Double salmon en croute
Years ago, possibly on Junior Masterchef, I remember seeing a lass cook a dish with both smoked salmon and fresh. My mum was horrified (what a waste!) and I was horriffied (I hated both ingrediants). Luckily if you roll forward the clock some 20 years (at a guess) both those things will have changed, so when I remembered we’d got the end of a large pack of smoked salmon and wanted to cook something a bit more fancy than normal, it sprang back to mind.
Being both rich and a little greasy, a green salad with a sharp and punchy dressing helps cut through the fat and provides a nice foil.
There are several things not seen in the ingrediants photo, sorry.
You will need
For the salmon
- A couple of salmon steaks, I left the skin on
- A couple of slices of smoked salmon per steak
- A sheet of premade filo pastry per steak
- A blob of garlic butter (I cheated and used the ready mase Kelly Gold stuff which is excellent)
For the salad
- A bag of lambs lettuce
- Half a lemon
- A dash of olive oil
- A slice of nutty bread
- A blob of chimichurri sauce
For the chimichurri sauce
This makes loads but it keeps really well
- A bunch of coriandor and an equal amount of parsley
- A couple of cloves of garlic
- Olive oil
- Wine vinegar (about a third of the volume of the oil)
- Bit of salt
Do
- Make the chimichurri first. We have a jar in the fridge most of the time, it’s great with steak and a million other thing.
- Whizz all the chimichurri ingrediants smooth.
- Skin the salmon
- Trim the narrow end of the salmon and lay it on top some you have a single piece of uniform thickness so it cooks all at the same time
- Wrap the salmon in a single layer of smoked salmon
- Lay out a sheet of filo and pop the salmon on it
- Roll, fold and tuck the filo is the salmon is enclosed
- Add a teaspoon of chimichurri to the top and smear it across
- Pop in over at 180 for 15 minutes
- Meanwhile, lightly toast the bread and leave to cool
- Whisk the juice of the lemon with a slug of olive oil and a teaspoon chimichurri
- Slice the toast into 1cm squares
- Toss salad, toast, lettuce and salad dressing
- Serve once the pastry is golden
Result
Rich, fishy, cripsy, lemon offsetting the oil, the smokiness tempored by cooking.
