Salmon and Caper Sauce

Ingredients

• 2 slices salmon
• 115 g butter
• 0.5 tsp parsley, chopped
• 1 shallot
• salt
• pepper

Method

Heat your oven to 200°C. Pat the salmon dry with kitchen paper — moisture on the surface will steam rather than colour, and you want the flesh to cook through whilst developing a subtle crust.

Lay the salmon in a baking dish (one that holds heat well; cast iron or heavy ceramic works best). Season the fillets generously with salt and pepper, pressing the seasoning into the flesh so it penetrates rather than sitting on the surface. Scatter the shallot, finely sliced, beneath and around the fish. Cut the butter into small pieces — this matters, because you're not just adding flavour, you're using butter-basting to regulate the oven's heat and keep the flesh moist during cooking. The butter melts unevenly, and as it foams and browns, it bastes the salmon repeatedly, which is the mechanism that prevents the top from drying whilst the centre finishes.

Place the dish in the oven. This is slow fish cookery — the exact timing depends on thickness (two 150 g fillets at 3 cm thick will take roughly 12–15 minutes), but the sensory cue matters more: the flesh should yield gently to pressure at its thickest point and show the merest resistance when pressed. The colour should shift from translucent orange to opaque throughout. Every four minutes, tilt the pan and spoon the foaming butter over the salmon — this is where the basting does its work, keeping the surface glossy and the heat distributed evenly across the fillet.

When the salmon is cooked, lift it carefully onto a warm plate and let it rest for two minutes. Strain the cooking liquid through muslin into a small saucepan (this separates out the shallot and any debris). You now have a pan butter base infused with fish stock and shallot essence. This is your sauce. Warm it gently, taste it, adjust seasoning, then add the capers (1–1.5 tablespoons, drained) and the chopped parsley. The vinegary brine of the capers cuts through the richness of the butter and provides the acid that baking dishes rarely develop on their own — this balance between fat, salt, and acid is what lifts the dish from blanched to composed.

Pour the sauce immediately over the salmon and serve. The heat of the liquid will finish warming the plate.