Not sure how you feel about Food Network stars but we're big fans of Giada De Laurentiis. We received two cookbooks when we got married, Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything and Giada's Everyday Italian: 125 Simple and Delicious Recipes.
The Bittman bible is dog-eared and beet-stained and we dip into at least once a week. On the other hand, we cooked our way through Giada's cookbook pretty quickly. If you can get over the amount of cleavage she displays while showing off heaping plates of pasta and antipasta, it's actually a pretty good cookbook. We don't use it all the time, but it's fun to return to occasionally and try some of our old favorites, one of which is salmon baked in foil.
This is a recipe for baked salmon that leaves the fish tender and moist. It's a flash to prepare. You can use either fresh or canned tomatoes. This may sound sacrilegious but we've actually had better luck using canned.
First you whip up the tomato, shallot, lemon and spice mixture. Then pour it over your salmon fillets encased in little aluminum foil pouches. Tightly seal the foil and you're good to go. As Giada indicates, let the salmon bake for about 25 minutes.
The biggest question mark with this recipe is the plating aspect. When we cooked this, we were tired and hungry and just plopped the packets onto our dinnerware and ate the salmon straight out of the foil. In retrospect, we probably should have taken the time to plate the salmon nicely, pouring the extra tomato mixture on top. But this is a minor detail. Either way, if you like salmon you'll probably like both the simplicity and taste of this dish.
