Serves 2

This salmon recipe takes my dad’s methods for cooking and serving salmon with Tom Douglas’s salmon rub and his own genius sauce (trust me, you’ll start making salmon just as a vessel for the sauce) and wraps it all up in one package. If you make the asparagus side with this, it becomes a sheet pan meal with minimal dishes to wash up afterwards.

My dad has been making this sauce for so long that he gave the recipe to my grandparents, who are the only people to actually write it down, so it comes with all of their recipe writing idiosyncrasies. I myself don’t own an iced tea spoon and am not really sure what that is. The haphazard measurements run in the family though, as evidenced when I asked my dad for his salmon rub spice blend and he responded with “Mostly paprika, a good dose of thyme, and then less pepper.” It’s taken several tries to remember to actually measure everything, but it is also to your taste. I’m a big horseradish fan, so you may want to dial that back a bit. Although keep in mind when you taste the sauce that it will mellow out while it’s baking.

The hardest part of this recipe is skinning the salmon, but the benefit of wrapping it in phyllo is that if you totally butcher it and have to piece it back together, no one will ever know. And for the asparagus, if you don’t have preserved lemon just zest some lemon on before you throw it in the oven and hit it with a squeeze of lemon juice when it comes out. Preserved lemon also isn’t for everyone.

Ingredients

2 8-oz skinless salmon filets 

16 sheets of phyllo (make sure you defrost ahead of time)

Olive oil in spray bottle or olive oil and pastry brush

Sprinkle of dill

Sauce

160 g greek yogurt

27 g prepared horseradish

35 g capers

Juice from ½ lemon

2 teaspoons dill

½ teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon ground black pepper

Spice Mix

1 tablespoon brown sugar

2 teaspoon smoked paprika

1 teaspoon dried thyme

½ teaspoon sumac (or zest from 1 lemon)

½ teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon ground black pepper

Asparagus

2 bunches asparagus

Olive oil

½ preserved lemon or 2 tablespoons pre-diced preserved lemon

OR

1 lemon

½ teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon ground black pepper

• If the salmon filets are not skinless, remove the skin. Turn the filets upside down. Make an initial first cut to free up a corner of the skin to grab onto, then use the knife to hold the salmon down while you pull off the skin. If you hit a part that’s more difficult, angle the knife up into the skin and with the hand holding the skin wiggle the salmon back and forth to make cuts right up against the skin. Set the salmon aside.

• Make the sauce: Mix all of the sauce ingredients together in a small bowl. For the capers use a fork to get them out of the jar, unless you want a little extra caper zest in which case use a spoon.
• Make the spice mix: Mix all of the spice mix ingredients together in an even smaller bowl. Preheat oven to 375.
• To prep the asparagus snap each stalk at its weakest point, and lay them out on one side of a sheet tray. This is a good recipe for summer/early fall asparagus that’s a little bit thicker and can stand up to the oven. Drizzle with olive oil. If you’re using preserved lemon chop and evenly distribute over the asparagus. If using fresh lemon zest it over the asparagus and then sprinkle with salt and pepper. Save the zested lemon to squeeze over the asparagus when they come out of the oven. 
• For each filet, lay out 8 sheets of phyllo, alternating vertical and horizontal orientation. In the center dollop about half of the sauce. Place a filet on top of the sauce, then coat the top of the filet with the spice mix. If you don’t use all of the sauce or all of the spice mix that’s okay, different filets have different surface areas.

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• Spray or brush the top sheet of phyllo with olive oil before folding it over the salmon. Repeat with each subsequent piece of phyllo until you have a fully wrapped parcel. Spray or brush the top and sprinkle with dill, then transfer to the empty half of the sheet pan.
• Bake salmon and asparagus for 20 minutes, until phyllo is golden brown.