Last Updated on February 21, 2023
Welcome to Day 1 of ‘Cooking with Valeria’ where I show the home-cooking recipes and dishes that I regularly prepare. Today I am cooking homemade salmon kebabs!
These go very well with fresh steamed corn on the cob and pan-fried spinach as side dishes.
Ingredients
These are the amounts for 2 people.
For the salmon:
- 1 clove of garlic
- 1 red pepper
- 1 red onion (2 if they are small)
- 4 fillets of salmon
- Extra virgin olive oil
- Fresh ginger root (one piece of about 4 cm)
- A couple of spoonfuls of soy sauce
For the side dishes:
- Spinach (at least 500gr as spinach loses volume as you cook it)
- 4 or 5 garlic cloves
- A pinch of salt
- Extra virgin olive oil
- Red chilli flakes
- Corn on the cob (however much you want, i.e., one per person)
Cooking Steps
Salmon Kebabs
1. Turn on the oven so that you can heat it up to 200 degrees Celsius.
2. Cut up the salmon so that you have nice small chunks.
3. Place the salmon in a bowl with the soy sauce, finely chopped ginger, one clove of garlic (finely chopped), and 1 spoonful of extra virgin olive oil.
(If you wish, you can add other ingredients such as a teaspoon of paprika or some sesame seeds. Do not add too many ingredients though, as you want to complement the taste of salmon, not overwhelm it.)
4. Now slice the red peppers into small chunks, but big enough to be able to put a skewer through them without breaking them. You want to have as many pieces of pepper as there are chunks of salmon.
5. Slice up the onion but keep the slices chunky. As for the peppers, you will need the same number of pieces as you have of salmon chunks.
6. On a skewer, start adding one piece of red pepper, then salmon, then a slice of onion. Keep repeating this sequence until the skewer is three-quarters full.
7. Place the skewers into a baking tray that is lined with baking paper, pour some extra virgin olive oil over the skewers and then place the tray in the oven.
The kebabs should take about 15 minutes to cook. Make sure to turn the skewers once, halfway through the cooking time.
Now relax for 10 minutes whilst the salmon skewers are slowly cooking in the oven.
You might even want to pour yourself a glass of wine and the one I highly recommend trying is the Sicilian wine, Frappato. This is a red wine made in Sicily that uses the Frappato grape. The wine is fruity and berry-tasting. It’s a lovely wine from my island, Sicily.
Spinach and Corn on the Cob
1. Place your corn on the cob in a steamer, and allow it to gently steam for roughly 10 or 15 minutes (depending on the size of the cob).
2. Cut the skin off the garlic and cut it up into medium-sized slices.
3. Now put some extra virgin olive oil in a frying pan with high sides (a sauté pan) on medium heat.
4. Add the red chilli flakes and the garlic to the sauté pan with the oil and let the garlic soften gently (you want the oil to get the flavour from the garlic, but the garlic mustn’t brown.)
5. Wash the spinach and then add it to the sauté pan with the oil, chilli and garlic and stir.
6. Allow the spinach mixed with garlic and chilli to cook slowly for 5 minutes. Add a pinch of salt, if you wish, and stir every now and then so that the spinach cooks evenly.
7. Now take the corn on the cob out of the steamer and put one on each plate. You can add a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil on the cobs if you like.
8. Finally, place the spinach and the salmon kebabs on the same plate as the corn on the cob.
I think it’s time to eat! 🙂
Watch the Video: Making Salmon Kebabs
Valeria’s Final Thoughts
This is a lovely fresh tasting meal that is very healthy and will taste as good as anything you will buy in any restaurant!
Hi. I’m Dr Valeria Lo Iacono, a lady in her 50s living in the UK. I write about the over-50s and 60s lifestyle including on travel, health, food, and fashion.
