In the summer, we are spoiled with fresh vegetables, which in the best case can be picked from your own vegetable garden.
Herring and potato salad and gray salmon are perfect summer food. Roni Lehti
A few raw materials strongly belong to Finnish summer. They are early potatoes and salmon.
Pippuri.fi’s chef Risto Mikkola decided to combine these delicacies, but not in the traditional way, i.e. boiled potatoes and smoked salmon. Which, by the way, is also really delicious. He makes a salad out of early potatoes, which, in addition to summer vegetables, tastes like herring.
This time he carves salmon in sugar and salt. The difference to the dill- and lemon-flavored gravy salmon of Christmas is that the salmon now gets the flavor of tarragon.
There is a huge selection of different herbs for sale in stores, which you should definitely use in cooking. The good thing about herbs is that you can’t put too much of them. The more the better.
If tarragon does not please your own taste, or you cannot find it in the store, you can replace it with another herb, for example basil.
– I can’t think of a single herb that wouldn’t go well with salmon. Rosemary is often thought of as a meat herb, but it also works with fatty salmon, says Mikkola.
He recommends testing the sugar-salt-engraved salmon, because then the surface of the fish remains soft. With just salt, it becomes hard-edged and has a rather sharp taste.
– For engraving, I prefer a ratio of one to one in sugar and salt. It works really well.
Skinless salmon is ready after a day, skinned salmon takes longer.
Prepare in advance
Potato salad can be prepared quickly if it has been pre-prepared the day before. In this recipe, add radish, spring onion, red onion and apple to the salad. But just as well, the salad could have fresh field cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, everything that can be found fresh in the store or market.
Mikkola’s salad is finished with matjesssilli.
– It’s a herring with an incredibly good taste and it’s easy to cut into pieces.
Mikkola recommends seven minutes as the cooking time for the egg. Then the egg is just the right amount of looseness.
Herring and potato salad
500 g boiled new potatoes, chopped
1 apple, peeled and diced
1 small red onion, sliced
10 radishes, sliced
4 eggs, boiled and halved
½ pound dill, chopped
½ pound spring onions, chopped
50 g of porcini mushrooms
Sauce:
250 g of creme fraiche
juice of half a lemon
1 cm piece of horseradish, grated
a pinch of salt
a pinch of sugar
a pinch of black pepper
1. Prepare the sauce: Mix all the ingredients together, season and check the taste.
2. Mix all the ingredients except the eggs together, put them alternately with the sauce in a serving dish.
3. Decorate the dish with eggs, chives and dill sprigs.
Taro engraved salmon
500 g of boneless and skinless salmon fillet
1 pnt tarragon, chopped
zest of half a lemon
100 g of salt
100 g of sugar
1 tsp black pepper, ground
1. Mix all the other ingredients together, except the salmon.
2. Sprinkle half of the mixture on the bottom of the dish, place a piece of salmon on top and sprinkle the rest of the spice mixture over the fish in an even layer.
3. Put the film on and lift the refrigerator. Leave to season for at least 24 hours.
4. Wipe the spices from the surface of the fish, cut into thin slices and serve.
Fast engraving
The salmon is carved faster (24 h) when you remove its skin. In addition to speed, salmon engraved without skin is easier to cut.