salmon

The salmon is described in the old poems as the "Chieftain of the Fish of Ireland", and has always been referred to down the centuries with affection and respect for its beauty, cunning, power... and good taste.

Irish salmon is unquestionably some of the best in the world, if not the best. Every day, tens of thousands of travelers passing through Irish airports for other destinations, east and west, pick up a side of smoked or cured wild Irish salmon to take home. What they unfortunately cannot take home with them (yet!) is fresh salmon, just out of the river or the sea that morning. But these recipes will enable you to get as close as you can to the taste of our unparallelled salmon as visitors here experience it, fresh from the unpolluted Irish waters.

The recipe for a whole poached salmon adds a buttery sauce with fennel, always one of Ireland's favorite herbs. The recipe for grilled salmon steaks recalls the Salmon of Knowledge that the hero Finn roasted by the mystical Pool of the Nine Hazels. There the ancient salmon of the pool fed on the magic hazelnuts dropping from the trees into the water, storing up in their flesh all the wisdom of the world...and possibly establishing for later millennia the tradition that "fish is brain food." ...Click "read more" for the recipes.

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We are in the process of breaking these recipes out onto separate pages. As this happens, they will be removed from this collection to prevent duplication. Recipes moved so far: