Oh yes….even you Croute. The best part of being in the Daring Cooks is having the opportunity to do things one would never attempt on their own.
The 2009 Daring Cooks challenge was hosted by Simone of Junglefrog Cooking. Simone chose Salmon en Croute (or alternative recipes for Beef Wellington or Vegetable en Croute) from Good Food Online.
Now what is Salmon en Croute you say? It is salmon cooked in pastry. In theory it sounds a little odd, but in reality it is delicious. There are various pastries one could use….shortcut, puff and the like. We had the option to make a shortcut pastry if we had time…I have very little time but wanted to try the shortcut pastry. Three ingredients is all it takes for the pastry and with a food processor it is done lickity split. I found that the dough was almost like a clay……and as it cooked it didn’t really turn into what I imagined it would. It was more like a crust…hard on the outside. I didn’t have all the ingredients for the watercress mixture so I improvised with spinach, mushrooms, dill and cream cheese. (it was such a good mixture I could have eaten it with crackers) 
I steamed some broccoli and thought the meal needed one more thing so I made a lemon butter sauce. The sauce was perfectly tart to go with the salmon and the broccoli.
Having never tasted it before I wasn’t sure if my final product was correct. Boy and Man loved the salmon…but didn’t like the pastry so much. Man said the pastry had no flavor and he would have preferred a “crescent roll” like pastry. (apparently his advanced palate knows more than I….LOL) I thought it was perfectly fine and how great was it that it was like an individual packaged dinner?
Daring Cooks 2~Me 2
Well done on this challenge!! Funny that you struggled with the pastry and found it too hard. I struggled with the pastry too, ended up buying storebought but the storebought was also too hard, so I thought I had bought the wrong kind, but now you’re having the same experience with the pastry you made yourself… hmmm, so what best to use? I made it again with puff pastry but that got a bit on the soggy side I thought. In either case, glad to hear you liked the challenge!
WOW. Never even heard of the croute. It sounds like a disease. LMTO! Sorry, I had to say it. But seriously, I’m adding it to my ever-growing list of creations you have made that I would love to try. It looked beautiful, and HELLO, all the ingredients sounded so tasty! Especially that lemon butter sauce . . . mmmmm. P.S. I love that Boy and Man always give you honest reviews.