Salmon with Charred Tomato Sauce

This recipe comes from Tim’s cousin Dottie, who is a professional chef. It’s a little more work than Salmon with Tomatoes, but is quite tasty.

Charred Tomato Sauce:

  • 2 Tbls Olive Oil
  • 1 Tbls Balsamic Vinegar
  • 6 large Tomatoes, stem removed, cut into eighths
  • 2 ea Garlic Cloves, minced
  • 1.5 Tbls Oregano, fresh
  • Sea Salt and Pepper to taste
  1. Heat broiler to high
  2. In bowl, toss all sauce ingredients gently together except S&P.
  3. On cookie sheet, place dressed tomatoes side by side, not overlapping. Season with salt+pepper
  4. Place cookie sheet in broiler. Remove when edges of tomatoes are blackened (around 15 minutes but potentially much longer if you end up opening the oven often to check). Place in bowl and mash together till coarse and chunky.

You can instead make this sauce in a cast-iron skillet by tossing the tomatoes with just the oil, and then searing until blackened in the skillet to high heat (do not overlap tomatoes, and only flip each piece once if at all), and then mashing everything together in a bowl. The skillet method comes out more moist.

We generally pour lemon juice on the salmon before adding the tomato sauce. The tomato sauce is the core of the recipe and scales quite well. Really you could make the salmon however you like, (we usually do Salmon with crispy skin) but below is Dottie’s salmon recipe for inspiration. We usually skip the butter.

  • 2lbs Salmon (e.g. 8 x 4oz pieces)
  • 2 Lemons, zested & juiced
  • 2Tbls Olive Oil
  • 2Tbls Butter
  • Sea Salt & Pepper to taste
  1. Dry salmon with paper towels. Rub salmon with sea salt, pepper and lemon zest, set aside.
  2. In sauté pan, on medium high heat, melt the butter in with the oil.
  3. As soon as butter melts, add salmon to the sauté pan skin side up. Begin to caramelize the edge of the fish. When on the bottom edge of the fish looks light brown and a pale pink color is reaching 1/3 high towards the center of the fillet, turn fish over.
  4. When the pale pink color is 1/3 high towards the center of the fillet on the reverse side, remove fish from sauté pan, facing in skin side down on plate and season with fresh lemon juice before topping with charred tomato sauce.

Makes enough entree for around 6. We often serve with brown or wild rice, since the sauce works well with rice, but if you’re feeling fancy you could do risotto.