Creamy baked salmon

Salmon is good, right? Pretty, tasty and healthy. I especially love it when they have some campaigns at the store and they sell salmon with the tiniest price ever. I haven’t had the courage yet to go and buy the cheaper salmon in the market, as…it seems so unhygienic. Let’s face it - if you see the lady selling the fish in the market picking up garbage from the ground and a few seconds later going through the fish pile with her dirty hands, you don’t feel like buying the fish. At least in the store you don’t see any of that - you’ll get a clean and nice fish in a package. No germs. And don’t you dare break my illusions that before reaching the fish counters at the store, there might still be a possibility that the fish goes through oh-how-very-messy-and-dirty production process.

So, anyway. I bought salmon lately. More than once actually and prepared the same dish every time. It was just so good! I have baked salmon in the oven before, you know, with some lemon juice, salt, pepper and butter, but often the salmon comes out dry. With this creamy topping you won’t have this kind of a problem and that is why I like it that much. I got the idea from here, and combined the following cream topping (serves two):

250 - 300 g salmon pieces (my pieces were about 5×6 cm)

2 tbsp sour cream

2 tbsp cream cheese

1 tbsp mayonnaise

2 tsp lemon juice

1 tsp dill

1 crushed garlic glove

some salt, pepper, ground paprika

some slices of tomato, optional

 

# Wash salmon and pat dry.  Arrange salmon fillets, skin side down, in a single layer on a foiled pan.

# In a bowl, mix together sour cream, mayonnaise, lemon juice, dill, cream cheese and garlic until smooth. Season with salt and pepper. Spread over fish and sprinkle lightly with paprika.

# Bake at 200 degrees C, uncovered, approximately 20 minutes (depending on how thick the salmon is). Remember the salmon continues to cook after it is removed from the heat source, so if you think that the salmon is almost ready and would need a few more minutes, then it IS ready and you should remove it from the oven.

Serve immediately. I offered rice as a side dish, but some steamed or boiled veggies would be good as well I guess. As you can see from the pictures, I tried two kinds of rice - the regular jasmine rice and brown rice with bell pepper and carrots (I boiled the rice in one saucepan and vegetable cubes in another saucepan; when rice was cooked and vegetables tender, I mixed them together).

This easy-to-make salmon comes out very rich and juicy. J voted it as the top-fish-dish. I did too.

Only one thing to complain about - the presentation. I just think that those fish pieces look so miserable on the plate…but at least the presentation does not have an effect on the taste. Still, if you like eating with your eyes, as I do, then you can’t be 100% satisfied. So I keep on trying to get it right. And I don’t mind trying actually, because it tastes oh so good

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Actually, I remembered now that one time I used a cream cheese flavoured with garlic and herbs and thus omitted the extra garlic glove. Tasted the same - and the herbs actually gave the cream a very nice kick. So, feel free to add some extra herbs to the cream, it should only improve the taste.

Tuna pie

Its handy to have a can of tuna in your store coupboard. You’ll never know when you might feel the itch for a tuna pie.

So, guess what, one day when I was browsing one of my favourite Estonian foodblog, I found the recipe for a tuna pie (Sille toidublogi). I felt the itch.  After getting some more ideas from an Estonian food cookbook I had, I decided combine my own tuna pie (read: I just wanted to use up the leftover cheese and cream and a few cherry tomatoes I had).

Dough:

75 g butter

150 g flour

1/4 tsp salt

2 tbsp cold water

 

# Whisk soft butter and salt with an electric mixer until nice and fluffy.

# Add flour and water, stir thouroughly and place in a mold. Round-shaped mold would be the best I think.

# I would suggest to pre-bake the dough at 180 degrees C for a couple of minutes. Just because the filling is pretty…liquid I guess is the word. I didn’t pre-bake, but would do it the next time. Or even use a different kind of dough, something more firm. Any suggestions?

Now to the filling, where you are allowed to use your imagination. I used the following ingredients:

1 can of tuna (100 g)

100 g grated cheese

1 smaller onion, chopped

1 smaller bell pepper, chopped

7-8 cherry tomatoes, diced

0.5 tsp salt and a bit of pepper

3 eggs

100 ml sour cream

 

# Fry chopped onion together with the bell pepper until soft.

# Drain tuna and place on the dough. Nicely and evenly, you don’t want to get one piece of pie loaded with tuna and another piece with none.

# Place bell pepper and onion mix on top of tuna. Evenly, of course.

# Mix grated cheese with sour cream and lighlty beaten egg yolks. Season with salt and pepper.

# Beat the egg whites until stiff and carefully add to the egg yolks and sour cream mixture.

# Finally, add the diced tomatoes and pour the filling in the pan.

# Bake at 200 degrees C for about 25-30 minutes. Enjoy with green salad or without any side dish, it tastes lovely by itself anyway.   

