Turmeric Rice with Tandoori Salmon

You've requested more one-pot wonders and I'm happy to oblige. This is my tandoori salmon with turmeric rice, a real standout dish. First we need to marinate the salmon fillets. I've got four fillets here, they're about 180 grams each. They've been pin boned and I've removed the skin. So a quick marinade, tandoori paste, we need about a tablespoon or so into a bowl and some natural yogurt. We'll just add a generous spoonful of that into a bowl and we want to mix that together. I love tandoori paste, fantastic with chicken, lamb, tofu, paneer and it's also really great with fish. So give that a stir. I also like to season it with a pinch of salt, not too much salt because depending on the tandoori paste you use, it could already have a little bit of salt in it. So once that's mixed and combined, we're going to just add that to each fillet of fish. We want to marinate it for about 15 minutes. Now because it's fish and because it's delicate, it doesn't need to marinate overnight. So just spread that marinade over the fish. We'll just turn it over and marinate on the other side. Okay, that's looking good. So we'll just leave that there for a moment while we get onto the rice. Now we'll start with half an onion or one small onion. These ones are quite large and I'm just going to thinly slice them and I'm cutting it quite thin because I want this to melt down and cook quickly. So onto the dish, I'm using an earthenware dish that not only goes onto my stovetop, it's flameproof so I can use this under the grill later on and it's oven safe. If you don't have one of these, you can just use a pan or you can start off in a pan and then use a baking dish. So there's plenty of options there. Now for some ghee. Ghee and rice, best friends, just taste so good together. So I'll just grab a spoon and we'll add about a tablespoon of ghee, which is clarified butter. We'll just let that melt away. To that, we'll add our thinly sliced onions and we'll just let that sweat off. I don't want too much color on the onions, we just want to soften them slightly. Give that a little bit of a stir and you can also add a good pinch of salt. Okay, I'm going to add some garlic, so just some minced garlic, not a large amount. One clove of garlic is plenty for this. All right, give that a stir and you can see that those onions are breaking down. Smells fantastic. Now for the all-important turmeric. It's going to give it a really lovely vibrant yellow color but I also love the flavor of it. It's subtle, it's not overpowering for the rice either. So we're just going to add a teaspoon and you want to toast that turmeric off and you'll see automatically it starts to stain those onions. Fantastic. All right, that looks good. Now for the rice. Now I'm using a dry aged premium basmati, super fragrant and fluffy after it's been cooked. Now I've washed my basmati rice. I wash it three times and now it can go in with our onions and our turmeric along with one bay leaf and you want to coat all of that rice in the onions. You just want to toast it off for a moment too. Okay, some liquid, just some water. We'll pour that over the top and just make sure there's no little grains of rice. Just tuck them into the water and that is the first stage done. Okay, this now gets covered with some glad foil and I'm going to cook this in the oven for about 10 to 12 minutes. You want the rice to be almost cooked before we add our fish. Rice is cooked. Let's take this foil off. Oh, turmeric rice, it smells so good, particularly with that ghee. Now it's just cooked so we've got enough time to put this back in the oven without overcooking the rice. So I'm just going to arrange these in and around the rice, just making sure that we're still showing off the colour of that beautiful rice. You imagine this coming out of the oven. Vibrant orange, vibrant yellow, looks so fantastic. Another tiny pinch of salt and now this goes back into the oven and that's going to take about three to four minutes at most to cook. You want to keep an eye on it because it is under the grill. You just want it to be slightly charred on the top and that fish perfectly cooked. Really happy with how this looks. See how that crust has formed? It's a little bit charred there, just right and the best part about this is the rice. Because that was under the grill, it's slightly crispy on the top but when you serve this up, it's going to be lovely and fluffy underneath. Okay, to serve this, I like to drizzle with some more yogurt and it's just the dramatic colour difference that I love so much. And if you can get your hands on some mint chutney, it not only looks great but it tastes so good. This is totally optional. You can get this at Indian stores and we'll just put a little bit in and around, not too much because it is quite spicy. Some lime juice for some freshness, just a good squeeze and always some fresh herbs, coriander and some mint in and around. This is one of those dishes you take to the table and dig in.