Grilled Salmon with Dill Sauce

Posted on September 24, 2020 by Our Growing Paynes

I spied a treat at the shop the other day in the form of Coho wild salmon. I’m not a fan of farmed fish so I love it when certain types come into season. I was in the mood to recreate a dish my mum used to make when I was younger. When I used to work with her she would bring in the previous night’s leftovers so I was lucky to eat well right out of university. At least one decent meal a day! One of my favourites was salmon, peas and potatoes. So I made Grilled Salmon with Dill Sauce with jacket potatoes and peas from our garden.

I chose dill sauce because I had a lot of fresh dill left over from making my husband Hungarian mushroom soup. I’ve realised I have not done a post on that so I shall have to make it again and do up a post to share.

Technique for Grilled Salmon and Dill Sauce

Heat the grill so it’s nice and hot. This will give the salmon a nice sear while keeping the centre moist. Slice a lemon. Place the slices on the grill and place the salmon on the lemon slices. It keeps the salmon from burning and gives it a lovely lemon flavour.

In a small saucepan, heat up some garlic infused olive oil. If you can have garlic, use two chopped cloves and regular olive oil. Sauté the chopped dill for a few minutes.

Add the mustard and the white wine and simmer to reduce a bit. Turn down the heat to low.

Add the cremé fraîche, this is a lovely alternative to regular cream. Stir in the cremé fraîche and keep it warm on low heat. Season with sea salt and pepper.

Spoon the sauce over the salmon and serve. This is such an easy dish to make but you are rewarded with high end flavour.

Grilled Salmon with Dill Sauce

A perfect pairing of dill and seafood.

Course Main Course

Cuisine French

Prep Time 5 minutes

Cook Time 10 minutes

Servings 2

Author Our Growing Paynes

Ingredients

1/2 lb Fresh salmon 226g
1 lemon, sliced
1 tbsp garlic infused olive oil
2 tbsp fresh dill, chopped
1 tbsp stone ground mustard
1/3 cup white wine 2.5oz
3 tbsp cremé fraîche
sea salt to taste
freshly ground pepper to taste

Instructions

Grilled Salmon

Season the salmon with sea salt and freshly ground pepper. Slice the lemon
Heat the grill to high heat. Place the slices of lemon onto the grill and place the salmon on the lemon. Grill until the fish has a nice sear and the centre is cooked to medium. Slightly pink in the centre.

Dill Sauce

In a small saucepan, heat up the garlic infused olive oil and sauté the dill for a few minutes.
Add the mustard and white wine and bring to a simmer. Reduce for a couple of minutes.
Lower the heat to the lowest setting. Add the cremé fraîche. Mix well and keep it just warm. Season with sea salt and freshly ground pepper.

Putting it together

Place the grilled salmon on a plate and spoon the dill sauce over the salmon and serve immediately.

Seared Pork with Creamy Cognac Mushroom Sauce

Posted on January 25, 2016 by Our Growing Paynes

It feels good to be able to sit up at a computer and actually blog. Which seems a strange thing to say. The cold going round here knocks you on your backside. There was barely enough energy to work the remote. Forget watching anything with a plot as keeping focused was not on the cards! Which meant silly stuff like Real Housewives. Please, nothing real about them! My brain may never recover.

I did find Design on a Dime. Which is very lightweight but has inspired several ideas for our porch that I want to try out when the weather gets a bit warmer. I’m looking forward to creating a comfy area to hang out in.

It also felt good this weekend to get back into the kitchen and work on creating dishes. I had some pork ribs and some root vegetables to use and I wanted to do something on the French side. There were a ton of recipes using mushrooms and cream. A combination that I love.

I prepped the roast veg of potato, parsnip, and carrot first and got those cooking. Heat a few tablespoons of olive oil in a skillet, season the pork with sea salt and pepper, then brown all four sides.

Remove from the skillet and cover with tin foil. Finely chop a shallot (these can be potent and make you cry!) and add to the skillet. Cook for a few minutes on medium heat. You want the shallots to soften, not brown, then add 4-5 cloves of chopped garlic.

After another couple of minutes add a few mushrooms that have been sliced. Then add 1-2 teaspoons of fresh thyme, some sea salt, and pepper.

Once the mushrooms start to brown add 1 1/2 – 2 cups of chicken stock to the skillet and bring to a simmer. Add about 4 tablespoons of cognac and a couple of tablespoons of stone ground mustard.

Put the pork back into the skillet and simmer until the pork is cooked and the sauce has reduced a bit. Then add a 1/3-1/2 cup of cream. Taste and add more cognac and mustard if needed. Sometimes the cream can dampen the strong flavours.