Baltic sprat pies

In case you were wondering what the hell is this egg-sandwich in this picture, let me tell you it is another one of Estonian dishes. It is not egg-bruschetta, it is spicy Baltic sprat with rye bread, topped with a slice of boiled egg. Very nice actually, you should try.

Estonians use this fish in many dishes, like in Baltic sprat butter (finely chopped sprats are mixed with butter until smooth - ideal sandwich topping), or in Baltic sprat pies. Those small bite-sized pies are very easy to make and can be a nice lunchtime snack or a starter.

Ok, the question is where do you get this Baltic sprat. Whenever someone from home comes over, they usually bring it - so I can get my fish from Estonia. It is not sold in the supermarkets in Brussels - at least I haven’t seen it here…but maybe one could find it in one of the Polish shops around - or any other Eastern-European shop, they should definitely have it…or just get a friend in Estonia and let them ship you some. Or, even better, open a shop of Estonian food in Brussels and start importing Baltic sprats and other nice things, such as dark rye bread and kama. I would be a regular customer.

Now, if you do succeed in finding the fish, the recipe is the following. If not, maybe just try to bake some pies with some other filling.

You’ll get 12 small pies from those ingredients:

75 g soft butter

65 g sour cream or cream cheese

150-250 g butter

salt, sugar

lightly beaten egg for brushing

Filling: 8-12 spicy Baltic sprats, 2 hard boiled eggs, diced

# Mix sour cream and flour with beaten up butter (at first add about 150 g flour and if the dough is still sticky, add some more, until the dough doesn’t stick anymore).

# Knead the dough until smooth and let it stand for 30 minutes in a cool place.

# Then roll out the dough and cut into 12 squares. Place a sprat (if t is a bigger kind of sprat, half it) and egg wedge on each square.

# Wrap two corners of the square over each other, brush with egg and bake at 200 degrees C until golden brown (about 15-20 minutes). They taste the best when served warm, immediately after removing from the oven.

 

Using up smoked salmon leftovers

Believe it or not, sometimes you might have some smoked salmon leftovers in your fridge. Especially if you have made sushi the previous day. I was trying to figure out what to do with my few slices of smoked salmon (and a lonely avocado in the vegetable shelf) and found out that there is a possibility to use them up in tasty brucettas. I took the basic idea of this recipe and decided to offer a starter before dinner. And what a starter it was - I ended up having a definite keeper.

1 peeled and chopped avocado

3 chopped cherry tomatoes

0.5 tsp chili powder

1 tsp olive oil

1 tsp lemon juice

2 tsp basil

salt and pepper to taste

3 slices of bread and oil for spreading the toasts

a few slices of smoked salmon

 

# Mix avocado and tomatoes with oil and lemon juice, season with basil and chili powder. Taste, add salt and pepper, if needed.

# Toast bread and spread with oil. Instead of oil you are welcome to use some cream cheese or goat cheese - to soften the taste of salmon and add a nice texture to the bruchettas.

# Top toasts with avocado-tomato mix, cut into bite-sized pieces and serve.

Light yet savory and juicy, they are a perfect appetizer for a sunny day. The fresh colours make a nice presentation as well. And what’s more - in case you have leftovers, no worries, because the salmon acts like a barrier for the juices, so that the toast is crisp even on the next day.

Herring casserole

This is another Estonian dish - I guess I am in a mood for cooking something which tastes like back home. Slightly salty herring fillet is often used in many Estonian dishes. In Scandinavia as well.  By the way, according to this Swedish chef, it is even possible to make ice cream from herring. That is something I have never heard before! But back to the casserole now.

200 g slightly salty herring fillet

4 boiled potatoes, chopped

1 onion, chopped

1-2 boiled carrots, grated

250 ml milk

1-2 egg, lightly beaten

pepper

some grated cheese

 

# Chop herring fillet and set aside, also chop the vegetables.

# Fry onion until tender.

# Place everything into a casserole pan in layers, keep in mind that potatoes should be both the bottom and top layer. Also sprinkle a bit of pepper between the layers. You probably needn’t to add salt (I didn’t), because the herring itself gives a lot of salty flavor to the whole dish anyway, even though it is “slightly salty”.

# Once you have everything placed in the pan, mix egg(s) with milk and stir in grated cheese. Pour over the casserole and bake at 200 degrees C for about 30 minutes.

It is a nice and filling casserole. I’m not a huge fan of herring actually - especially because my fingers smell like fish after making this dish - but will definitely make this again. 

But I just found out that you’ll get rid of the fish smell if you wash your hands with lemon juice. Should try that the next time.