On the surface, this recipe may seem rather simple. But once you look into the ingredient list and taste the sandwich, you’ll see and experience what lies beneath. As I’ve said before, it’s all in the sauce.
Last week, before heading out to the grocery store for our weekly recipe shopping, I picked out three dishes I liked. I already prepared and posted two of them and had one left to try. For days, I was hesitant about even posting the third one on this blog because I wasn’t sure that it was going to come out all right. And yesterday, I abandoned the original recipe all together and went ahead and made a sandwich. A salmon sandwich. A salmon sandwich with pan fried tomato slices and two different types of sauces. Laura and I talked about what I was going to try for a few minutes before I headed into the kitchen to have at it. It was tough coming up with something that worked, but I feel that I hit the nail on the head. The salmon sandwich is awesome.
The recipe uses regular salmon fillets as the primary ingredient. The hidden treasure is the garlic mayonnaise and the roasted red pepper spread. I put one sauce on one side of the roll and the other sauce on the other side of the roll. Then, I pan fried some plum tomato slices in olive oil to bring out their flavor and added them to the roll as well. Finally, I chopped up some lettuce and sprinkled that on top of everything to complete one delicious bite to eat.
Makes: 2 Sandwiches
Please read this post. Just add one minced garlic clove to the food processor at the beginning.
Regular Olive Oil
1 Tablespoon Extra-Virgin Olive Oil
1 Red Bell Pepper, Chopped
2 Teaspoons Lemon Juice
1 Garlic Clove, Minced
1 Teaspoon White Sugar, Honey or Real Maple Syrup
1/4 Teaspoon Ground Black Pepper
1/8 Teaspoon Regular Table Salt
Thank you to Paulette Mitchell for this recipe. I found it in her fantastic cookbook called Vegetarian Sandwiches.
2 Hoagie Rolls
Regular Olive Oil
1 Pound Salmon Fillet, Center Cut
2 Large Plum Tomatoes
2 Slices of a Head of Iceberg Lettuce, 1/2 Inch Thick, Chopped
Ground Black Pepper
Regular Table Salt
If you’re going to go ahead and give this recipe a shot, I’d say to stay relaxed and prepare the sauces first. That’s where you’ll spend most of your time. The good part about those two ingredients is that you can make extra and store them in the refrigerator. I’ve been using garlic mayo all week without apology.
Even though you should use this page for the garlic mayonnaise preparation, I figured I’d take a few photos of what things looked like last night.
Basically, I added the first batch of ingredients to the food processor.
I processed the above ingredients and then slowly added the regular olive oil while the food processor was running. This is the outcome.
It works great every time and man, it’s wonderful tasting. Very different than store bought mayo. When it’s finished, transfer to a bowl for later use.
This was new to me, so I was curious about how it was going to taste. I was pleasantly surprised. It’s light and fresh. Although it sort of looks like ketchup with it’s finished, it tastes nothing like it. Also, I know I’m not actually roasting this pepper. I’m pan frying it because I don’t have a grill and didn’t want to spend all night waiting for it to soften in the oven. I should have called this a pan fried red bell pepper.
The first thing you’re going to want to do is pre-heat your skillet over medium-high heat. Then, stem, clean and coarsely chop the pepper. Once chopped, add about 1 tablespoon of regular olive oil to the skillet, followed by the chopped pepper. Cook for a few minutes, while stirring, until you see the pepper begin to brown.
When the pepper is finished in the skillet, add it, along with the 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil, the 2 teaspoons lemon juice, the 1 chopped garlic clove, the 1 teaspoon of sugar (or alternative), the 1/4 teaspoon of ground black pepper and the 1/8 teaspoon of regular table salt to the food processor.
Finally, run the food processor for about 30 seconds or until everything is broken down well and has the consistency of soup.
When it’s finished, transfer to a bowl for later use.
To prepare the fried tomato slices, trim both ends of the two plum tomatoes off. Then, trim both rounded slides off. After that, slice both tomatoes into 4 pieces each, length-wise. Heat your skillet to medium and when warm, add about 1 tablespoon of regular olive oil to it. Then, toss the tomato slices into the skillet. Cook the slices on each side for about a minute or so and then flip them and cook for another minute. The goal here is to soften them to bring out their flavor. I used plum tomatoes because they hold together well when doing something like this.
Finally, season with salt and pepper and remove from the skillet. Store on a plate for later use.
Keep the heat set to medium on your stove top. When the skillet is empty, add some more regular olive oil (just enough to lightly coat the bottom), slice the rolls and add one roll to the skillet. The goal here is to toast the interior of the bread. Keep the rolls in the skillet until the bottom begins to turn golden. Do this for each roll.
When finished, remove the rolls from the skillet and plate them. Then, cover the inside of the top roll with the garlic mayonnaise and the inside of the bottom with the red pepper spread.
Next up, add 4 of the pan fried tomatoes to each bottom roll, right on top of the red pepper spread.
Now, the reason I did all this before I cooked the salmon was because I didn’t want everything I needed the skillet for to taste like fish. Now that everything else is finished, we can go ahead with preparing the salmon.
Cut the salmon into 4 pieces. Two of them will be used for each sandwich, so make them equal in one way or another. If you have skinless salon fillets, you can skip this next step. If you have skin-on salmon, you might choose to cut the skin off at this point. Personally, I like frying salmon with skin on and eating it, but not everyone enjoys that. Finally, you can fry the salon, skin-side down and then remove the skin when it’s finished. Whichever way you do it is up to you.
Heat the skillet to medium and add 1 tablespoon of regular olive oil. When the pan is hot, go ahead and add the salmon. If the skin is on, add it skin side down. Cook the salmon until you see the color change occur about half way up each piece. When that happens, flip the fish. You only need to cook for another minute or so at this point, because it cooks fast and you don’t want to overdo it.
When the fish is cooked, season with salt and pepper and transfer two pieces to each sandwich, on top of the tomato slices.
Finally, sprinkle some chopped iceberg lettuce on top of the salmon.
Place the top part of the roll on the lettuce and the sandwich is done.
This is a fairly heavy sandwich that might not stay together well, depending on how your salmon was cut. I chose to slice mine into pieces with a knife and eat each slice with a fork. I didn’t want to make a mess. It tastes the same, no matter how to go about it.
Enjoy!
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