Grilled Salmon with Lentils and Chard

So, I've been watching Food Network again. I have come to like Anne Burrell's show, "Secrets of a Restaurant Chef." The other day, I watched her make some grilled salmon with meyer lemon compound butter and some stew-y lentil thing and I don't remember what else. Since I had some sockeye salmon in the freezer and lentils on the shelf, I decided to do a similar thing, but my own way of course. Oh and I had gotten a bag of "Kaleidoscope Chard" from TJs, which I thought would compliment the rest of the things. It did.

Lentils
Cooking Liquid
A couple of celery stalks, in large pieces
A couple of carrots, in large pieces
An onion or a couple of shallots, in large pieces
A couple of cloves of garlic, lightly smashed and peeled
White wine to taste
A few cups of water
1/2 cup green lentils, rinsed and picked through
Salt to taste

Lentils
1 T olive oil
1/4 C minced carrot
1/4 C minced celery (I used some of the leaves too, which was nice)
1 T minced shallot
1 clove garlic, minced
About 1/4 C lentil cooking liquid
Salt and pepper to taste

Start the lentils first because they have to cook for about 30 minutes. Put all ingredients in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Lower the heat and simmer for about 30 minutes, until the lentils are tender. Note: Anne used fennel, too, which would be nice, but I didn't have any.

Once the lentils are tender, pull out the big chunks of stuff and strain the lentils, reserving some of the cooking liquid. (At this point, I started cooking the salmon and chard.)

Heat the olive oil in a saute pan over medium heat. Add the carrot and cook for about 30 seconds because they take longer than the rest of the vegetables. Add the other vegetables and cook for about 1 minute, until they start to soften. Add the lentils and stir, turning the heat to low. If the lentils start to dry out, add some of the cooking liquid. Simmer for about 5 minutes. These lentils were amazing. Anne put bacon in hers, which is probably a good idea, too, but all my bacon got cooked that morning!

Compound Butter
2-4 T softened butter
Zest of 1 blood orange or citrus fruit of your choice
Crushed green peppercorns (I would have used pink if I'd had them)
Chopped fresh herbs if you have them
Salt to taste

Stir everything together until well-incorporated and keep at room temperature if you're going to use it within a couple of hours. Otherwise, refrigerate.

Salmon
2 salmon fillets (mine were about 1/3 lb each)
Salt and pepper
olive oil
Juice of the blood orange or citrus you zested for the butter

Let the salmon fillets come to room temperature, skin-side up so the skin dries out (the dry skin before cooking is one of Anne's seemingly favorite tricks for crispy fish skin). Get your grill going, be it charcoal or gas, to a medium-ish heat. Sprinkle the skin-side of the fillets with salt and pepper and then spray or drizzle with olive oil. Place the salmon skin-side down and grill for 4-6 minutes. Season the other side of the fillets and then flip, cooking to desired doneness (usually about 8 minutes per inch of thickness). Give the fillets a spritz with the citrus juice, and then top with desired amount of compound butter.

Chard
1 T olive oil
1 clove garlic, smashed and peeled
1 big bunch or bag of rainbow chard
Salt and pepper to taste
Blood orange or other citrus juice

Heat the olive oil and garlic in a large pan (I used my wok to be able to hold all the chard) over medium heat. Add the chard, salt, and pepper and cook down for about a minute, tossing constantly. Remove from heat and place a lid over the chard. Let it steam for about 5 minutes to finish. Remove the garlic and spritz with citrus juice.

Serves 2.