Smoked salmon mousse with pickled cucumber salad, tomato jelly and a chive cream
Ingredients – serves x 6
Mousse
140g smoked salmon
50ml Noilly Prat vermouth
2 leaves gelatine, soaked in cold water
Lemon juice
225ml whipping cream, beaten to the ribbon stage
50ml sour cream
1 teaspoon horseradish cream (optional)
Method
Have ready six ramekins 6 cm x 5 cm deep. Brush the insides of ramekins with olive oil. In a food processor cut the smoked salmon to a fine paste or pureé. Refrigerate.
Pour the Noilly prat into a shallow pan with the fish stock and reduce by half, add the gelatine and remove from the stove, allow to cool. Beat up the whipping cream to a ribbon stage, set aside.
Add the fish stock and gelatine reduction to the smoked salmon pureé and process until well mixed. Add lemon juice to taste. Fold in the sour cream and whipping cream and pour into the ramekins and chill in a refrigerator for at least 4 hours.
Pickled Cucumbers
1 cucumber cut in half lengthways 60ml rice wine vinegar
1 bay leaf 100g sugar
½ thinly sliced red onion Salt & pepper
60g thinly sliced fennel (optional)
Method
Scrape the seeds from the cucumber, discard the seeds and shave the cucumber into long strips with a vegetable peeler or slicer. Place the bay leaves, vinegar, sugar and chilli in a saucepan and simmer for 5 minutes. Strain and cool.
Combine the cucumbers, onion, fennel, salt and pepper and cooled vinegar mixture and refrigerate for at least 3 hours.
These cucumbers will keep in the refrigerator for up to one week.
Tomato Jelly
600g ripe tomatoes
200ml fish stock
200ml passata
3 egg whites
1 small leek, finely chopped
½ tablespoon Pernod
1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
5 sheets gelatine, soaked in cold water
Method
Cut the tomatoes into small pieces and process in a blender until smooth. Pass through a fine mesh sieve, mix with the fish stock, passata and egg whites, and bring the chopped leek, Pernod and white wine vinegar to the boil in a saucepan, bring up to a boil then turn down to a simmer and cook for 20 minutes, make a little hole in the egg whites to allow the steam to be released.
When the tomato stock looks clear remove it from the heat and pass through a muslin cloth in a strainer and add the soaked gelatine. Mix well and allow to cool. Pour on top of the smoked salmon mousse, return to the fridge until set
Chive Cream
250ml whipping cream
85g horseradish cream
25g Dijon mustard liquidise all these ingredients and strain through a fine sieve,
140g natural yoghurt it will keep for 3 days
55g chives, finely chopped
Juice of 1 lemon
Salt & cayenne pepper
To Serve
Turn out the mousses in the centre of each plate, top each mousse with some pickled cucumber and mixed tiny salad leaves.