Salmon Wellington

Ingredients

Rough puff pastry:

250g high grade flour

250g Westgold Unsalted Butter

½ tsp salt

½ cup cold water

1 egg, beaten for glazing

Salmon filling:

800g salmon fillet, boneless, skinless

2 Tbsp butter

1 onion, sliced

120g baby spinach

1 cup baby peas, defrosted

100g full fat cream cheese

¼ cup fresh parmesan

2 tsp lemon zest

1 large cooked potato, peeled                       

Salt and pepper

Method

To make the rough puff pastry:

Dice the butter (straight from the fridge) into small cubes. 

Put the butter and flour into a bowl and start squashing and rubbing the butter into the flour with your fingers.  Don’t rub the butter in fully, you still need to see visible lumps of butter in the flour. 

Make a well in the centre, pour in the water and mix to a firm dough.

Roll out on a floured surface to a rectangle of 20cm x 30cm. Fold into thirds (laying the thirds on top of each other), then roll out and fold in thirds again. 

Wrap in plastic wrap and leave in the fridge to rest 30mins. Repeat this rolling and folding in thirds process 2 more times, resting in the fridge inbetween each rolling and folding.The pastry is now ready to use.

To make the filling:

Melt the butter in a frypan, add the onion, cover to cook over a low heat  until soft and any moisture has cooked away.

Take the onion out of the pan and set aside to cool. 

Turn up the heat, add spinach to the frypan and cook until wilted.

Tip the spinach into a sieve and press down firmly with a rubber spatula to extract any water from the spinach. Tip out onto a plate to cool down.

Put cooled spinach & onion, peas, cream cheese, parmesan & zest into food processor and pulse until chopped & mixed, but not pureed.

Season. Refrigerate until needed.

To make the wellington:

Preheat oven to 220 degrees.

Cut off approximately a 350gm piece of pastry. Roll out on a floured surface to 4mm thickness and around 25cm x 35cm rectangle.

Place the pastry onto a large piece of baking paper.

Spread ½ of the spinach mixture onto one side of the pastry the same size as the piece of salmon.

Slice the potato into thin slices and layer up on top of the spinach mixture.  Season the salmon and place on top of the potato. Spread over the remaining spinach mixture.  Brush all sides of the pastry with the beaten egg. 

Lift the other side of the pastry over the salmon and gently press the edges together to form a parcel.  Trim off any rough edges. 

Cut 8 small slashes into the top of the pastry. Brush all over with the beaten egg.  Slide the wellington onto a baking tray. 

Cook 20-25 mins at 220 degrees until golden brown. Serve immediately.

Note: the potato acts as a barrier for the juice from the salmon, so the bottom of the pastry cooks.  The wellington can be all put together and kept in the fridge to cook when you’re ready.  This rough puff recipe amount will make more pastry than you need for this recipe, but it freezes well wrapped in plastic to use at another time.