One of the most exciting cookbooks I’ve come across this year is Asha Gomez’s My Two Souths. Gomez spent her childhood in Kerala, at the southern tip of India. She learned to cook with her family there, and was often called upon to hand-grind spice mixes, reveling in the scents of classic South Indian spices like black pepper, cumin, fenugreek, turmeric, and clove. As a teenager, she immigrated with her mother to Queens, New York, and in 2000 she settled in Atlanta, Georgia. In Atlanta she learned to love and respect the cooking of the American South, and began to blend the sensibilities of her two Souths in a variety of dinner clubs and restaurants.
Reading that history, I fell in love with My Two Souths before I ever actually touched it. I checked it out from the library and read it like a novel. Then I headed into the kitchen.
The first thing I tried was a breakfast dish, Puffy Ginger Hoecakes with Spiced Syrup. It was terrific – a really special breakfast, not much harder to make than pancakes (except for the frying step, but it’s a shallow fry so not too bad). Good enough that I returned the library book and ordered a copy, and and was dancing with excitement when it arrived at my doorstep in mid-June.
All the gorgeous berries in the market this month made me think of the Bright Fruit Salad Topped with Seasoned Shrimp and Cardamom Honey Lime Dressing that had jumped out at me when I first read the cookbook. The fruits Gomez used leaned more toward the tropical – mango, papaya – and I nodded toward that with a handful of pineapple, but primarily I used beautiful seasonal berries. And when I went to buy shrimp, the salmon looked better. And I used spinach instead of arugula.
But the dressing I left pretty much alone. Well, except for adding more lime. (I always add more lime. I’m a lime fiend.) Even before I added more lime, this dressing made my eyes roll back. It is so good, with some of the appeal of a honey-mustard dressing – sweet, tangy, and surprisingly creamy. (The honey can be hard to incorporate, which is why I suggest warming it, but gives it that creaminess and keeps it emulsified.) But instead of the spice of mustard, the dressing tingles with the aromatic complexity of cardamom. Which, oddly, especially with the substitution of salmon for shrimp, makes my version of this dish influenced by South India and the American South seem kind of… Nordic to me. Salmon, of course, is deeply associated with Norway. And cardamom has been beloved throughout Scandinavia for almost a thousand years. The combination made me wistful for the beautiful fjordlands we visited last year.
View of the Geirangerfjord, June 2016
The overall effect of this salad, whatever nationality you associate it with, is stunning. It’s gorgeous in the bowl and even better on the tongue. I think it would work with almost any fruit, though I love the juicy berries and tangy pineapple here. The cucumber adds a nice vegetal freshness and crunch. Gomez’s recipe calls for tangy arugula, but I went for milder spinach. Butter lettuce would be lovely too. The dressing somehow makes everything taste brighter and more like itself.
If possible, eat this in the backyard on a warm June evening, as the sunset casts lengthening shadows across the table.
Summer Salmon and Berry Salad with Cardamom-Honey-Lime Dressing
Yields 2 hearty main-dish salads
Notes
Adapted from Asha Gomez
Ingredients
For the Cardamom-Honey-Lime Dressing
- 1/4 cup honey, gently warmed
- 1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom
- Pinch salt
- 3 tablespoons freshly squeezed lime juice
- 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
For the Salad
- 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1/2 teaspoon paprika
- 1 teaspoon brown sugar
- 12 ounces fresh salmon fillet
- 1 tablespoon olive oil or any neutral oil
- 4 ounces (about 3 cups) baby spinach or other soft greens, rinsed and dried
- 2 cups mixed fresh fruit (I used seasonal berries and pineapple)
- 1/2 cup sliced cucumber
Instructions
- Start by preparing the dressing. I do this in a mini-chopper, but you can also whisk it by hand. Make sure the honey is just warm to the touch and pours easily - you can do this in short bursts in the microwave - otherwise it won't want to blend with the other ingredients.
- If you're starting with cardamom pods, which I recommend, lightly crush 8 pods and break them open. Remove the little black seeds and grind in a spice grinder. You'll probably have a little less than a half teaspoon, which is fine, because the freshly ground spice is more pungent than pre-ground.
- Combine the honey, cardamom, salt, and lime juice in a mini-chopper or medium bowl. Whisk until the ingredients are thoroughly blended. Then add the oil to the chopper and blend, or drizzle the oil into the bowl in a steady stream and whisk, until homogeneous. Set aside.
- Combine the salt, paprika, and sugar and sprinkle over the salmon filet. Heat the oil in a small skillet, and also heat your broiler. When the oil is hot enough to shimmer, add the salmon fillet to the pan skin-side down. Watch the cut side of the fillet; when you can see that it's cooked to about halfway up, move to the broiler. Watch closely and remove when it's done to your liking. (OR cook according to your favorite method.)
- While the salmon cooks, arrange the greens, fruit, and cucumber between two big bowls. Cut the cooked salmon into two or four sections and place on top. Drizzle some dressing attractively over the top and pass the remaining dressing at the table.
- Any leftover dressing makes a bowl of plain fruit into an irresistible salad.
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