BISMILLAHI RAHMANI RAHIM

Salmon en Croûte

As-Salaamu ‘Alaikum Dearly Beloved Sisters & Brothers

As some of you know, my Beloved Honey-Stick is a professionally trained chef in French cuisine, so whenever I find a recipe that I like, it is not surprising to find that it is of French origin.

The French are specialists in my favorite foods, breads, cheeses and eggs. (Add milk and beans and I might have to move.  😛 j/k) 

Salmon en Croûte translates to Crusted Salmon but it sounds much better en français 😉 Click here for pronunciation (Just click the megaphone icon)

And you already know, being pescatarian is the best diet for human beings, so when I found this one, I knew I had to share! Enjoy!

Salmon en Croûte
Chez Paul
Chicago, Illinois

6 to 8 servings

INGREDIENTS

2 SALMON FILLETS, 1 1/2 TO 2 pounds each
1 c fresh sorrel or spinach, stems removed
5 hard-cooked eggs, chopped
1/4 c chopped fresh parsley
1/4 c chopped onion
Salt and freshly ground pepper

1 lb. puff pastry dough
1 egg, lightly beaten

Sorrel Sauce*

DIRECTIONS

Lay 1 fillet on waxed paper. Finely chop sorrel or spinach by hand or in food processor. Spread over fillet. Mix together eggs, parsley and onion. Spread evenly over sorrel or spinach. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Cover with other fillet.

Preheat oven to 425°F. Roll out puff pastry dough on pastry cloth to thickness of about 1/4″, making one long piece large enough to wrap fish. Cut off ends and save for decorations. Wrap fish in pastry very carefully. Seal seam and ends with beaten egg. Cut small leaves, flowers, diamonds and other patterns from leftover puff pastry.

Carefully place salmon on ungreased cooking sheet, seamside down. Cut diagonal slits about 2″ apart down center. Decorate with cut-outs, using beaten egg as “glue.”

Bake for 30 minutes. Lower oven temperature to 375°F and bake for 15 minutes more. Allow to stand few minutes before slicing. To serve, cut into slices 1 1/2″ thick. Serve with warm Sorrel Sauce.

*Sorrel Sauce
6 to 8 servings

INGREDIENTS

3 shallots, chopped
1/4 c fish stock
1 1/2 c dry vermouth
1 c white wine

2 c cream
Salt and white pepper
3 c finely chopped fresh sorrel or spinach
3 egg yolks
Lemon juice

*Don’t worry about the alcohol it with cook out of the sauce and you will only be left with the flavor 🙂

Combine shallots, fish stock, vermouth and wine in 2-quart saucepan. Cook over medium-high heat until reduced to about 1/2 cup, about 45 minutes.

Add cream and salt and white pepper to taste. Cook over medium heat, stirring frequently, for 10 minutes. Add sorrel or spinach and heat 3 to 4 minutes.

Beat egg yolks. Remove sauce from heat and stir a little of it into yolks. Then slowly stir yolk mixture back into sauce. Return to heat and cook 3 to 4 minutes. Season with lemon juice to taste. Keep sauce hot; do not boil.

بِسْــــــــــــــــــمِ اﷲِالرَّحْمَنِ اارَّحِيم

As-Salaam-Alaikum Beloved Sisters & Brothers!

Anyone who knows me knows that my Mom and I have an estranged and strained association. I’m not going to even say “relationship.”

I think she’s never liked/loved me because she couldn’t give my sister her fourth birthday party because she was in the hospital giving birth to me. The pictures are so depressing. I think she held (holds) that against me because she never threw another birthday party for any of us.

It’s all good though, because now that I am in THE NATION OF ISLAM, it just made not celebrating birthdays that much easier. Mother’s Day also.

I was kind of destined to have an estranged relationship with my mother. My mother wasn’t speaking to he mother when I was born. My grandmother found out about my birth from her cousin.

I told my hubby how I never felt like my mother ever loved me because she would buy my sister and brother whatever they wanted but not me.

He told me something that corresponds with the Holy Qur’an:

“But she gave you everything  you needed!”

He told me that twenty years ago but it’s just now, that I’m a Muslim, starting to sink in.

So, thank-you Vanessa, for feeding and clothing me when I was little. Even though it feels like you did it out of duty rather than love. I never knew what it felt like to go to bed hungry or without shoes. I had toys and a comfortable bed. A roof overhead and a fairly happy childhood. I thank you for nursing me, enabling me to enjoy good health. Thank you for giving me respectable, somewhat decent boundaries. Thank-you for treating me like a slave so that now housework comes easy and is second-nature. Thank-you for buying wheat bread when my friends had white; fruit instead of cookies & candy.. Oh, and we always had Honey – My favorite – thanks to  you!

Thank-you for that one time we baked Nestle Toll House Cookies, instilling in me my love for baking.

More recently, thank-you for letting me in the house a couple times when I couldn’t get in the shelter. That was a nice surprise after turning me away repeatedly.

However, I wish you had left my father, before I was born. He told me  he left you because of something I had written in my diary! If you had left him he would never had had his nose in my business.

Thank-you for teaching me how to sew up the holes in my socks. I was shocked to learn, after living in shelters, how many women can’t even thread a needle!

But most importantly, thank-you for leaving West Angeles so we could go to Trinity where I Fell In Love With My Prince!

HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY!