Light, quick, fresh, and simple to prepare. The tart blood orange, salty soy sauce, and sweet mango combine beautifully as a soft backdrop for the crisp salmon. This meal was a Wednesday night – haven’t been shopping for two weeks – what will we cook – special. Basically I combined everything that was left in the house, it was ready in half an hour, and Dan concurs that the result was a great success! Sometimes it pays off to be lazy with the shopping!!
Step by step photographs included in the recipe below :-
Boiled dried mung bean noodles have a GI of 39, and dried rice noodles which have been boiled a GI of 40 +/- 4. Compared to udon noodles (GI of 62), these are a great choice. We used the dried mung bean noodles, they are delicious, and also very quick to prepare. You can easily find them in the asian food section of your supermarket. They are also very inexpensive – about 70 c per serve.
Broccoli is a wonderful vegetable with a very low GI of 15. It has a very low amount of carbs in it – just 6.5g per 100g. Keeping the vegetables greener (not overcooking) and leaving them a little crispy retains the nutritional value. I recently discovered how delicious the inner stalk of broccoli can be (thanks to Stephanie Alexander’s notes on Broccoli in her delightful A-Z cookbook. In this recipe I used broccolini, because it was on special, but ordinary broccoli would be perfect too. Shallots – or scallions contain very little carbohydrates (only 7g per 100g), and as such would be very low GI, though it is not tested. Blood Orange GI value is also not recorded, but regular orange has a GI of 33-40. With just 9g of sugar per 100g in an orange (mostly in the form of fructose), oranges are an excellent staple, and a great way to add a sweeter tang to foods than lemons. Mango is low – medium GI depending on ripeness. We used quite a ripe mango, which has a GI close to 60, but a greener mango has a GI nearer to 40.
Broccoli, shallots, mango and orange are all high in fibre, vitamins C, A, calcium and iron, so this dish is a real vitamin booster! The salmon (and the fish sauce) are high in Omega 3 fats, protein, not to mention delicious!! Soy sauce is low in carbs and sugar, but quite salty, so don’t overdo it!
In short – there really isn’t anything in this dish that is high GI, or short on nutritional value – so tuck in!!
Serves: 2 (increase quantities proportionally for more serves)
Preparation time: 10 minutes
Cooking time: 15 minutes
Ingredients:
- 1 mango
- 1 blood orange
- 2 salmon tails
- 1 whole broccolini or broccoli
- 2 – 3 scallion/ shallot stalks
- 2 cloves garlic
- 2 serves mung bean noodles
- 1 tablespoon soy sauce
- 1 teaspoon fish sauce
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
Method:
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- Chop the blood orange and mango into small pieces and set aside so the juices combine
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- Chop the garlic and broccoli. Heat a heavy based pan add half the oil and lightly fry till they are still crunchy, but starting to soften. Deglaze the pan with soy sauce and fish sauce, and a little water if needed (1-2 tablespoons) to cool them, then set aside in a bowl.
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- Broccoli, ready to take off the heat – note still a dark colour
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- Clean the pan, and heat again on a high heat. When the pan is hot, add the remaining oil, chopped shallots (leave a few aside for garnish), Cook for about 2 minutes (skin side down), then deglaze the pan with a little water, turn down the heat, remove the shallots, and turn the fillets..
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- Cover the salmon with a lid, and continue cooking on medium for a further few minutes. If you are uncertain you can slice one tail in half to see if it is to your liking – if not, cook a little longer.
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- Place the noodles in a bowl and cover with boiling water (follow packet instructions)
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- Combine noodles with cooked broccoli and mango and blood orange
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- Stir to combine
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- Serve the salmon over the noodles, and garnish with some fresh chopped scallions
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- Yum!! Pick up the chopsticks!!
That looks seriously good! Just my sort of food. By the way, you can buy (and I always do) reduced-salt soya sauce.
I shall definitely do this, or a similar version sometime soon. Salmon and citrus fruit do seem to be a marriage made in heaven.
Yes – and blood orange is just soooo yummy! I have been on a blood orange eating fiesta this spring – perhaps my impulsive purchase of blood oranges had something to do with watching two full series of “True Blood” in quick succession!