I’ll tell you soon as look at you: SEO ruined food blogging. The death of Google, the concept of pivoting to video, AI and the word I don’t even want uttered near my blog because it makes me so belligerent and queasy — ChatG*T — are carving up the remaining carrion. I’ll leave expanding that preamble for another day, but all of this is to say, contextually, that while I’m a rabid hater of roughly 79-86% of food content out there (up to and including the word “content” to describe writing and developing recipes), there are still pockets of hope to be found, like the dimpling air bubbles in a focaccia — people who are driven by a bona fide and guileless love of food, not a love of affiliate link kickbacks (whatever they even are, other than none of my business!) I’m talking of course about people like Bettina Makalintal, ItsHolly, and in the case of the recipe that inspired today’s salmon with roasted cherry tomatoes and fennel, Hailee Catalano.

Because I have such hate in my heart for the state of food writing and recipe creation, when I do feel that pleasant yet unfamiliar rush of enjoyment at beholding someone else’s work, it’s an instinct that I trust and roll with — and look, there’s not much in this world that I can be scathing of from a position of genuine superiority and educated understanding but I absolutely know dreadful foodwriting when I see it, and we are so drowning in it that the most basest, low-hanging out-of-season fruit starts to look palatable. Hailee Catalano’s cooking videos are peaceful without strenuous artifice, she demonstrates techniques, knowledge, and a grippable love of food — I am always happy to see them and to slow down and learn something from them.

She recently posted a video where she gently roasted tomatoes and salmon; the notion stuck with me, inspired me, and morphed into this — quite different, but with a clear echo of and full respect for the original in the outcome — briskly roasted cherry tomatoes and thinly sliced fennel, collapsing and catching a little in the oven’s heat, with fat, softened garlic cloves and rosemary. At the last minute you remove it from the oven and top it with a ready-made slab of fridge-cold, hot-smoked salmon, and tuck in with high spirits. Something in the contrast of temperatures, the varying degrees of tenderly-textured ingredients, and, of course, the flavours co-mingling on the plate, is quite exquisite.

Salmon sits fully and coatingly on the palate, sometimes distressingly so, but the chill of the fridge negates that somewhat, as does the muted acid of the tomatoes and the jaunty aniseed from the fennel. On the other hand, the ripened sweetness from roasting the tomatoes and fennel points up the softer, also-sweet side of the salmon, and the rosemary adds a hearty, strident woodsiness. If you’ve never roasted fennel before, it’s gorgeous — some of that clean, vaguely liquorice flavour remains and it can withstand a lot of richness. I have made this numerous times already and — perhaps maddeningly — have never committed to consistent quantities, I just make as much as I can with what I have, and quite often will eat the entire portion of salmon myself. Because you don’t have to do anything to the salmon, this is a charmingly low-fuss recipe to enjoy well into the hotter, lazier zenith of summer, and you can always come back to the vegetables and reheat them after their initial blasting in the oven.

On top of which, it looks like a dream too, with those shades of deep red and coral and pink. I have made this so many times but I’d still like to pause the loop and properly try Hailee’s original recipe; the addition of dill and vinegar intrigues me. Finding food people like this does give me hope that one day the medium and craft can return to being about the adoration of food and creativity and not clickable word salad repetition; till we reach the next golden age of food blogging you can at least count on me to be witheringly scornful and shunning of such practices.

If you want further proof that I occasionally enjoy other people’s food writing than my own, I recommend this Creamy Gochujang Tomato Pasta inspired by Bettina Makalintal; these Prawns, Rocket, Gruyere and Lemon adapted from Marianna Leivaditaki; and of course, the ur-inspiration herself, Nigella Lawson, with her recipe for her Granny Boyd’s Biscuits.

Salmon with roasted cherry tomatoes and fennel

Think of the quantities as a vague guideline — add more and you’ll have more, use a whole fennel or small vine tomatoes, perhaps add a few peels of lemon zest or different herbs — thyme, oregano, basil, dill. It’s a relaxed, elegant dinner recipe where the hardest part, and I certainly don’t mind doing it, is halving the tomatoes. Inspired by a Hailee Catalano recipe; it’s ended up quite far removed but I’d still love to try her original version properly.

• 400-500g cherry tomatoes
• 1/2 a large head of fennel
• 4-5 garlic cloves
• Leaves from a stem or two of rosemary
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• salt and pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon chilli flakes (optional)
• 150g slab packaged, chilled, hot-smoked salmon

1: Set your oven to 200C/400F and get out a roasting dish in which the vegetables can fit fairly snuggly. Halve your 400g cherry tomatoes — a slightly fiddly, but oddly satisfying job — and finely slice the half-bulb of fennel, trimming off the ends.

2: Tumble the sliced fennel and tomatoes into your roasting dish, add the four or five garlic cloves and the leaves from the rosemary stem. Pour over the three tablespoons of olive oil and scatter over some salt and pepper, and the chilli flakes if you’re using them. Roast for 40 minutes, though check in at half an hour, or until the tomatoes are collapsing and the fennel is lightly golden brown at the edges.

3: Remove the pan from the oven. Squash down the now-soft garlic cloves a little with the back of a fork. Divide the vegetable mixture between two plates, and top with half each of the 150g slab of cold, hot-smoked salmon, and consume immediately.

Serves two, although I’ll happily eat this by myself.

music lately:

Get Me by Dinosaur Jr, J Mascis sings like a cat both stretching in the sun and studiously avoiding your grasp and this song has got a relentless wistfulness to it.

A New Argentina from the original concept album of Evita — the contrast between Julie Covington’s conversationally vulnerable, cracked yet powerful voice and Colm Wilkinsons’s magnificently chewy, full-mouthed vocals, it couldn’t be more perfect than if it were a piece of hot-smoked salmon on a bed of roasted tomatoes and fennel. I saw a local production of Evita tonight (well, local is a stretch — good lord, Glen Eden is far away geographically and emotionally); the alternate was performing the title role and her voice and choices reminded me so much of Julie Covington in an unexpectedly wonderful way.

Pursuit of Happiness by Kid Cudi, what on earth is going on at the start there — it’s the aural equivalent of watching a droplet of liquid pausing in a perfect crown formation, or seeing a flower grow in ten seconds through a time lapse video, it’s actually preposterous how old this song is now because it sounds as fresh as that newly unfurled flower!

Mistake, Fiona Apple. “I’m gonna make a mistake/I’m gonna do it on purpose” has a lot to answer for I can tell you.

PS: Again I’m bringing your attention to ReliefAid’s Gaza Appeal. With the ongoing annihilation of people in Gaza, and those in power either looking away or actively empowering it, there are still small ways to do more than nothing — this is one of them.