New Year's Eve Dinner Bash

Welcome to a new year of The Fork in the Road blogs. I hope your new year has started off on the right foot--healthy and happy!

Our New Year's Eve Dinner Bash theme this year was American Rustic. Meaning pretty much whatever our participants interpreted it to mean but basically foods from the past, and our mains, at least, were to center around foods we caught or hunted ourselves. We have two hunters in our circle of friends and I am a fisherman of sorts and so we had what we needed.

Our menu:

Appetizers: Salmon spread

Mains: Salmon en Croute (Salmon in pastry), Elk Stew, Pheasant

Sides: Mashed Potatoes, Roasted Root Vegetables, Curly Kale Greens and Ham Hocks, Spinach Salad and Brown Rice Salad

Desserts: Indian Pudding and Dutch Oven Peach Cobbler

Beverages: Champagne, Wines, Hard Cider, Tea and Coffee +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

My recipes were the Salmon in Pastry and the Brown Rice Salad. The salmon sounds a bit pretentious and French and its official title would make that a correct observation. However, meat wrapped in pastry is an American recipe often made in our early history so in my mind it qualifies. Salmon en Croute is basically, salmon wrapped in a pie crust. It is actually pretty simple to create yet it presents like it took hours of trouble and that its creator must be a chef of amazing ability. I must admit it did have me worried since I had never made it before (something I do not advocate) and so I was very nervous about how it would come out.

2 salmon filets
pie crust (store bought or made ahead)
zest from one lemon
fresh dill
fresh basil
1/4 pound of butter, softened
course ground mustard
salt and pepper
eggs, one beaten whole, the other separated using only the white

Remove the skin from the salmon. Dry the filets well. salt and pepper filets.

Spread the butter mixture over one of the filets and the mustard over the other. Place one filet on top of the other so the tail end is on top of the head end. This ensures the thickness is more uniform helping make the salmon cook more evenly. Also, be sure the butter and mustard sides of the filet face each other so they can melt into each other.

Butter Recipe:

In a mixer soften the butter. Blend in bits of the fresh dill and course cut (with scissors) the basil leaves into the mixing bowl. Add in the lemon zest and salt and pepper to mix with spatula blade on the mixer. Spread mixture over the top of one filet.

Mustard: Squeeze the mustard right from the bottle over the other filet and spread.

Place the two filets on top of each other with the sauces facing each other and so the ends of the filets are roughly the same thickness. Place the filets in the center of the pie crust. Brush egg over the exposed pie crust and fold the crust over the fish making a neat package. Roll the package onto a baking sheet.

Brush egg white over the top of the package. Salt and pepper. Using the back of a knife, gently make cross hatching lines diagonally across the top of the package. Bake in a pre-heated oven at 400 degrees until the pie crust is golden brown, about 30-40 minutes.

Bon appetit