Last night’s dinner, baked salmon with a red onion confit, was a test run of a recipe I’m considering cooking for friends at some point next month (shh, don’t tell!). It comes from an old copy of The Mediterranean Kitchen, by Joyce Goldstein, that I bought earlier this year at the used bookshop. The only other recipe I’ve tried in it was baked cod with onions and mint, which was quite good once we adjusted to the flavor of mint in an entrée.

The more elaborate version of this recipe involves poaching the salmon fillets in a fish fumet to which you’ve added the red onion confit and some more wine. I decided to just go with the baked version in order to have a reasonable chance of successfully executing the meal. I also halved it, as we were only cooking a pound of salmon rather than slightly-over-two-pounds used in the book.

First, I sliced three red onions and sautéed them 1/4 cup of safflower oil, until tender but still slightly al dente, about 15 minutes. The recipe called for 1/4 cup of butter melted in the pan, but, well, yeah. It also called for a deep sauté pan, which would have worked better but we only have the shallow skillet:

Onions cooking in oil.

The recipe calls for a cup of a full-bodied wine like a Zinfandel. I used a California one (which seemed milder than we expected when it was done):

The wine.

After the onions are cooked but not yet totally soft, add the cup of wine and cook at medium high heat for about another 10 minutes. I probably could have cooked the onions down into a thicker confit than I did, with maybe another 10 minutes beyond what was recommended. At the very end of the cooking time, add a tablespoon of sugar (or more if you prefer) and salt and pepper to taste:

Onions cooking in wine.

While the onions were cooking down in the wine, I turned on the oven to 450F and started steaming the potatoes in the back burner (a process which usually takes about 15-20 minutes for the small potatoes that I get from the farmers):

The stove mid-action.

The salmon I rinsed and put into an oiled dish (I oil the dish by pouring a bit of olive oil into the middle and flipping the fish around in it until it and the dish are lightly coated):

The unlucky fish of the day.

Once the confit is ready and the oven is hot, I poured the confit over the fish and baked for about 18 minutes (this was probably a minute or two longer than necessary, but the 7 minutes recommended by the recipe were definitely not enough unless you like your salmon cooked like rare beef):

The fish and onions on the way into the oven.

The final product on the table, darkened up nicely:

Dinner.

The meal was tasty, but a little bland; a stronger wine and a bit more salt and pepper might address that in the future. There was also a bit much liquid for a dish to be served to guests; cooking the confit down to a thicker consistency would likely made this a non-issue. Rice or couscous rather than potatoes would probably provide a better accompaniment (what can I say, I bought a lot of potatoes last week). And again, we’ll be having the leftovers tonight.