Salmon with Sorrel Sauce

From the garden

• 3 cups sorrel leaves, stems stripped, leaves stacked and cut into ribbons · loosely packed, about 2 oz; it is the lemon in the sauce, not the body of the dish
• 2 small shallots, finely minced

From the pantry

• 1½ lb salmon fillets · 4 fillets, skin on
• ½ cup dry white wine · dry vermouth is the older choice and works beautifully
• ¾ cup heavy cream
• 2 tbsp butter
• 1 tbsp olive oil · for searing
• salt · to taste
• black pepper

1. Strip the sorrel leaves from their stems, stack them, and slice them across into thin ribbons. Cook everything that follows in stainless or enameled pans, since sorrel acid pulls a grey, metallic taste out of cast iron and aluminum.
2. Pat the salmon dry and season it on both sides with salt and pepper. Sear the fillets skin down in the olive oil over medium-high heat for 4 minutes, turn them, and give them 2–3 minutes more until the centers are just short of done. Lift onto a warm plate.
3. Pour off the fat, drop the heat to medium, and soften the shallots in the butter for 2 minutes without letting them color.
4. Pour in the wine and simmer until barely a spoonful of syrupy liquid remains, about 3 minutes, then add the cream and reduce 3–4 minutes until it coats the back of a spoon.
5. Pull the pan off the heat and stir the sorrel ribbons through; they collapse to a soft khaki green in well under a minute. Season with salt and pepper, spoon a normal ladle over each fillet, and keep it to that, since sorrel is the flavoring and not the bulk of the plate.