Slow Cooking in the oven!

What caught my attention the other day was this post, about boris. A bori is essentially a sun-dried lentil nugget that I have never really tried making at home. It is just something that I have never seen done and with the indifferent sun we have in the northeast, it has hardly been something I have ventured to do. However the recipe of doing this in the oven seemed very tempting. I did make the boris and I shall post pictures of what I did with them, the interesting thing here was that I oven roasted a whole bunch of tomatoes. I did not have much hopes of anything serious materializing from this exercise so I kept is simple and did not really take any pictures. I had a fussy husband reminding me of the carbon footfrint from my activities. I was going to make my usual fish in the oven fare,so I had a pound of wild salmon steaks that I through in the refrigerator marinating in a zip-lock bag with a paste of 1 small red onion, 2 green chillies, some fresh ginger, mint and garlic. I was heading to Queens to check out something, so I stuck in the boris and the sliced tomatoes drizzled (very lightly) with olive oil and grated ginger and some salt. I had them sitting along with the boris in the oven at 200 degrees and had this timed for 3 hours and went off for my event. Well, I was back about 4 hours later. I found some lightly browned bories and shrivelled tomatoes. I sliced and ate one half and I was in love. This is how the rest of the meal was created.

Masala Salmon with oven roasted tomatoes

Cook time: 4 hours (mostly unattented)

Ingredients

8 small tomatoes

1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil

1 tablespoon very finely grated fresh ginger

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon red chili powder

1 lbs salmon steaks

1 small onion

1 tablespoon grated ginger

1 cup mint leaves

2 green chillies

2 cloves garlic

Extra salt and pepper for the fish

2 tablespoons ghee

Cilantro, lime juice and black pepper to garnish

Method of preparation

1. Cut the tomatoes in half and place on a greased casserole, drizzle with the oil, ginger, salt and chili powder.

2. Place in a oven set to 200 degrees and cook for about 3 hours.

3. Mix the onion, ginger, mint, chillies and garlic into a paste and add in salt and pepper and marinate the salmon for at least 1 hour in the refrigerator with this mixture.

4. Remove the cooked tomatoes and increase the oven temperature to 400 degrees. Place the salmon in a single layer in a greased casserole. Dot each piece with half the ghee.

5. In the meantime, coaresly slice the tomatoes.

6. Cook for about 10 minutes. Turn and dot with the remaining ghee and cook for another 5 minutes. Spead with the tomatoes and add as much black pepper as you wish.

7. Turn off the heat and place the casserole back into the oven and leave in for at least 10 minutes. This allows the juices to flow and meld.

8. Remove from the oven and add in some lime juice and cilantro. I did not have mashed potatoes, but this dish would be perfect with mashed potatoes.