FFWD – Crab-Avocado “Ravioli” & Salmon Rillettes

Salmon

This post will have to serve for both this week and last, as I was laid low with a nasty flu over last weekend and into this week, so I’m just catching up on life now.

I made the salmon rillettes earlier this week. The combination of poached and smoked salmon is fantastic, especially when combined with chile pepper,spring onion, pink peppercorns, and lots of lemon. I halved the recipe, but it still made quite a bit of this spread. I can see serving half as an appetizer and saving hoarding the rest for sandwiches the next day.

Avocado

The crab-avocado “ravioli” came together in less than half an hour this evening. The fussiest bit is slicing the avocado to make the ravioli, but the one I picked was just barely ripe, so it held together quite well. I couldn’t get fresh crab meat – there is some sort of supply issue right now, according to my fishmonger, but the canned stuff wasn’t bad, I thought. I quartered this recipe, as crab doesn’t keep very well and there’s only two of us. It still made enough for a small plate of “ravioli” with enough left over to put on toast later. I thought the combination of lime, cilantro, and shallot worked well with the crab, but am I a cretin for wishing there had been a little cream or mayonnaise in the mix, too? Probably.

These were both delicious appetizers that I’ll be making again. This group has been a boon to my entertaining recipe repertoire – so many of the light and first course recipes have been winners, haven’t they? So much so, that I keep imagining that if we ever had a Dorista potluck, we could safely cover the table with enough delicious pre-dinner nibbles that we’d never make it to the main course.

Find out what the rest of the French Fridays crew thought about this week’s recipe: Crab-Avocado “Ravioli”

You can find links to everyone else’s posts on last week’s recipe here: Salmon Rillettes

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FFWD – Almond Flounder Meunière (Make that Sole)

Sole, coated in an almond-lemon zest crust, with cauliflower and lemon wedges in the background.

I’m not a fan of heavily breaded or batter-covered fish. I’m fine with a little light dredging or the barest coating of fine crumbs, but too much and I begin to flash back to Good Fridays past and their requisite take out dinners featuring tiny pieces of fish hidden in gobs of deep-fried batter. And schnitzel, which I’ve never really been on board with, either.

A crust of ground almonds and lemon zest, though; that’s a coating I can get excited about. The recipe calls for a tablespoon of all-purpose flour to be added to the almond mixture, but I substituted a gluten-free whole grain flour mixture. I also substituted sole for the flounder, which is kind of perfect, since the recipe is based on a combination of two classic sole dishes: sole amandine and sole meunière.

The fish is brushed with egg yolk, then coated on one side with the almond-lemon zest crust. It’s cooked in brown butter and finished with a few squirts of lemon juice and some toasted almonds. (I skipped the parsley, which has been growing extra-slowly in the cool, damp weather we’ve been having lately.) I served it with steamed cauliflower, which I dressed with lemon juice and a little pepper.

A closer look at the fish and its accompaniments.

My post this week is a catch up, since everyone else is making olive oil ice cream and I (sadly) do not own an ice cream maker. I’m glad I finally got to this recipe – it was too good to be ignored, unlike those fish and chip dinners of yesteryear.

You can find many other blogged descriptions of this FFWD recipe here: Almond Flounder Meunière