Israeli-style oven-baked salmon with mustard and silan, and dill roast potatoes
Salmon for an Israeli Friday-night table: thick fillets glazed with Dijon mustard, date syrup and lemon zest, cooked until tender on golden roast potato wedges, then finished with fresh dill and lemon.
Method
- Preheat the oven to 220°C fan, with a shelf in the middle. Wash the potatoes without peeling, dry in a tea towel and cut into wedges no more than 1.5 cm thick at their widest point. On the oven tray, or in a 35 × 25 cm metal roasting tin (glass and ceramic do not brown the undersides), toss with 30 g oil, 5 g salt and half the pepper. Spread in a single layer, cut side down, without water or foil.
- Roast for 20 minutes without opening the oven: the undersides of the wedges should be golden and release from the tray. Meanwhile, take the salmon out of the fridge, dry thoroughly with kitchen paper and place each fillet skin-side down on a piece of baking paper cut to fit. Season with 1 g salt, 0.5 g per fillet.
- Make the glaze while the potatoes roast: finely grate the lemon zest, taking only the yellow part, then squeeze the lemon. Peel the garlic, remove the central shoot and crush in a garlic press. Mix the mustard, silan, 5 g oil, garlic, zest, 10 g lemon juice and remaining pepper: the mixture should be thick and glossy and stay on an upturned spoon. Reserve 15 g juice for serving.
- Take the tray out, turn the potatoes with a spatula and move them towards the edges, keeping them in a single layer around the fillets rather than piling them up, to clear two spaces in the centre. Place the salmon on its paper in these spaces, without the pieces touching, and coat the tops and sides with a thick layer of glaze. Reduce the oven to 200°C and roast for 11–15 minutes depending on thickness: 11 minutes for 2 cm, 15 minutes for 3 cm. Take the tray out when a thermometer reads 52–54°C at the centre; the glaze should brown at the edges and the flesh should flake under gentle pressure while remaining pink and glossy in the middle.
- Leave to rest out of the oven for 3 minutes: the temperature will rise to around 55°C. Meanwhile, chop the dill. Drizzle the 15 g lemon juice over the salmon and potatoes, then sprinkle with dill and fleur de sel. To serve, slide the spatula between the skin and flesh: the skin will stay stuck to the paper and the fillet will lift away. Serve one fillet and half the potatoes per plate, with golden crisp edges and centres tender to the tip of a knife.
Variants and their steps remain below the recipe.
Fish-free
- Skin-on boneless salmon fillets → Boneless skinless chicken thighs (pargiyot) 450 g (4 skinless boneless chicken thighs (pargiyot), 100–120 g each, prepared by a kosher butcher)
- add Fine salt 1 g (for the chicken: 1 g more than the salt allowed for the salmon, making 2 g for 4 thighs, 0.5 g each)
- For two fish-free plates, replace the 400 g salmon with 450 g boneless chicken thighs. For one of each, use 1 × 200 g salmon fillet and 2 chicken thighs (about 225 g); keep the same quantities of potatoes and glaze.
- For a mixed meal, divide the seasoned potatoes between two 25 × 20 cm metal roasting tins in a single layer from step 1. In step 3, divide the glaze between two bowls before any contact with raw fish or meat, and divide the finishing lemon juice in two.
- After the potatoes have cooked for 12 minutes rather than 20, take out only the chicken tin. Turn the potatoes, move them to the edges in a single layer, lay the chicken thighs flat in the centre, salt them and coat with their portion of glaze. Return to the oven and reduce the temperature to 200°C: the chicken needs 22–25 minutes in total. For a fish-free meal, this is the only tin; go straight to checking doneness.
- For a mixed meal, take out the second tin 8 minutes later and add the salmon as in step 4. Put the two tins side by side on the same shelf, never one above the other. According to your household's practice, loosely cover the chicken tin with foil while the salmon cooks; remove the foil only once the salmon tin is out of the oven.
- Check the salmon's temperature first and take its tin out at 52–54°C. Wash and dry the probe before inserting it into the chicken, or use two probes. Leave the chicken uncovered in the oven for another 3–5 minutes while the salmon rests: the juices should run clear, the probe should read at least 75°C and the edges of the glaze should caramelise. Use separate serving utensils and lemon juice for each dish.
Mustard and silan chicken thighs are an Israeli weekday dish in their own right: the same glaze and potatoes, with thighs that stay juicy where breast meat would dry out. Fish and meat share neither a dish, a probe nor utensils; many Sephardi families cover one of the dishes when cooking both together, and this recipe allows for that.
Lighter version
The glaze is less sweet and less dominated by silan, making the mustard more prominent. The salmon keeps its natural richness, while potatoes make up a smaller part of the plate.
- Potatoes : 400 g
- Extra virgin olive oil : 25 g
- Silan (date syrup) : 10 g
- Fine salt : 4 g
In step 1, toss the 400 g potatoes with 20 g oil and 3 g salt; keep the 5 g oil in the glaze and use 10 g silan.
The same glaze with fewer potatoes; serve with the vegetable starter.
On your plate
Recipe
845 kcal · protein 49 g · carbs 56 g · fat 45 g
Quantities per person
- 200 g Skin-on boneless salmon fillets
- 300 g Potatoes
- 17.5 g Extra virgin olive oil
- 15 g Hot Dijon-style mustard
- 7.5 g Silan (date syrup)
- 2.5 g Garlic
- 60 g Lemon
- 7.5 g Fresh dill
- 3 g Fine salt
- 0.5 g Fleur de sel
- 0.25 g Ground black pepper
Fish-free version
718 kcal · protein 53 g · carbs 56 g · fat 29 g
Quantities per person
- 300 g Potatoes
- 17.5 g Extra virgin olive oil
- 15 g Hot Dijon-style mustard
- 7.5 g Silan (date syrup)
- 2.5 g Garlic
- 60 g Lemon
- 7.5 g Fresh dill
- 3.5 g Fine salt
- 0.5 g Fleur de sel
- 0.25 g Ground black pepper
- 225 g Boneless skinless chicken thighs (pargiyot)
Cooking tips
Take the salmon out at 52–54°C: it rises to 55°C as it rests and stays tender. At 60°C or above, the salmon dries out and white albumin beads on the surface. For well-cooked flesh, go no higher than 58°C. Thoroughly dry potatoes, a single layer and a properly hot oven are what give the wedges their crisp edges. For more texture, replace 10 g Dijon mustard with wholegrain mustard; honey can replace the silan. Flake cold leftover salmon the next day into a potato salad with dill and red onion.
Oven-baked salmon with mustard and silan, or honey, a classic of Israeli Friday-night and weekday tables; this version roasts the potatoes in the same tray.
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