Salmon rissoles

As Lent is upon us, we like to eat more fish or seafood dishes this season.   As a Filipino parent, we try to instill in our kids traditions that we grew up with.  And as born Filipino Catholics, there's a lot of these traditions that come during Lent - from Ash Wednesday to Maundy Thursday to witness washing of the feet, to Good Friday to do the Stations of the Cross to Easter Sunday.   While we can't always do all these traditions because of timing and schedule, we do keep to our lenten sacrifice.

From Ash Wednesday, it's customary that we avoid eating meats on Fridays for the whole season of Lent.  In the past years, I have personally sacrificed eating meat for 40 days and it was a welcome change.   

Every year, each of the girls have their own fave food or habit which they sacrifice for the whole Lenten period.  Usually they give up chips, lollies, chocolates, soda, etc.  It's a good exercise of discipline as sometimes I forget and pack some in their lunch box, and then I get told off.  "Please don't add chips in my lunch box as I'm sacrificing that for lent, mum."  It's good for discipline and for the health too!

Now this is a fantastic option to our weekday or weekend menu.  Salmon rissoles.  They're easy and so inexpensive to make.  The recipe is adapted from Coles recipes.

Ingredients:

4 medium sized potatoes
 

30g unsalted butter

395g tin red salmon, drained and flaked

3-4 spring onions, chopped

1 cup breadcrumbs

zest and juice of 1 lemon

1 egg

1 cup corn flour


vegetable oil or light olive oil for frying



Method

Boil the potatoes until tender, 20-25 minutes.

Drain.  In a large bowl, mash the potatoes with 30g unsalted butter.

Add the flaked tinned salmon, bread crumbs, spring onions, egg, zest and juice of the lemon.

Mix and shape into patties.

Roll in corn flour and shake off excess.

Continue wth the rest of the patties.

Heat a pan on medium heat with enough oil for frying.

Pan fry the rissoles in batches, for 5-6 minutes or until golden.

Drain on paper towels.

Serve with garlic aoili (simply add crushed garlic into a cup of store bought mayonnaise) and a lemon wedge.

Tips and tricks:

*Variations on this rissoles, would be using tinned tuna or flaked smoked salmon;

* When shaping the patties/rissoles, make sure they are uniform in size to make cooking easy

* You can add other greens into the rissoles.  Chopped basil or chives will work great too.

Aussie-Asian smoked salmon rice paper rolls

 

We love fish and seafood,  and salmon is one of our family's favourites.  Raw or smoked, it's always a welcome treat in the lunch box, in salads and in our mains.  And I was just too happy to oblige to receive an invitation to the #huonsalmon blogger's competition sponsored by Huon Aquaculture. 

 

 

With salmon and my cooking style, I prefer simple and fresh.  As much as possible, I want the star of the dish to shine.  So it was a little bit difficult to think of a dish to make that's not already out there.  And this came to mind - Australian salmon meets Asian spring rolls.  This may be one too many of similar dishes out there, but I don't mind.  This was a welcome change to our usual fare.  I also added some Australian macadamias for that extra texture and to make it even more Aussie.

 

 

Ingredients

8 pieces rice paper rolls

1 Lebanese cucumber, deseeded and julienned

1 carrot, julienned

60 grams salted macadamias, roughly chopped

60 grams rice vermicelli noodles

 

250 g Huon Reserve Selection Whisky Cured Tasmanian Cold Smoked Salmon, cut into 1in x 4in strips

 

Method

In a bowl, soak the rice noodles in warm water for 10 minutes.  Once soft and noodles have turned white, drain.

 

In a large bowl, combine the rice noodles, julienned cucumber, carrots and the macadamias.  

 

  Prepare a wide bowl with some water, and a dry tea towel on the counter.

Soak one rice paper roll in the water for 10 seconds or more until soft. 

Place the rice paper and pat on the tea towel, then on a cutting board.

Place a strip (or more) of smoked salmon on the rice paper roll.

Spoon some of the rice noodle-macadamias-cucumber-carrts onto the smoked salmon.

Fold the front end of the rice paper roll and slightly tuck to hug the filling, fold the right and left sides then continue to roll.

Continue with the rest of the rice paper rolls and the filling until you've used up all ingredients.

 

 

 

These can be dipped in simple soy-sauce or sweet chilli sauce, or you can also make your own Nuoc Cham sauce which is the traditional dipping sauce for the inspiration for this dish - the Vietnamese spring rolls. This sauce is adapted from SBS Food with some slight changes.

 

To make the nuoc cham sauce:

 

1 garlic

 

3 pieces red chillies

 

juice of 1 lemon

 

60 ml fish sauce

 

60 ml warm water

 

3 teaspoon raw sugar

 

1/2 teaspoon Worcestire sauce 

 

 

Grind the garlic and chillies in your mortar until you get a paste consistency.

Combine the fish sauce, water, sugar  in a bowl stirring until the sugar is dissolved.  

Add the Worcestire sauce and stir.

Add the garlic-chilli paste, stir and serve with your spring rolls.

Disclaimer: The writer (adobo down under) was invited to take part in the #huonsalmon blogging challenge and Huon Aquaculture has provided the products mentioned in this recipe. 

Empanadas (empanaditas)

Heirloom recipes.  Do you have those?  Handed and taught down from generation to generation through family members?  

 

 

I don’t have an image of me growing up with my grandmother on one side and mother on another, dabbling with ingredients in the kitchen or making  a mess with flour and sprinkles.

