Steam-baked Salmon with Lovage & Lime and Herb Tartar Sauce

Preheat oven to 400°F.

Cut the head and tail from the salmon and rinse and pat it dry with a paper towel.

Pull 2 large pieces of heavy duty foil from the roll. They should each be about 8 inches (20cm) longer than your trimmed salmon. Lay them, one on top of the other, onto a cookie sheet. Lay 3 sprays of lovage lengthwise in the center of the foil pieces.

Lay your salmon lengthwise on top of them and season it inside and out with salt and pepper. Slice the lime and lay half of the slices along the inside cavity of the fish.

Stuff 1 or 2 sprays of lovage into the cavity on top of the lime slices. Lay a row of lime slices on top of the salmon and cover the fish with 2 or 3 more sprays of lovage, so that you have the herbs underneath, inside, and on top of the fish.

Bring both long sides of the foil together over the salmon and herbs, and roll them down together in ½ inch (1cm) folds until they get close to the fish. Roll in both ends of the foil to make a tidy package, tightly enclosing the whole salmon.

Place it into the oven on its cookie sheet and bake for about 40 minutes, checking near the end to see if it’s done. A smaller fish will take less time, a larger one will need more time (and maybe your oven runs hotter or cooler than mine, so the time is variable).

Serve with herb tartar sauce to slather over the fish. To make the sauce, stir all the sauce ingredients together in a small bowl.

To serve the salmon, remove the meat from the top side, starting at the tail and sliding a spatula under the meat above the backbones. Once you’ve removed the meat off the top side, pull up the backbone, starting at the tail, then you can serve the meat from the bottom half of the salmon.