Fish Dish

We're feeling the light, flavorful, quinessentially West Coast recipes from the Sunset Essential Western Cookbook. Next up, a recipe to satisfy your sushi craving without all the guesswork involved in...you know, making sushi. Enter, salmon shioyaki, your new go-to Japanese dish.

I have been making straightforward gravlax—using just dill, salt and sugar —for years, and always toyed with the idea of making a beet version. The beet only flavors the fish flesh slightly, but makes its mark through the color it imparts. This is a splendid dish for feeding a lot of people (it’s a boon at Christmas) and it doesn’t take much effort.

This dish plays off of the natural sweetness of flounder, carrots and parsnips. It is really a dish of its ingredients, so choose the carrots and parsnips well, because they carry the recipe. Serve this dish as its own course, with no sides, possibly preceded by something with different flavors, like a game terrine or something acidic and pickled. Drink a sweet white wine.