get crusty on the outside and juicy on the inside (there’s nothing worse than overcooked salmon!)
- Serve inmedialtely with the majado.
Notes