Inay, my grandmother (mother side), was not so much a kitchen person.  She’ll concoct some traditional Tagalog / Filipino dishes every now and then, effortlessly.  The few times she’s in the kitchen, she can work magic with simple ingredients – from scratch.  And I mean from a live chicken to a dish on the table.  That type of cooking.  Other than those few magic moments, she’s really a Martha-Stewart-recycling-DIY-kinda-gal.  She’ll make a “walis ting-ting” – broom made of sticks from dried coconut palm leaves.  She’ll idle away the time making floor rags from old fabrics and old t-shirts.  She’ll clean the hell out of old coffee, jam, peanut butter jars and reuse them as drinking glasses and tumblers at home, she’ll be happily tinkering away the afternoon in her sewing machine. At the best of times, she’d be making mean "pinais na tulingan" (slow braised tuna in tamarind or kamias), tinolang manok with malunggay (native chicken tinola with moringa leaves).  Her cooking was always simple with fresh ingredients and as organic as would be called now. 


Now my grandmother on my father's side is the all the time cook.  Although I have never spent time with her side by side in the kitchen (she's lived in the US since we were born with a few visits in the Philippines while growing up),  I have gotten to know her through her cooking.  The few times she's visited us was always a lesson in the kitchen.  And this is her recipe. One of the dishes she can throw all together in a bowl without batting an eyelash, without measurements, and it always comes out perfect.    And whenever they make this at my aunt's home in NJ, everyone pitches in and make these.

Now like all recipes, as long as you have the ingredients on hand it's really up to you to adjust the quantities as it suits your taste.  The flavour, feel and texture is entirely up to you.  I have tweaked my grandmother's recipe for the filling to suit our preferene at home.

There are two elements to this recipe - the filling and the dough/pastry.   

Ingredients and method for the filling:

 500 grams minced pork (or beef or chicken)

 1 large onion, diced

3 cloves garlic, finely diced

1 large potato, diced

2 medium sized carrots, diced

1 red capsicum, diced

1 stick celery, diced

1 cup frozen green peas

2-3 tablespoons soy sauce

salt and pepper, to taste

vegetable oil

2 teaspoon of chilli flakes (optional) 

In a large skillet or wok, pour about two tablespoons of vegetable oil and heat the pan.

Saute the onions and garlic until soft and fragrant.

Add the minced meat and cook stirring until almost brown, 5-10 minutes

Add the potatoes, carrots, capsicum, celery and cook stirring to coat all the ingredients.

Add soy sauce and season with salt and pepper.

Turn the heat to medium and simmer until meat and vegetables are cooked through, 10-15 minutes.

Add the frozen green peas and sprinkel the chilli flakes if using.

Simmer for another5 minutes then turn off heat.

Spoon onto a large bowl and let it cool.  

Make sure the filling is completely cool before making the empanada/empanaditas.

Ingredientes and method for the  dough:

170 grams butter, cold cut into cubes

3 and 1/2 cups plain flour

1/4 cup sugar

1 cup cold water

1 beaten egg + 1 tablespoon of water for the egg wash

2 tablespoon milk or water for sealing

Combine all the  dry ingredients in a bowl and rub the ingredients with your hands until it resembles fine crumbs.  Slowly add the water (a little at a time) and continue to mix with your hands until it forms into a ball.

* Alternatively, you can process the butter, flour and sugar in a processor, then slowly pour the cold water until the mixture forms into a ball.

Flatten the dough slightly and chill in the refrigerator for 10-15 minutes.

Place the dough on a flat surface, and using a rolling pin flatten the dough to abou 1-2 cm thick.  

Cut the dough with a cookie cutter (your desired size - can be bigger or smaller).

Filling the dough:   (see photo below).   

Press on the sides of the dough to slightly thin them out.  Seal one side with milk.

Fill the dough with a tablespoon of the filling.

Slowly pinch the sides to seal the empanada.

Place on the flat surface and using your thumb/finger, press the sides of the empanada.

Further seal the edges with a fork.  Place all finished empanadas on a lined baking tray.

Continue with the other dough/filling.  

Baking the empanadas/empanaditas

Before baking, preheat oven to 180*C.

Brush the empanadas/empanaditas with egg wash.

Bake in the oven until golden, 30-40 minutes. 

 

Tips and tricks

* The butter needs to be cold when making the dough, not softened or melting;

* When making the filling, you can add other ingredients to suit your preference.  You can make it entirely vegetarian too.

* Alternatively, you can also deep fry the empanadas until golden, then drain on paper towels.

* Create small air pockets on the empanadas prior to baking so they don't inflat too much leaving a space between the dough and the filling.  I usually use a small knife or a fork to do this.

* This dough which my grandmother uses does not have the flaky texture when baked.  If you prefer a flaky dough, you will need to roll until thin, fold, then roll, and fold and roll.  The layers from rolling and folding several times creates the layers which results in a flaky dough.

* Some empanada recipes calls for lard and butter combined, which also helps in creating a flaky texture when baked.  Trissalicious shares in her blog a secret for a flaky empanada. 

* Store-bought puff pastry can also be used to make these empanadas.

* They are called empanadas when they are bigger, like the palm of one's hands.  This recipe for empanaditas are bite-sized and a little fiddly to make (photos show scale).  You can always adjust the size to suit your preference.

From Inay Mercedes and lola/grandmother Antonia, this is my heirloom - memories of good old fashion, no-nonsence cooking.  No fancy antique jewelries here, or grand estates. 


And this family recipe, I'll recreate a tradition at home when making this - as these are bite-sized pieces, I'll gather the girls around the table, pinch away dough and seams and filling and sharing stories and creating new memories.