Salmon en Croûte - Indbagt Laks

Salmon en Croûte - Indbagt Laks

This is one of my favorite dishes to make for an spring or summer buffet. I'll just use more puff pastry and a large piece of salmon fillet.

The creamed spinach is to die for. The sweet, creamy and a bit tangy taste pairs well with any fish or smoked sausage. This recipe makes too much for this dish, but I always serve it as a side for the fish.

Ingredients:

• 300 g salmon filet, deboned and without skin

• 1 package puff pastry, defrosted

• 1 egg for egg wash

Creamed Spinach:

• 450 g baby spinach (you can use frozen leaf spinach)

• 2 tablespoons butter

• 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour

• 250 ml heavy whipping cream

• 1 lime, zest and juice

• 3 tablespoons sugar

• salt & pepper to taste

Directions:

Defrost the puff pastry in the refrigerator according to instructions on the package. 

Creamed spinach:

Melt the butter in a sauté-pan, steam the spinach in the butter a few minutes until it is wilted down, and you have cooked most of the water from the spinach down. Sprinkle the flour on the spinach, and stir until incorporated. Stir in the cream and cook the spinach until the sauce thickens, about a few minutes. Finally add sugar, lime juice and zest and season with salt, pepper and additional sugar. Cool the creamed spinach to room temperature, before adding it to the puff pastry.

Roll the puff pastry to two 16x8-inch (40x20 cm) rectangle. Place the on a baking pan lined with parchment paper.

Place a dollop of spinach in one end of the pastry, make sure to leave a ½-inch border to seal the pastry. Place the salmon on the spinach, and add more spinach on top. Fold the pastry over the filling, and close the pastry package by pinching it shut. Repeat with the next, and brush the packages with egg wash. Score the top with a sharp knife.

Bake the salmon for 25-30 minutes.

Serve the salmon with a nice salad.

Enjoy! 

Baked Cod

Baked Cod

Easy, yummy healthy weeknight dinner.

Adapted from a recipe by The Boston Bean.

Ingredients:

• 2 pieces cod filets, good and evenly sized.

• olive oil for the pan

• 1 teaspoon chili powder

• ¼ teaspoon lemon pepper

• 2 tablespoons butter

• ¼ teaspoon cumin

• 1 lime, the juice of

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 450°F.

Remove bones from the cod. 

Put a little olive oil in an ovenproof pan, just enough to grease the pan. 

Place cod in pan, making sure that the pieces are the same size and thickness. Sprinkle the cod with chili powder and lemon pepper..

Bake the cod for 5-7 minutes until opaque in color. Remove the pan from the oven, and melt the butter in the pan, next to the cod. Add cumin and lime juice to the melted butter, let it heat through to make a sauce. Spoon the sauce on top of the cod, and serve immediately.

Enjoy the cod with a good salad.

Easter Cake

Easter Cake.

I saw this decorating on Pinterest and I was sold. I had to make this cake for our Easter celebration/family gathering. 

I have been wanting to put up recipes for a traditional Danish layer cake for the longest time. Every time I made a cake, we have had people over, and the cake has been eaten before we could take a picture. So this was my chance. Well, so I thought. Because we had to bring the cake to the family gathering, we could only take pictures of the decorated cake, and no pictures of a slice. 

Slicing the cake was not an easy task. The edible grass was kinda difficult to cut, to get a pretty slice. But it was fun making, and the reaction to the cake was well worth the effort. 

Serves 10-12

Ingredients:

• 1 portion of lagkagebunde (spongecake)

• 1 portion of passionfruit mousse

• 1 portion of chocolate mousse

• 1 portion vanilla buttercream

• 3 bags of edible grass

• 1 bunny, I used a Lindt milk chocolate

• a few easter M&M's with peanuts

Directions:

Make the cake/lagkagebunde/the spongecake and the mousses. I normally make the cake a day in advance, to ease my workload on the day I need the cake.

Place a springform or ring lined with some plastic cake wrap on a cutting board. Place one layer of the cake in the bottom, (I sprinkle the cake with some water/port or juice to moisten the cake). Pipe the chocolate mousse on the cake and even it out. Place the cake in the refrigerator for the mousse to set for 10-15 minutes. Place a thin piece of cake on top of the mousse, and put the passionfruit mousse on top followed by the last piece of cake, this placed upside down on the mousse. Put the cake back in the refrigerator for a minimum of 2 hours to set.

Make the buttercream.

Remove the ring or springform.  

Spread a thin even layer of buttercream on the top of the cake, repeat on the sides of the cake. 

Cut up 1 pack of edible grass into 1-inch (2,5 cm) pieces into a large shallow dish. Spray a very small amount of water over the edible grass, this will make the grass a bit sticky. Now using your hands, mix the grass together, so the water spreads, and the grass starts to clump together. Working in small batches, take a clump of grass up and adhere it to the buttercream on the cake. Repeat putting the grass on the cake until it is all covered. Spray with very little water over the cake, for the grass to stay in place.

Place the bunny on top and sprinkle the M&M's round the bunny.

Let the grass dry completely, and place the cake on a cake stand and serve it.

Enjoy!

Passionfruit Mousse

Passionfruits

I love love love passionfruits. For me it is the most exotically tasting fruit, I've ever tried. The taste is very distinct, somewhat sour. The more wrinkled  the fruit gets, the sweeter the juice is. 

This Mousse is perfect as dessert or in cakes. It pairs perfectly with chocolate.

Ingredients:

• 3 gelatin sheets (husblas)
• 200 g passionfruit juice*
• ½ teaspoon vanilla paste
• 45 g confectionary sugar
• 250 ml heavy whipping cream

Directions:

Place the gelatin sheets in cold water, to bloom. 

Half the passionfruits and scoop the juice and seeds out in a sauce pan. Heat the juice, and strain the seeds from the juice.

Heat juice, confectionary sugar and vanilla in a small saucepan. You just want to melt the sugar and hot enough to melt the gelatin. Remove from heat and put the bloomed gelatin (husblas, squeeze most of the water out first) in. Stir until the gelatin is melted, this takes no time. Pour the mixture into a small bowl and let it chill in the refrigerator until almost room temperature.

Whip the cream to medium stiff peaks. Gently fold the whipped cream into the chilled passionfruit juice. Now the mousse needs to set, this will take a few hours in the refrigerator. 

Before the mousse sets, you can pour it into individual serving vessels, a large glass bowl, to serve family style, or spread in between layers in a cake. 

Enjoy!

* Or use 100 g concentrated passionfruit concentrate and 100 g water. Sometime you can find this product in the freezer isle in Whole Foods.

Chocolate Mousse

Chocolate Mousse

Easy, no eggs chocolate mousse, perfect in layer cakes.

Adapted from piskeriset.dk

Ingredients:

• 300 ml heavy whipping cream
• 220 g milk chocolate, I used Valrhona
• 2 sheets of gelatin (husblas), about 3.5 g

Directions:

Place the gelatin (husblas) in cold water to bloom for 5-10 minutes. Melt the chocolate over at double boiler with 50 ml of the cream. 

Whip the remaining cream to medium hard peaks. (You don't want it to become grainy.)

Melt the gelatin in a small ball over a double boiler. (I just place a bowl as a lid on a saucepan with water I just boiled in a kettle. I don't put the saucepan over the heat.) Mix the gelatin in the melted chocolate. Let the chocolate cool to finger-warm. Gently fold the whipped cream in the chocolate. Pour the Mousse in small serving sized bowls, one large bowl if served family style or use it as filling in a cake. 

Now the chocolate mousse has to set. Let the mousse set for a minimum of 2 hours in the refrigerator.

Enjoy!