Serve over the roasted veg and top with the sauce. You might find you have plenty of sauce left over. I used mine to make a creamy chicken soup for tonight’s dinner. Too good to let it go to waste!

Finally French Baked Eggs!

Posted on October 12, 2015 by Our Growing Paynes

There are times where you have to try, try, and try again. Such is life. It gets a bit annoying when that happens with a recipe.

I saw a recipe in a cookery book of Barefoot Contessa’s for easy baked eggs. Ooh, I thought, this looks amazing. Let’s have a go.

To start her method was to broil. I followed it to the letter. Three times and failed each time. I was starting to get annoyed! The flavours were there but the yolk would over cook and the whites would stay runny. Not the way I wanted.

In the meantime I tried Jovina Cooks Italian recipe for Marinara Baked Eggs. I still struggled with getting the yolks runny but it was a better result. My husband and I talked about maybe separating the eggs and cooking the whites for a bit. Darya on Tortore mentioned in the comments the same idea so that settled it. I was going to give it another try.

This recipe is for one serving. Finely chop a handful of parsley, rosemary, and thyme. Then finely mince a clove of garlic. Grate about a 1/4 cup of fresh parmesan. Set all this aside.

Preheat the oven to 400F/205C. In a shallow bake safe dish heat up 1 1/2 tablespoons of cream and a tablespoon of butter.

Separate three eggs and add the whites and half the cheese and herb mixture to the dish. Season with sea salt and pepper. Bake until the whites are almost set, fluffing a few times as it cooks. Add the three yolks.

Add the rest of the herb and cheese mixture. Bake a few minutes more until the yolks are warm but still runny. I was feeling really positive by this point! Once the eggs are cooked, remove from the heat. Grate a bit more parmesan over the eggs. Toast up crusty bread to serve with.

Look at that, runny yolks! This was easy. 🙂 And oh so good. I am so happy I figured this out. There is an extra step but it means I get the result I’m supposed to.

Croque Monsieur, Fun Food for the Kids

Posted on August 4, 2015 by Our Growing Paynes

In some of the tourist places we visited in France I came across croque monsieur. An inside out grilled cheese sandwich! The kids tried it and thought it was fun.

I loved the inspiration I got while over there. So much good food and ingredients. I got a kick out of this vending machine we found:

I mean how cool is this idea? Fresh veg, fruit, and homemade soups. Don’t get me wrong I loved the Cadbury vending machines when I lived in London but still, this was refreshing to see. Much better than these fish sticks I found:

How sad.

There are several recipes for croque monsieur, all pretty similar. I used Ina Garten’s from Barefoot in Paris as a guide. I used our sourdough bread for this. I really didn’t want to use the soft storebought white bread she recommends. I just don’t like that stuff! I needed to make 4 sandwiches so I toasted the bread ahead of time. Also, prep 1/2 cup of parmesan and 1/2 cup of jarlsberg and set aside.

In a small saucepan melt 2 tablespoons of butter then add 3 tablespoons of flour to the butter.

Keep it on the heat and continue whisking to cook the flour. You don’t want the mixture to burn.

Her recipe called for 2 cups of milk but I felt that was way too much. I decided to go with 1 1/2 cups of milk. We still had too much sauce leftover. Gradually add the milk to the flour mixture, again whisking the whole time to work out the lumps.

With the heat on medium bring the mixture to a near boil. You don’t want to have it actually boil but you need it hot enough to thicken. Keep stirring to prevent the milk from scorching on the bottom. Once the sauce thickens remove from the heat and stir in the grated cheese. Dust the top with nutmeg and season with sea salt and pepper.

Spread stone ground mustard of your choice onto half the slices of the toast. Add slices of ham and top with the other slices of bread. Then spoon on the sauce. Top with more jarlsberg cheese.

Broil until the cheese is bubbly and golden brown. Serve with a side salad.

I have to say as crazy as this dish sounded to me it was a lot of fun to eat and it was delicious.

Our Growing Paynes

A journey about cooking, traveling, gardening, and crafting.

Tag Archives: french recipes

Grilled Salmon with Dill Sauce

Technique for Grilled Salmon and Dill Sauce

Grilled Salmon with Dill Sauce

Ingredients

Instructions

Grilled Salmon

Dill Sauce

Putting it together

Seared Pork with Creamy Cognac Mushroom Sauce

Finally French Baked Eggs!

Croque Monsieur, Fun Food for the Kids