Salmon en Croute

The 2009 Daring Cooks December challenge was hosted by Simone of Junglefrog Cooking. Simone chose Salmon en Croute (or alternative recipes for Beef Wellington or Vegetable en Croute) from Good Food Online. I'm glad she introduced me to this dish as Salmon en Croute is delicious, rich and relatively simple.

As usual it took me longer than the expected cooking time of 50 minutes to create thanks to pre-made puff pastry's unaccounted for thaw time and my relatively meticulous chopping of the red potatoes, bosc pears, carrots and onions I roasted to serve on the side. I'm pretty sure Rafe was ready to shoot me when we sat down to eat at 9:50 p.m. but I've also convinced myself that he, Vika and Demaris forgave me when they realized how tasty the creamy Salmon en Croute was.

I used watercress and spinach for the herb crepe and made the decorative cut outs by hand, which were pretty even if they didn't cover up the seam where the pastry shell joined together. Cooking salmon for 30 minutes made me skeptical, but it was very moist and flaky likely thanks to the puff pastry packet and herb crepe's protection.

Next time I make this, I will use smaller pieces of salmon and remember to reserve some of the herb mixture for a garnish because as you can see my salmon packets are oozing green goo (so not attractive). This would be a great dinner party dish accompanied by a fresh salad or something similar. Roasted vegetables went well but doing two things in the oven certainly didn't help with getting this to the table promptly.