Pawaru-Grahmata

№ 60IX. nodaļa

Pastēte no laša

Salmon pie with oysters, crayfish and a pike-forcemeat top

  • Serves 6
  • overnight soaking (for salted salmon), then about 1¾ hours
  • Melnraksts · vēl nav izmēģināts

1796Pasteete no lascha.

Modernizētslpp. 423–424 · PDF 437–438
6 porcijas

The book gives no quantities; the amounts below are ours, for a 22–24 cm dish.

Method

8 soļi
  1. If the salmon is salted, soak it overnight in cold water in the fridge, as the book does, and pat dry. Fresh salmon needs no soaking.
  2. Cut 100 g off the salmon for the forcemeat. Cut the rest into slices about 1 cm thick (these stand in for the book's flakes, lapiņas).
  3. Forcemeat: in a food processor, purée the pike and the 100 g salmon with the salt until smooth. Add the egg, then the clarified butter and cream a little at a time, until glossy. Chill for 20 minutes.
  4. Dumplings: bring the broth to a bare simmer. Shape about a third of the forcemeat into small dumplings with two teaspoons and poach them for 4–5 minutes, until firm. Lift out, cool and cut each in half. Keep 100 ml of the broth.
  5. Heat the oven to 190 °C (170 °C fan). Brush a 22–24 cm ovenproof dish about 5 cm deep thickly with clarified butter. Wet the rim and press the pastry strip onto it, so it stands a little above the edge.
  6. Lay the salmon slices in the dish in layers, each layer crosswise over the one below, leaving small gaps. Fill the gaps with small pieces of clarified butter, the mace, oysters, crayfish tails and the dumplings. Pour over the wine and the reserved broth.
  7. Spread the rest of the forcemeat over the top, right out to the rim, and press it against the pastry strip. Notch the pastry with the back of a knife. Brush the top with the melted clarified butter and sprinkle with the breadcrumbs.
  8. Bake for 35–40 minutes, until the top is set, golden and firm and the centre reaches 70 °C (the salmon is done at 63 °C). Once the top has set, about halfway through, prick it here and there with a fork, as the book says, to let the steam out.

Notes

What the book says vs. what we added

the book cuts the salmon up and soaks it overnight in water. A forcemeat is made of pike and soaked salmon, with well clarified, washed butter. The salmon is dipped in hot water, skinned and its flakes laid out so they don't stick together, and left to cool. Small dumplings are made from the forcemeat, poached in water or meat broth and cut into small pieces. A rim of soft pastry is made round a pewter dish, the dish is buttered thickly with clarified butter, and the salmon flakes are laid in crosswise, layer by layer, with small gaps. The gaps are filled with pieces of clarified butter, mace, oysters, crayfish tails and the dumplings, then sweet wine and enough of the dumpling broth are poured in. The forcemeat goes on top level with the rim, is pressed together with it and notched with a knife; it is brushed with clarified butter, strewn with bread and baked, and once firm, pricked here and there with a fork. Slicing raw salmon instead of scalding it, the cream, the amounts, oven temperature and times are ours.

The top

unusually, this pie has no pastry lid; the forcemeat itself forms the crust, inside a pastry rim.

Salmon

in 1796 most salmon outside the season was salted, hence the soaking. Lightly salted (not smoked) salmon, or fresh farmed or wild salmon, both work. Taste a scrap of salted salmon after soaking: it should be only mildly salty.

Oysters and crayfish

both were ordinary pie fillings then. Mussels or prawns make reasonable substitutes; the dish works without either.

Clarified, washed butter

butter boiled gently, skimmed and strained (08-056). Ghee does the same job.

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