Design Life Diaries: Sweet Orange Salmon

With Spring just around the corner, I felt like brightening up our house with some new plants and a fresh menu for dinner.

Salmon dishes are always hit or miss for me. It seems like they are always mushy, dry, bland or some combination of the three. Then five years ago my mom bought me a cookbook that introduced me to the best recipe for salmon I've ever had to this day. Christopher, not a fan of salmon, was reluctant to try it the first time I mentioned it. Knowing he would like it, I made it for dinner anyways and he absolutely loved it. It's now a regular meal around our house, particularly when spring and summer roll around.

Off I went to pick up all the ingredients pictured above. The only problem was I couldn't find any salmon that wasn't farm raised. When Whole Foods didn't even have fresh looking salmon, I was puzzled as to where else I could even buy wild caught fish. I did a little research and low and behold, there is a fish market downtown LA that sells wholesale to the public. Of course there is...they sell everything else downtown- jewelry, fabric, trims, flowers- so why not fish?!

My good-sported hubby and I woke up at 5:30am this weekend to check this whole fish market deal out. Open from 6am to 9am, we were one of the first ones to arrive. This gave us our pick of the lot, but the sushi chefs were not far behind us. Safe to say this quickly validated the quality and freshness of the fish we were about to purchase, and put us more at ease.

At half the price of Whole Foods, we ended up with two pounds of salmon and two pounds of New Zealand snapper.

Now on to the amazing recipe. One of the beauties of this dish is that it's SO EASY. Hands down, one of the easiest items in my housewife menu repertoire.

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to BROIL.

2. Coat each side of the fillet with the seasoning mix.

3. Broil for 8 minutes or until salmon flakes apart easily with a fork.

4. Squeeze orange wedges over salmon and ENJOY!!

I usually serve this salmon with some sort of roasted vegetable on the side. Today I went with brussel sprouts I picked up from a local farmer's market. Other great options are asparagus, summer squash and zucchini, or cauliflower.

And speaking of amazingly fresh, melt-in-your-mouth salmon...

Here is a preview of what's coming up next for Design Life Diaries: