Have you heard about salmon terrine with curd cheese? Surely not. This dish is not very common in our country, and you can taste it only in expensive restaurants, as well as in the homes of especially spoiled gourmets who are accustomed to delight themselves with unusual, but very tasty delicacies. So why not try cooking it? Moreover, for cooking you do not need to have special skills, and everything you need today can be purchased in most large stores.
What it is?
First, let’s tell you what constitutes smoked salmon terrine. Like many other gourmet dishes, it was invented in France. At least the French themselves say that it was their chefs who first guessed how to cook salmon in such an unusual way. Anyway, the dish turned out really very tasty, and today it enjoys considerable popularity in many countries of the world. Therefore, it will be useful for domestic culinary specialists to study it.
Terrin benefits
The main ingredients are cheese and salmon. On the one hand, these products are quite high in calories, so it’s not worth it to cook salmon terrine, a photo of which is attached to the article. At least if you follow the figure. On the other hand, salmon is rich in chromium, potassium and phosphorus, as well as vitamin B1 and nicotinic acid. Therefore, its use has a positive effect on blood sugar and improves the appearance of the skin. Yes, and Omega-3 fatty acids, which are part of it, improve memory and reduce the risk of age-related brain changes.
Soft cheese is also very healthy. It contains a large amount of calcium, which strengthens not only tooth enamel, but also bones. And B and D vitamins allow a person to better withstand stress, at the same time improving the absorption of minerals.
Which cheese to choose?
Studying different recipes of salmon terrine, it is easy to notice that almost always you need cheese for cooking. What is preferred? Indeed, the choice of cheeses today is quite large - in any large store you can see dozens of varieties. And experienced chefs are well aware that an improperly selected ingredient may well spoil the taste and texture of the dish.
Therefore, it is best to give preference to cottage cheese or cream cheese. However, if there were none at hand, you can choose any other soft variety. The main thing is to make sure that it is not too sour or salty, otherwise it will interrupt the taste of the finished dish.
Dish benefits
Now we’ll see why more and more housewives love to indulge their loved ones with delicious dishes and arrange small dinner parties, like terrine with salmon and cream cheese. In fact, everything is simple. This dish has a number of important advantages.
One of them is refinement. Hardly many can boast that on the last holiday, convening guests, they were treated to a delicious French dish. Of course, such an appetizer will strengthen your reputation as an experienced cook and connoisseur of European cuisine.
Furthermore, the dish is simple to prepare. Yes, it’s hard to imagine, but such a delicate delicacy in some varieties takes less than half an hour to cook. This is especially important if time is running out, and you need to do a lot of urgent tasks before meeting guests, and there is simply no way to spend several hours preparing the ingredients.
So, we can say with confidence - every lover of delicious food costs to learn how to cook this dish.
A little bit about calories
However, adoring delicious and unusual dishes, many people also seriously think about their own health, carefully calculating calories and checking how balanced this or that culinary delight is.
Needless to say - the calorie content of salmon terrine is quite high. One hundred grams accounts for about 350-380 kilocalories (depending on the method of preparation). That is, having eaten two hundred grams of snacks, we can assume that a person had a tight dinner or lunch. Therefore, especially should not lean on this sophistication.
At the same time, one hundred grams of the finished product accounts for 23 grams of protein, 27 fats and 10 carbohydrates. This means that people sitting on a low-carbon diet can well be pampered with terrine. Yes, there are quite a lot of fats. But carbohydrates are much less than in many familiar dishes.
So, if you follow your health, you can pamper yourself with this delicacy quite often.
Cooking Cold Terrine
Now we go directly to the salmon terrine recipe with curd cheese. The first option is particularly easy to cook and quick. More precisely, it takes a very little time to cook. But after that, the finished dish should stand in the refrigerator for at least a few hours, or better - all night. Therefore, try to correctly calculate the time and figure out in advance whether the dish has time to “infuse” in order to reveal all the wonderful and refined taste.
So, for cooking you will need:
- Salted salmon fillet - 300 grams.
