Pan Seared Salmon with Crème Fraîche

Ingredients
4 (6-ounce) salmon fillets
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
2-4 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
4 cloves garlic, minced
4 tablespoons fresh parsley, finely chopped
6 ounces crème fraîche (I used the storebought kind.)
2 tablespoons white wine

Instructions
1. Pat salmon dry with paper towels and season well with salt and pepper.  Heat vegetable oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat and place salmon skin side down in skillet.  Cook for 3-5 minutes per side, or until salmon flakes easily with a fork and is done.  Remove salmon to a paper towel lined plate, skin side up to keep the skin crisp. 

2. Drain the oil from the pan, add in butter and reduce heat to low.  Once butter is melted, add garlic and cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds.  Add parsley, crème fraîche, and wine.  Cook, stirring, until combined. 

3. Serve salmon topped with crème fraîche sauce. 

Comments
For those of you following along at home, this was supposed to be Pan Seared Salmon with Sautéed Spinach and Crème Fraîche following the recipe from Chase Blackwell’s blog.  I had all the ingredients out.  I seared the salmon, removed it from the pan, switched out oil for butter, cooked the garlic until fragrant, and then dumped in my container of spinach. 

And then, once the spinach was all in the skillet, I started noticing that there were ladybug-size bugs on it.  Yuck.  Since the spinach was already wilting, I decided that I couldn’t really take it back out of the skillet and wash it properly, so I opted to get out another skillet and make the sauce shown here. 

The moral of this story is always wash produce! 

Thankfully the salmon with the sauce turned out lovely, but I sure do wish there had been spinach as well.  I guess this just means I’ll have to make the dish again in the future. 

Shown here with Super Simple Oven Potatoes.

Internet - Chase Blackwell