This is a recipe that has a bit of history behind it. Several years ago PBS featured a wonderful
cooking show about New Scandinavian Cooking called Kitchen of Light. The companion book for the show authored by
Andreas Viestad was beautiful and full of great recipes and pictures of Norway. Suzette was kind enough to buy me the book
and we have enjoyed cooking several of the recipes over the last few
years.
Last week Suzette was looking at the Kitchen of Light to get
ideas for a Winter Solstice/Christmas menu for the Greenhouse Bistro. Also last week I bought a cauliflower at
Sprouts and yesterday I went to Albertson’s and bought a 4.4 lb. piece of fresh
keka salmon ($3.99/lb.) in anticipation of gravading it (salt and sugar curing
it). I also bought two 3-4 oz. lobster
tails from Canada for $3.99 each and four bone-in rib steaks graded choice for $5.99/lb. Tonight when we opened the salmon and cut the
salmon to fit a glass baking dish, we had a small piece left. So we decided to poach the salon and when I
mentioned the cauliflower, Suzette said, “There is a recipe I saw in the
Kitchen of Light Cookbook, I would like to make called Frothy Cauliflower Soup,
but we can reduce the amounts of liquid to make a sauce.” So we launched into dinner and gravad
lax. On Sunday we had gone to Costco and
bought a 2.25 lb. bag of asparagus ($5.99), so Suzette decided to garnish the
dish with steamed asparagus.
We had no dill in the garden but we decided to use tarragon
instead for the gravad lax. Suzette went
to the old garden to get tarragon, which was partially dead from an early frost
last night, but there was still more than enough fresh green sprigs to make the
gravad lax.
The gravad lax recipe is very simple.
She mixed 1 cup of salt and ¾ cup of sugar in a metal bowl
and added about 1 tsp. of ground black pepper.
We then laid a layer of fresh tarragon sprigs on the bottom of a 2 inch
deep baking glass baking dish and pour some of the salt and sugar mixture on
the skin side of the salmon and the laid the skin side down on the tarragon
sprigs. Then Suzette covered the inside
of that filet with more mixture and we lay tarragon sprigs on it and then
poured the mixture on the inside of the other filet and lay it on top of the
first filet and then poured the rest of the mixture on top of the top filet and
then put more tarragon sprigs on top of it and covered it with saran wrap. I then weighted down the whole affair with
two bricks.
The Frothy Cauliflower recipe called for chervil, which we
did not have but I then went to the new raised bed gardens and cut several stems
of lovage, trying to find the greenest leaves possible. When I returned to the kitchen, Suzette had
measured out three cups of water and added about 1 tsp. of Knorr dehydrated chicken
Stock to make a chicken stock. We did
not have cream and our Half and Half was curdled, so we were left with 2% milk. I opened a bottle of 2006 Nobilo Sauvignon
Blanc from Marlborough, New Zealand that I had bought at Albertson’s on an
earlier trip when it was offered for a $2.00 discount from $12.00. It was a little too yellow and had a slightly
tawny flavor, which worked well in and with the soup. The secret to the making the cauliflower soup
frothy is the cooking of the cauliflower in the chicken stock, milk and
wine. I deflowered the cauliflower and Suzette
cooked the cauliflower in ½ cup of milk, ¼ cup of wine and 3 cups of chicken
stock and a dash of white pepper and salt.
After fifteen minutes of cooking Suzette added the additional cup of
milk and the 2-3 Tbsp. of butter to the soup stock. I had removed the leaves from the lovage and she
blended the cauliflower mixture in a blender with 2 Tbsp. of lovage leaves and
pureed the mixture into a thick but sauce-like consistency, which meant that
she had excess broth remaining, which she added to the pan with the fish and poaching
medium.
While the cauliflower was cooking for fifteen to twenty
minutes or until it softened, Suzette poached the approximately 2/3 lb. salmon
chunk in white wine, about ¾ cup of water, butter and tarragon.
I snapped fourteen stalks of asparagus and Suzette steamed
them in the steamer.
The cauliflower sauce required several batches of blending,
so Suzette put the batches of blended sauce into the four cup measuring cup she
had used for the chicken stock. When the sauce was blended and while we were
waiting for the asparagus to steam, Suzette thinly sliced 1 lb. of fresh
strawberries I had bought yesterday at Pro’s Ranch Market ($.99) and dossed the
strawberries with some raspberry infused brandy I had made.
When the asparagus were finished steaming, Suzette ladled the
Cauliflower sauce into large pasta bowls and then delicately separated the poached
salmon from its skin and put chunks of salmon on the sauce and then added the
asparagus. I poured glasses of the
Sauvignon Blanc and we were ready to enjoy perhaps the last meal from our
garden as we approached winter.
After our delicious dinner, we talked to Luke who had
returned from dinner with Ellie. When Luke
went to pack to leave for N.Y. we decided to eat dessert. I scooped vanilla ice cream into bowls and we
spooned brandied fresh sliced strawberries on top of the ice cream and added a
drizzle of Hershey’s chocolate sauce. I ate
my dessert with a cup of green tea and Suzette had a glass of cognac.
What a great way to welcome Winter weather and say good bye
to Summer weather; with a mix of Scandinavian and Mediterranean foods!
Bon Appétit
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