salmon | azahar's kitchen

This is a riff on my already versatile cream cheese and almond… what? Filling, spread, topping, snack? I mean really, what can’t it do? Anyhow, I discovered this option recently when I was defrosting my freezer and had to use up some puff pastry AND THEN realised it could also be used as a pastry filling and omg. So fast, so simple, so good. The first time I just used the basic stuff that I seem to always have in the fridge now. A dollop of it on a square of puff pastry, fold it over, crimp it and… wow. I showed a photo of them to my friend Paul and he said “if you stuck spinach in it would almost be healthy”. So yes, next time I made them I added chopped wilted baby spinach and hey – Paul was right. Crispy cheesy crunchy deliciousness with virtuous green stuff inside. In fact the spinach works really well.

Then over the Christmas holidays, probably the only time I have smoked salmon at home, you guessed it. I tried a version with all of it all together. Garlicky cream cheese with toasted almonds, baby spinach and smoked salmon. Fabulous. Still working on getting my triangles to actually look like triangles but they’re so good nobody actually cares what they look like.

Ingredients and instructions below…
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My buddy raincoaster was recently asking around for a simple yet delicious way of preparing salmon steaks and I immediately thought of this fabulous dish from Janet Mendel’s Cooking In Spain – though at the time I was in Málaga and so had to send Rain the recipe from memory. It’s a recipe I have used a lot, especially for special meals like birthdays or New Year’s eve at home. I’ve always assumed Janet meant cooked ham not jamón serrano… and I have no idea if my version turns out the way it is meant to. For example, Janet suggests adding some fish broth to thin out the sauce if necessary but, as I seldom have fish broth kicking around, I just add more cava. Works for me!

Recipe and instructions below the links.