The return of Salmon en croûte

Time: Roughly one hour

Quantity: 4 people

Note: You’ll need a side dish

Let me start by saying, that if you haven’t had Salmon en croûte recently, it is definitely time to bring it back to your dinner table. What is not to love? Salmon, creamy sauce, pastry…. heaven. My version is a twist on BBC GoodFood’s because I like stronger flavours but if you prefer a more traditional version, take a look at theirs.

A little bit of history first, because we are all smarties and want to understand our food more. According to British Food History, this dish originates in Tudor times when salmon were so plentiful that people used to feed them to the pigs! This dish used to be (still is in some places) sweet, and along with the herbs and pastry, people added raisins, sultanas or stem ginger. Other sources say the origin is Russian, and has descended from coulibiac, the Russian fish pie that was made with sturgeon and also had a sweet component.

My version is definitely not sweet. It is creamy with a little spice kick. Decide for yourself which oil you want to use, and how much garlic you like.

Ingredients

Cooking oil

1 large onion

150g mushrooms

Garlic

Lemon juice

Dill and chives – chopped

Salt and pepper

Paprika and chilli powder

4 tbsp crème fraiche

7 sheets of filo pastry

750g skinned salmon fillets – you need to lay one on top of the other, so you need to slice in half if you buy one big

Instructions

· Put the oven on 200C/180C fan/gas 6, pick your oven dish and add a layer of parchment paper on top

· In a pan, fry the onion, garlic, mushrooms until soft and remove the excess liquid and remove from the heat and let it cool down

· Once cooler, add in lemon juice, salt, pepper, crème fraiche, watercress, paprika and chilli powder and herbs and taste it – make sure it works for you

· Take a layer of filo pastry and place it on your oven tray, dab some oil, add another layer and then one more – so you have three sheets at the bottom. You may need to roll your pastry a little to ensure that it is bigger than your salmon as you will be folding the edges later

· Place one of your salmon on top and add some salt, pepper and paprika

· Spoon your cooled mushroom and watercress mix on top of the salmon, making sure that it is evenly spread across, but that you have left a little gap from the edge all the way around

· Place your other salmon fillet on top of this

· Now add a layer of filo on top and tuck and pinch it to the filo at the bottom so you have created a parcel.

· Add some of your chopped herbs on top of this layer and a dab of oil and then add another layer of filo and tuck in

· Slit some holes in the pastry at the top

· Scrunch up your remaining pastry and place it at the top for artistic effect

· Bake for 25mins

Enjoy