I had the chance to stop by Phil’s Fish Market in Moss Landing last night and I bought some salmon. If you are ever driving Hwy 1 between Monterey and Santa Cruz, be sure to stop by Phil’s. You won’t regret it.

I wanted to do something new with the salmon, yet something Californian.  So I grabbed my 3 books on Californian Cuisine and found a recipe for Kale-Wrapped Wild Salmon, with red bell pepper, almond and garlic sauce.  It’s a recipe from San Francisco restaurant Jack Falstaff that has been printed in the book Savoring San Francisco, recipes from the city’s neighborhood restaurants.

I didn’t have any kale, but I had collard greens.  Close enough.  The recipe calls for blanching the greens in water and wrapping them around salmon fillets that have been coated with salt pepper and oive oil.  The fish is baked and a sauce is prepared from red bell peppers, sliced almonds, garlic, olive oil, sherry vinegar and paprika.  The sauce itself is just fantastic.

To round out the meal, I made some Basmati rice to which I added a few dashes of Chiang Mai, a Thai Red Curry powder consisting of red chili powder, garlic, galangal root, lemon grass and coriander.  To save water, and add a hint of flavor and color, I cooked the rice in some of the left over water used to blanch the collard greens.  I then steamed some zucchini on top of the cooking rice.  Almost a one pot meal!

So, pictured here is my prepared dish.  It took about an hour to put it all together.  Not bad for a week-night meal, if I do say so myself.

I don’t want to print the recipe here, as I don’t want to violate any copyrights.  So I encourage you to buy the cookbook.  I bought Savoring San Francisco several months ago and have made 4 or 5 dishes from it already. So far, every one has been fantistic, especially tonight’s Salmon and the Roasted Pork Tenderloin with Figs and Marsala.  The book has a good variety of recipes from many restaurants covering just about every cuisine of the world, but all done in a very Californian/San Franciscan style.