Carrot soup with salmon

I was wrong to think that I have time to spare after the exams, when I ‘only’ have the dissertation to write. Well..but no more excuses. Here comes a recipe of delicious carrot soup topped with salmon. Yum!

Seves two:
5 large carrots, peeled and chopped
1 red onion, chopped
1 glove of garlic, crushed
1 tbsp butter
salt and pepper
50 ml white wine
125 ml single cream
100 ml vegetable stock

125 g salmon
seasoning: lemon pepper, dill, salt and pepper, lemon juice and the like

# Heat the butter in a saucepan, add garlic and onion. Fry until golden (don’t burn).

# Add white wine and boil until reduced in half.

# Add carrots and stock to the saucepan, bring to boil and simmer about 20 minutes (or until carrots are tender).

# Puree the carrots-onion-garlic mixture in a blender, then add the cream and bring the soup to boil again. Remove from heat and season with salt and pepper.

# In the mean time, prepare the salmon. Season it to your liking and fry it on a pan.

# Serve the soup in bowls, topped with salmon pieces. Offer bread as an aside.

Peasoup with peppermint and grilled salmon

Sound weird? I also thought that when I saw the recipe in one of the Estoninan newspaper…so you have a green pea soup which tastes like peppermint and which is served with salmon. Strange, right? But, as said in last post, you should eat fish every week and I try to be open for new tastes and challenges, so I decided to give this recipe a try.

Originally it should serve 4 but I don’t know whether it was because my plates were to big or I measured the quantities wrong, but I could only squeeze 3 platefuls of soup out of it. Ok, you might have salmon enough for 4 but in case you are serving it for four not for two as I did, I suggest you to increase the amount of ingredients.

And what else – please don’t use chicken stock or any other stock to season the soup. I had this plan at the beginning – you know, whenever you are doing a creamy soup and are not satisfied with the taste (maybe it is too bland) then if you pour some stock in it, it usually comes out ok every time. But with this soup using stock is forbidden. Seriously. You would just kill the taste of peas and peppermint and that would ruin the soup.

500 g salmon

400 g frozen green peas

50 g butter

2 small onion, chopped

150 ml dry white wine

salt

500 ml water

handful of chopped peppermint leaves

2 tbsp olive oil

juice of a half lemon

0.5 tsp pepper and some lemon pepper

200 ml cream (35%)

 

# Melt the butter in a heavy saucepan, add peas and onion and heat through. Add white wine and simmer for about 15 minutes. Season with salt, add the water and simmer until the peas are soft.

# Process the potful into a nice creamy soup. Push the soup through a sieve, add peppermint and process a bit more, to mix in the peppermint.

# Cut the salmon into four, rub in with olive oil and salt and fry until browned on each side (for about 2 min). Then place salmon in an oven dish, sprinkle with lemon juice and pepper and bake at 190 degrees C for 6 minutes.

# Add the cream to the soup and bring to boil. Adjust seasoning – you might want to add some salt. Serve immediately – place soup into a soup bowl, put salmon in the centre and top it of with some whipping cream (not sweet!).

Indeed, this was something different. With all its freshness it is a perfect summer soup. A nice presentation as well, so if you are looking a first course to impress your guests, this is it.

Salmon with potato-broccoli puree

Healthy eating rules suggest you to eat fish for at least once a month. I have tried to follow this principle and served whiting casserole or creamy salmon for at least once a week. But one should look around for different recipes, otherwise eating fish might become dislikable. And I did not have any cream at hand as well. So, this time I decided to go for regular oven baked salmon, which I haven’t tried before because I have always been afraid that the salmon might come out dry. The recipe is from Thredahlia, I have tried to translate it as it was in Estonian. Served the fish with potato-broccoli puree.

Salmon (serves two):

400 g salmon

0.5 lemon

1 tbsp butter

dill, salt, pepper

For the sauce some butter and dry white wine

# Take fresh salmon, place on a foil. Foil has to be large enough to wrap around the fish comfortably.

# Sprinkle salmon with lemon juice, salt and pepper. Take a pat of butter and cut into small pieces. Dot pieces onto surface of salmon evenly.

# Wrap the foil around the fish and keep at room temperature for about 15-20 minutes. At the same time heat the oven to 200 degrees C. Bake at 20-30 minutes depending on the thickness of the salmon (the fish is ready when it is nice and pink). Remember that salmon continues to cook after it is removed from the heat source, so don’t overbake it, otherwise you’ll end up with dry fish.

# When removed from the oven, open one corner of the foil and pour the fish sauce into a bowl. It will be used for sauce. Wrap the foil and keep the fish in the foil for about 5-10 minutes.

Sauce:

Heat the butter in a saucepan and add about 100 ml dry white wine. Simmer until the wine is reduced until 30 ml. Then add about 200 ml fish stock (and some water maybe), adjust seasoning and bring to boil. Remove from heat and add some parsley.

Potato-broccoli puree

3-4 potatoes, peeled and cubed

100 g broccoli florets

chicken stock

2 tbsp cream cheese

1 tbsp grated Parmesan cheese

1 tsp basil pesto

1 tsp butter and 50 ml warm milk (optional)

# Place potato cubes in a cold water seasoned with salt and bring to boil. Place broccoli florets into another saucepan, cover with chicken broth and bring to boil. Boil the vegetables until tender.

# When broccoli florets are soft (most likely before the potatoes), drain and keep the broth. Place the florets into a bowl, add cream cheese, Parmesan and basil pesto. Puree the potful. If not smooth enough, add some chicken broth and stir.

# Drain the soft potato cubes and puree the potful. If you want extra smooth result, add some butter and warm milk.

# Before serving mix broccoli puree with potato puree and serve. Delicious!

# If you make a larger amount of the puree, you can use leftovers the next day for lunch. Fry some bacon pieces and mix them with the puree. Simple and very tasty.

Oh, and if you haven’t yet seen it, then go and watch WALL E in the cinema. Very sweet cartoon, a love story between robots. Definitely worth watching. I heard it might get an Oscar. I would vote for it!

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.