M&S recipe inspiration
Confit salmon, crushed new potatoes, petit pots à la Française, smoked salmon choux bun and hollandaise
Short of time? Swap the salmon for bass fillets and fry them for a few minutes instead. You can also skip the hollandaise and use a tub of M&S hollandaise sauce.
Ingredients
For the confit salmon
- 1 litre M&S olive oil
- 1 M&S scotch bonnet or 1-2 M&S red chillies, to taste
- 25g M&S cut thyme
- 2 cloves M&S garlic, crushed
- 4 M&S salmon fillets
For the choux pastry
- 85g M&S unsalted butter, diced
- 100g M&S plain flour, sifted 3 times with a pinch of salt
- 3 M&S free-range eggs
For the choux bun filling
- 270g M&S smoked salmon
- 140g M&S cream cheese
- 1 tbsp M&S cut dill, chopped
- Juice of half M&S lemon
For the petit pois à la Française
- 30g M&S unsalted butter
- 2 tbsp M&S brown onion, chopped
- 300g M&S frozen peas
- 50ml M&S double cream
- 50g M&S smoked pancetta
- 1 M&S baby gem lettuce, chopped
For the crushed new potatoes
- 750g M&S new potatoes, sliced into 4 pieces
- 3 tbsp M&S unsalted butter
- 2 cloves M&S garlic, chopped
- 4 tbsp M&S double cream
- 1 tbsp M&S wholegrain mustard
- 25g M&S cut flat leaf parsley, chopped
For the hollandaise
- 2 M&S free-range eggs, yolks only
- 100g M&S unsalted butter, at room temperature, cubed
- 2 tsp M&S lemon, juiced
Method
- Preheat the oven to 200°C/180°C fan. Line a baking tray with parchment paper.
- Start the confit: put the olive oil, scotch bonnet or red chilli, thyme and garlic into a medium baking dish and heat in the oven for 20 minutes. Set aside.
- Meanwhile, make the choux pastry: over a low heat, melt the butter in 200ml water in a medium heavy-bottomed pan. Bring to the boil, then quickly tip in the flour all at once. Beat over a medium heat for about 2 minutes until the mixture pulls away from the sides of the pan.
- Transfer the choux to a free-standing electric mixer and whisk until it’s at room temperature. WIth the motor running, add the eggs, one at a time, until smooth. Spoon into a piping bag fitted with a large plain nozzle.
- Pipe golf ball-sized mounds of the dough onto the prepared baking sheet and bake for 25-30 minutes or until golden and crisp (on a shelf above the olive oil). Cool on a wire rack.
- To make the choux bun filling: put all of the ingredients into a food processor and blend until smooth. Season to taste and spoon into a piping bag with a plain medium nozzle.
- To make the peas: put the butter and onions in a medium pan, season with salt and freshly ground black pepper and sauté over a medium heat for 4-5 minutes.
- Put the peas in a medium bowl and cover with boiling water from a kettle. Leave for a minute, then drain and tranfer to iced water to keep their colour. Drain and add one third of them to the onions. Pour in the cream and purée the mixture with a hand blender.
- Sauté the pancetta until crisp and golden. Add to the purée mixture along with the chopped lettuce and the remaining peas.
- Cook the potatoes in a large saucepan of boiling salted water for about 15 minutes or until tender. Drain well and return to the pan. Shake well to break the potatoes up.
- Heat the butter in a small frying pan and sauté the garlic for about 1-2 minutes until golden. Add to the potatoes, with the cream and mustard. Taste for seasoning. Stir in the chopped parsley.
- Now back to the salmon confit: Warm the infused olive oil to 37°C. Add the salmon and leave to sit for 10 minutes. Remove the fillets and set them on kitchen towel to drain. Season with a pinch of salt.
- To make the hollandaise sauce: set a large glass bowl over a small saucepan – it should sit comfortably without the bottom touching the water. Add the egg yolks, 2 tbsp warm water and the lemon juice and whisk until the yolks double in volume (you could freeze the leftover whites to make meringue later). Add one cube of butter and whisk until the eggs are thick, pale and fluffy. Continue with each knob of butter, one at a time (this can take up to 10 minutes). Season with salt and freshly ground black pepper and add extra lemon juice if necessary. Turn off the heat but keep the bowl on the pan to stay warm - this will stop the sauce from splitting, too.
- Make a small hole in the base of the choux buns and pipe in the smoked salmon cream.
- To serve, plate the salmon choux buns, peas and potatoes and pour the hollandaise over the fish.
