Salmon en Croute from Scratch

Hello! Last night a couple of friends bought a little too much food for just the two of them so the three of us got together and cooked a Salmon en Croute for 6. It was honestly one of the best things that I've ever eaten that I helped cook myself and we made it all from scratch! Except the pastry... no one has time for making pastry...

Ingredients:

- Salmon - it depends how many you're feeding with this one. You can either do it with a large piece which we did or a single filet - it's up to you.

- 1-2 shallots

- 4-7 mushrooms

- Creme Fraiche

- 2/3 handfuls of Kale/Spinach 

- Asparagus

- Mixed Vegetables (Peppers, onions, courgettes etc.)

- Pastry

- Juice of a whole lemon

- White Wine

First things first, the oven needs to be about 200C. Do this before you start to prepare the dish!

Melt about a tablespoon of butter into your pan and simmer the shallots and the mushrooms for about 5 minutes until the shallots start to brown. Then add your kale or spinach (if you're using kale you'll want to chop it up) until it wilts in the pan. Here you can add the juice from the lemon and a tablespoon of creme fraiche. Keep stirring it until it's all mixed up and has some kind of sauce forming and then you can remove it from the heat.

Once you have removed it from the heat, seperate the mixture using a sieve - you want the sauce in one bowl and the shallots, mushrooms and kale in another, ready to use later.

You now want to roll out your pastry. Separate the pastry you have into two equal parts and roll them out to roughly the same size as your salmon. You then want to place your salmon on top of one part and this is the beginning of the parcel you will be creating.

Back to the mixture with the shallots, mushrooms and kale! You want to evenly distribute this across the top of the salmon. Once you've done this you can lay your second piece of rolled out pastry on top. If there are parts of the pastry that really don't line up, you can cut it to make it more square and make your life easier! Make sure you don't have too much air within your parcel and shape the pastry around the salmon. You can stick the two pieces of pastry together using water. Check there aren't any gaps that are too large!

You now want to take a fork and push the two parts together. I'm not sure if this has a technical name but mostly I just think it looks pretty! Do this all around the edge to fully merge the pastry together. You don't need to push too hard here!

Here comes the part where you can simply score the top, write your name, draw a heart or do what we did, which is draw a fish each on the top! Be careful to ensure you aren't cutting through the pastry here - use a knife with a delicate hand or a toothpick.

To ensure a golden finish to the pastry, beat an egg inside a cup and then apply it all over with a pastry brush. Get right to the edges and over your design!

Once you've completed your masterpiece you can put all the vegetables in a baking tray, add some olive oil and black pepper and put them in at the same time. The asparagus only needs about 10 minutes in the oven so you can add this in closer to when you'll be sitting down!

After 15-20 minutes, your Salmon en Croute should be completely cooked and golden brown. I think our design looks super cute and if you're making this for a couple of friends or your family, you could add a personal touch to each person's slice.

Make sure you've added in your asparagus with your veggies! After taking your Salmon en Croute out of the oven, it needs to sit on the side for about 5 minutes. While you do this you can complete the sauce that you started earlier. Add the sauce from the bowl and a little bit of water into a pan with another tablespoon of creme fraiche and some wine. We found that there was barely any sauce by the time we came to this so we added a bit of water to make sure it didn't all evaporate and added more mushrooms, kale, garlic, salt and pepper.

We served this all up together, cutting it into thin slices and topping with the sauce we had just made and then dishing up our vegetables on the side. Results? Empty plates and perhaps seconds...

Let me know if you have a go at making this or if you've made it before! Sounds a little complicated written down, but once you've done it it's actually pretty simple. Plus, we had three people so we all took on different jobs and got it all whipped together pretty quickly! Have a go at making it with a couple of friends or your family and you could get it done in about 20 minutes!