Cedar Planked Salmon with Garden Herb Pesto

To prep the pesto, simply combine the parsley, mint, lime juice, lime zest (from one lime), 4 cloves of garlic, 1 tbs fresh ginger and 3 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil in your blender.  Whizzzzz it around until you get a really nice pesto consistency.  At this point I toasted up about 3 tablespoons of pine nuts and set them aside to cool  Once done, add them into the pesto mix and blast it twice to keep the pine nuts relatively coarse.

Whilst preparing everything, I soaked a cedar plank for about 2 hours.  We love the taste of cedar smoked salmon and I will try this recipe once again simply on the grill but for last night, we went with the smokey flavour of the cedar instead.

Prepare your plank by patting the top dry and then add your olive oil and a pinch of salt and pepper.  Place the salmon steaks on the plank and then use up about 2/3 of the pesto and coat each of the steaks.  Keep the last third for your plate.  Now I let these sit and come up to room temperature under a glass dish for about 30 minutes (that’s just enough time to let the salmon marinate nicely without staring to cook it with the acid of the lime.)

Set your grill to direct heat and stabilize at 400 degrees F. Place the plank and the salmon on the grill, shut the dome and let it rip for 20 minutes. That timing has always worked for us given the size of the steaks we purchase at the market.  Once done, slice the salmon and distribute evenly between your guests – in my case it was Heather, Alex and Kalyna (and a bit left over for me.)  Along with this dish I served up some basmati/onion rice and some steamed corn.

Hope you find this one as tasty as we all did!

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Overall Heather Rating: 7/10

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