- Curd cheese (or other soft cheese, for example, "Philadelphia") - 250 grams.
- Natural yogurt - 100 grams.
- Gelatin - 1 tablespoon.
- Dill - 1 bunch.
- Salt, pepper - to taste.
When everything you need is at hand, you can get to work:
- To get started, take a bread form or a container for food of a suitable shape - narrow, elongated and at the same time quite deep. Optimum dimensions - 30 x 10 x 15 centimeters.
- Cover the bottom with cling film, trying to leave the ends outside.
- Cut the salmon fillet as finely as possible - for this you need a sharp sirloin knife. Put a thin layer of fish on the bottom of the mold.
- Pour half a glass of cold water into the gelatin and let it swell for a few minutes. Then bring to a boil over low heat and cool by placing the pan in cold water.
- Rinse the dill thoroughly, remove dried and too coarse areas, chop finely.
- Mix cheese with yogurt, add salt and pepper, dill and diluted gelatin.
- Stir everything until smooth.
- Pour half the resulting sauce onto salmon and carefully level the surface.
- Put the remaining sauce, and on top - the remaining pieces of salmon.
In general, the dish is ready. It remains only to put it in the refrigerator, and after 10-12 hours you can get it and serve it to the table. During this time, the gelatin will seize, and the whole dish will be a monolith, which is convenient to cut.
Terrine from the oven
However, there is another recipe for salmon terrine. You can familiarize with a photo in the same article.
It will take a little more time to cook it, but some experts believe that the dish turns out more delicious.
To cook it, you need to take these products:
- Fresh salmon - 500 grams.
- Salted salmon or salmon - 150 grams.
- Raw chicken eggs - 3 pieces.
- Fat cream - 200 grams.
- Basil or dill - 1 bunch.
- Dried Provence herbs, salt and black pepper - to taste.
Cooking is not limited to insisting in the refrigerator - you have to bake it. Therefore, you can turn on the oven in advance by setting it to 180 degrees.
- Put raw fish in a blender bowl and grind into a homogeneous mass.
- Add the rest of the ingredients here - except salted salmon - and mix well. The mass should be exactly the same, without thick and liquid layers.
- Thinly salted salmon and divide into three equal parts.
- Put the first third on the bottom of the silicone baking dish - approximate dimensions are indicated above. But this time you don’t need to use cling film - lay it right on the bottom.
- Then repeat everything as described above to get three layers of fish, separated by two layers of sauce.
- Now you need to draw hot water into a sufficiently large pan or poultry pan and place the mold in it.
- Cover with foil on top and put in a preheated oven for 45 minutes. Then pull out, remove the foil and return to the oven for another 5 minutes.
The finished dish needs to be cooled to room temperature, and only then serve. Still, terrine is a cold appetizer, and when hot, it will not be able to reveal the whole rich bouquet of aromas and tastes.
Decorate before serving
Experienced chefs know that the dish should be not only very tasty, but also beautiful. Therefore, it is advisable to decorate the terrine before serving. How to do it best?
For classic decoration, you will need greens, lemon, and, if possible, also red caviar (a little, just a couple of tablespoons).
Greens are washed and disassembled into small twigs. Lemon is washed and cut into thin slices - approximately 1.5-2 millimeters thick.
First, caviar is laid out on a beautiful dish. You need to place it in the middle, in heaps of several eggs with an interval of about 2-3 centimeters. A small leaf of greens is laid on the side (both dill or parsley and basil are suitable). On the other hand, a piece of terrine is laid out. And on top of all this is covered with a rolled slice of lemon. To do this, cut each slice to the middle and unfold it so that the ends of the crust look in different directions.
Now it remains only to cut the finished snack, for this it is advisable to use a sharp ceramic knife, put it on portioned plates, decorate and serve each guest with a slice.
Conclusion
On this our article comes to an end. Now you know everything you need about gourmet salmon terrine. And, if necessary, you can easily cook this dish, surprising even the most picky guests and family members.