Filo evil, hear no evil- adventures in pastry.

Apologies for the terrible pun.

This week, I have mostly been experimenting with filo pastry. By which I mean I made salmon en croute with it on Tuesday, and then used the leftovers on Wednesday because I was hungover and couldn’t be arsed to go to the shops.

I like filo pastry a lot, but almost never eat it. It just doesn’t occur to me to do it at home. I think it’s the finicky layering of each sheet with butter and building up the leaves and all that hooha. Leave it to Masterchef the Professionals, that would be my motto.

However, amongst the people having supper on Tuesday were going to be the two women whose advice I would call on if I ever needed some inspiration on what to cook for a dinner party. So I obviously couldn’t ask them, and it had to be good because they are both fantastic cooks. I hit upon salmon en croute because I was, as is so often the case, daydreaming about beef wellington, and its piscine cousin just meandered into my head in the below vaguely Greek incarnation.

The whole shebang could not have been simpler – I urge you to try it. Everyone really enjoyed it (or they said they did, which is the same thing) and it looked mega impressive straight from the oven, although less so after I tried to cut it up and it turned into something that resembled spawning time at an intensive fish farm. I think that was the ricotta…

Σολομός σε φύλλο κρούστας
(told you it was vaguely Greek)
Serves 6

You will need:
800g salmon fillet
1 tub ricotta
1 small block of feta
Big bag of spinach
Juice of 1 lemon
6 sheets of filo pastry
Knob of melted butter.

Method:

Line a baking tray with greaseproof paper or foil. Ideally be prepared enough to have either of these two items in your kitchen, so one of your guests doesn’t have to bring them.

Melt the butter.

Unwrap the filo pastry and put one layer in the bottom of the tray. Lightly brush with melted butter. I don’t have a pastry brush, so used the back of a spoon. It would have been better with a brush.

Pop another layer of filo on top. Butter, brush.

Pop another layer of filo on top of that.

This is less tedious to do than it is to write, primarily because the filo is extraordinarily thin and delicate and therefore (in the direct opposite of the same in relation to human beings) fun to play with.

Cut the salmon in half lengthways so it’s in two roughly 400g chunks. Or, buy it in two roughly 400g chunks.

Wilt the spinach in a pan. Add the ricotta, lemon juice, feta and season well. Stir it around so it’s a sort of greeny mush.

Put one of the salmon fillets on the pastry. Cover with the spinach mixture. Pop the other salmon fillet on top and cover again.

Do three layers of filo over the top as per the earlier method, and scrunch the sides of them into the sides of the three layers on the bottom.

Bake at 200 degrees for about 25 minutes or until the filo is golden and crunchy.

Serve with watercress salad, new potatoes, and apparently 7 bottles of wine.

The next evening, I mixed up a bit of leftover ricotta with some chives, pesto and garlic and wrapped it up into two little filo parcels. I did not do the faffy butter thing. It didn’t matter too much. After 15 minutes in the oven during which time I contemplated the wisdom of Tuesday night dinner parties, it was delicious.