Salmon Baked in Prosciutto

I've heard an awful lot of chatter about it now being too hot to cook.  We don't really do summer that well*.  If it's not a barbecue with cremated burgers then it's a sad salad or a limp sandwich.  Well I can't stand it any more.  It's not too hot to cook.  It may well be too hot to spend time stood over a hot pan stirring, but that isn't the only way to cook.

For tonight's menu I decided to cook a dish that I first heard about at university.  The recipe comes from back in the days when Jamie Oliver worked in a restaurant and lived in a flat.  Before he was married, while he was still naked**, young Jamie shared a recipe for salmon wrapped in prosciutto.  It was possibly one of the first "foodie" things I ever cooked and I've been cooking it ever since.

It's not a cheap meal but it is an easy one, especially if you don't want to be spending time in the hot, hot kitchen.  The secret to the simplicity of the dish is that it all gets cooked together.  Salmon wrapped in ham, green beans and cherry tomatoes are all roasted together in olive oil and lemon juice.  To bulk the meal out I've started adding some parboiled potatoes as well.

While the food is roasting for around half an hour, you're free to sit on the patio with a glass of chilled fizz and enjoy summer.  By the time the fizz is gone, the salmon is ready and you have a plate full of hot tasty summery food without a flaccid sandwich anywhere in sight.  Yes it's hot at the moment but that is no excuse not to eat good food, not in my house anyway.

*we don't do seasons very well at all. It would probably be better is we just had slightly over-cast mild days 24/7 but we'd only complain about that too.
**it wasn't him, it was the food.