Golden Salmon, Golden Sunshine

If you ask most people in the world of work what the hardest working week of the year is many I'm sure will say it is the last full week prior to the Christmas Holidays. The week just gone was of course just that week and although I had only been at work for four days of it I ended it exhausted. Part of the reason was the need to do things before Christmas simply because of the fact it is coming up to Christmas, while the short days at this time of year drain your batteries especially if you are going to work in the dark and then coming home in the dark too.

Yesterday morning, having finally beaten the migraine from hell that had clobbered me the day before, I rolled out of bed, got my hair cut for the holiday season and then had a wander in the rain with my dog to post the last round of Christmas Cards.

When I got home I elected to have a proper cooked dinner due to me having only enough energy the previous night to bung an instant meal into the oven. As the weather was mild I decided to have Salmon as it is a meal that reminds me of sunny summer days when the sun never seems to stop shining.

I prepared the salmon fillets I was to use by laying them out on a baking tray covered in foil and sprinkling them with paprika before covering them with sunflower oil. I then put them to one side while I prepared a butternut squash and a red onion.

The butternut squash has become popular in cooking over the last ten or fifteen years. It's vegetable I can never remember from childhood meals in 1980s and 1990s and I first encountered it one summer in 2002 when I was back from uni visiting my parents' house. It's not the easiest to prepare and the best way to do it is top and tail it and then use a knife or sharp potato peeler to peel it. After it's been peeled you are best cutting the ball shaped bit off, splitting that in two and scraping out the seeds and orange-coloured pith from it while the rest of the squash is best if diced into cubes.

Once the squash was suitably cubed I finely sliced a red onion and fried the squash pieces for around twenty minutes in white pepper and sunflower oil. Once this had been done I placed the onion pieces in foil next to the salmon and put the orange squash cubes onto the salmon itself and arranged them on it to look like golden scales.

Next I folded the edges of the foil over the salmon and other ingredients to form a parcel and I cooked them in the oven at gas mark 5 for 25 minutes. While the salmon was cooking I prepared the side dish which today was a peeled white potato sliced thinly width-ways and boiled until fairly soft with some peas.

When the salmon was ready I served it with the potatoes and peas and some mayonaisse which I spiced up by mixing dried dill into it and putting it on the squash. The unseasonably mild weather meant that I could sit in my conservatory to have the meal and the freshness of the salmon, a freshness you only get if you oven cook it rather than grill it, coupled with the slighlt al-dente texture of the squash made this a dish that served to revitalise me after a long week.

Salmon is golden: at least it is as shown here when covered in butternut squash pieces