Sunday, and after a fantastic walk around our valley, we're hungry, but not so hungry we can't wait for dinner to be well presented.
Tonight, salmon steak, prawns, crab velouté, mashed potato, broccoli, asparagus, samphire and radicchio.
Velouté
Velouté is simply a sauce made from stock and thickened with a roux. As ancestral eaters, we don't eat wheat flour and sadly, starch flours can become unappealing when heavily thickened. I'm going to use a double cream reduction to thicken my stock sauce.
First, the stock. I was preparing some crab for lunch tomorrow and so had all the leftover bits, shell and so on, which when boiled, smashed up and sieved produces a fantastic stock! Alternatively, buy in a fish stock or perhaps even a cube.
Now, take a skillet, some butter and tarragon. Tarragon has a lovely aniseed flavour which works very nicely with seafood, and cream. Shred some leek and gently let that lot infuse on a low heat before adding in the stock, raising the heat to reduce.
Towards the end, we'll cook our prawns in this and pour in some double cream and reduce quickly. So, in preparation, sieve the stock and set aside in the skillet for later ...
Salmon
Take a couple of inch and a half thick steaks, skin and bone (if necessary).
Being the posh version, I cut these into smaller cubes to place in and amongst the vegetables. Leave the steak whole if you're doing the mid-week version.
Poaching is simply a case of holding the steaks in hot water for around a quarter of an hour until they're cooked through. I am partial to salmon only just poached, the middles still being pink, but cooked. Sous Vide is the obvious method, but a quick and ditry poaching method I've found is simply to pour boiling water over and set aside for 15-20 minutes.
Veggies
Simply par-boil the broccoli, drop the asparagus in for a few seconds, drain and set aside in a skillet along with some samphire and a knob of butter for later on when we'll just warm them through.
While the salmon is poaching, we can boil our potatoes ... 15-20 minutes.
Assemblage
So, salmon poached, potato boiled, velouté ready to reduce and veggies to warm through, we're ready to assemble the dish ...
Drop some prawns into the seafood stock and pour some double cream in. Raise the heat to cook the prawns through and reduce the velouté. This will take a mere couple of minutes.
Mash the potato with a generous knob of butter. Once mashed, whip with a spatula until a really smooth mash is achieved.
Retrieve the salmon from the poaching liquid, reserving the stock for another meal, and dry off on a piece of kitchen towel.
Flick the heat on under the green veggies to warm through.
Plate up with the velouté and prawns down in a stripe along the plate and proceed to arrange the salmon, green veggies and quenelles of mashed potato in and amongst each other along the stripe, garnishing with some shredded radicchio.
Voilà! Presenting ... Salmon Supreme.
