I tried the salmon recipe Meghan Markle made for Prince Harry

I’ve been a staunch supporter of the British royal family for most of my life. I’m not just referring to the current incarnation: I’ve read every book and seen every movie that relates to everyone from Henry VIII to Queen Victoria. And of course I’m an avid viewer The crown.

When news broke a few months ago that Prince Harry was working on a book about his own tumultuous relationship with the royal family — his family — I was dying to sift through every last word. Little did I know that while reading the Duke of Sussex’s account of his family dramas, I would stumble upon a potentially new favorite salmon recipe.

About two thirds of the way in spare part, Prince Harry shared a story about a meal Meghan Markle created at a fairly pivotal juncture in their relationship — both with each other and with his extended family. While Prince Harry didn’t reveal exactly what recipe Meghan prepared, he did share that it was a baked salmon recipe food and wine the included parchment paper. Based on the ingredients and the timing of that moment in the timeline of their relationship, I’m pretty sure it was this salmon, broccolini, and fresh red chile papillae recipe from a late 2015 issue of the magazine that would have come out just before when the couple quietly got serious and yet had no front page news around the world.

“Meg had edited out a recipe for fried salmon food and wine and with that we had made a list and split it in two,” Prince Harry wrote in his book. “She was responsible for finding a baking sheet while I was tasked with finding parchment paper.”

Prince Harry wrote about how the couple, who had not yet gone public with their relationship at the time, split up the grocery list and made a shopping appointment at a local Waitrose (a UK chain of supermarkets) to find all the ingredients. “I grabbed a basket, casually paced the aisles,” he wrote. “Besides the fruit and veg, I felt her stroll past me. Actually, it was more of a stroll than a walk. Very cheeky.

The story goes on

Overall, the discussion of the couple’s preparations for that important dinner party (first formal extended family dinner is a big deal in any relationship) was a sweet section of spare part, full of furtive glances down the grocery aisle. After shopping, they returned home to their cottage in the grounds of Kensington Palace, where they received Harry’s cousin, Princess Eugenie, and her then-boyfriend (and now-husband) Jack for a dinner of parchment-baked salmon.

Prince Harry wrote that everyone raved about how delicious the food was. And it’s an easy meal to make: If it’s the same recipe, I believe it includes an easy and short grocery list of broccolini, salmon fillets, thinly sliced ​​lemons, and Fresno chilies. While some of the ingredients are seasonal and hard to come by in some places (I’ve had a hell of a time finding Fresno chilies), there are substitutes that work well. A red jalapeño has done the job with my Fresno chiles, as has something like a serrano pepper.

How I Made Meghan Markle’s Baked Salmon:

Ingredients:

• Parchment paper cut into large pieces (one per salmon fillet)

• A pound of broccolini, rinsed

• One lemon, thinly sliced

• One Fresno chilli (or similar bell pepper) cut into rings (one bell pepper has enough rings for two slices of salmon)

• Extra virgin olive oil

• salt and pepper to taste

Instructions:

Start by preheating the oven to 425 F. Lay the parchment paper flat and then divide the broccolini on it. (Can’t find broccolini? Regular broccoli or another favorite vegetable would be fine here.) Then, on top of each group of broccolini, add a fillet of salmon—one per person—and 2 thin lemon wedges for each piece of salmon. Then add a few chilli rings and a drizzle of olive oil, and salt and pepper to taste.

Now all you have to do is fold the parchment paper neatly over the salmon and bake for 15 minutes.

When the salmon comes out of the oven, simply unwrap the parchment to release the steam. The vegetables should be tender and the salmon should be moist and flaky. Thanks to paprika and lemon, it is very aromatic and tasty. I can totally understand why Eugenie and Meghan became so close after Meghan did that at her dinner party.

Bake parchment salmon at home

Parchment paper may seem counterintuitive: many get quite nervous when they first think about putting any Variant of paper to the oven, as instinctively it seems like a rather bad idea. However, it has many advantages when cooking fish.

“Cooking with parchment paper is fantastic, especially when cooking salmon because it helps keep the fish moist and tender,” says chef Hidekazu Tojo of Tojo’s Restaurant in Vancouver, Canada, a region known for producing some of the best to have salmon in the world. Tojo is a chef with royal connections: he cooked for the Prince and Princess of Wales, William and Kate, during a tour amid their tenure as Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. During this visit, he served them geoduck (a sustainable giant clam). However, this is one chef who often cooks fish in parchment paper as it keeps the product moist and minimally interferes with the natural flavors.

“Salmon is particularly lean and tends to dry out,” Tojo tells Yahoo Life. “Baking with herbs and spices in parchment allows those flavors to penetrate the salmon, and you don’t have to use a lot of butter or olive oil, either. It also makes cleaning easier.”

How you place the parchment on and around the salmon will also affect the results. “If you’re making salmon en papillote (in a paper wrapper), I recommend making sure the parchment packet you’ve created is crimped tightly around the edges to keep steam from escaping,” says Kai Chase, a personal chef of Celebrities like Kevin Hart, Barack Obama and Mary J. Blige. “Nobody wants a dry fish.”

One downside to cooking with parchment paper can be that it’s harder to know when the fish is done. “When in doubt, it’s better to check on the salmon earlier to avoid overcooking,” says Tojo. “Actually, I like to get my salmon out a minute or two earlier than the recipe calls for, as the fish will continue to cook in the parchment wrap after it’s baked.”

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