Recipe 6: Smoked Salmon Plates

I was honestly really stoked for this one as soon as I saw it while flipping through the cookbook for the first time. I love avocados, dill, and smoked salmon so the idea of combining these ingredients sounded like a match made in heaven.

The Shopping Experience

Most of the ingredients are commonly seen in all grocery stores so this shopping trip was not really dramatic in any way. The only ingredient I was concerned about was the smoked salmon because I never regularly use smoked salmon in my own home. I’m more the type to just order the smoked salmon and cream cheese bagels when I eat out. (Any Vancouverites out here ever been to Rosemary Rocksalt? Life changer.)

Since I’m located in British Columbia, Canada, the type of smoked salmon was sockeye salmon in my local grocery stores. Because of this, my salmon looks a bit darker than Jamie’s. I think sockeye salmon is a bit leaner than regular salmon so the taste may be slightly different. Fortunately, I also think all smoked salmon is tasty salmon.

The Cooking Experience

As of right now, this recipe was the fastest one to prepare since you don’t really have to “cook” anything. You’re really more of a “combiner” than anything; which is great for lazy folk who want to eat healthier, like me!

I really loved the idea of shaving the cucumbers with a vegetable peeler to make wide ribbons. I’d never heard of this technique before but it seems so obvious now! I think I’m going to try this technique for other foods in the future as well like maybe zucchinis or carrots?

My one pro-tip for this otherwise super simple trick is to be careful of cutting your fingertips/nails as you get to the end of the cucumber. I almost got my long nails caught by the blade of the peeler when I wasn’t paying attention. So maybe the pro-tip is more to just pay attention when you’re using any kitchen tools...

On the topic of cucumbers, I thought using just one small cucumber didn’t seem like enough but once they were arranged on the plate, it felt right. I will say as well that I think the cucumbers I ended up using were slightly smaller than those in Jamie’s book.

While I was cooking, my boyfriend was keeping me company and he thought the combination of ingredients sounded unusual together. But I was convinced it was genius.

The Eating Experience

Just as I predicted, this recipe was super delicious. It was fresh and light as the dill really brightened up the creaminess of the avocado and smoked salmon. The red wine vinegar dressing combined surprisingly well with the cottage cheese to boost its subtle flavour and contributing some needed acidity.

I was very pleased to prove my boyfriend wrong as he raved about the dish.

While the dressing in the pit of the avocado is definitely pleasing to look at when plating the dish, when it came time to actually eat, it was a bit more of an obstacle than anything. Once you cut into the avocado, the dressing just spilt everywhere and oversaturated in certain areas so for next time, I think I’ll just evenly drizzle the dressing all over instead.

Speaking of dressing, I realized that my dressing looked a bit darker than that in Jamie’s picture but I definitely triple checked that I followed the directions properly so who knows what happened. Oh well, it was tasty nonetheless.

I also ended up giving myself another helping of cottage cheese halfway through my salad because, as a big fan of cheese in general, I was having bigger scoops of cheese with every bite. So if you’re a cheese fiend like myself, do yourself a favour and double scoop your plate with cottage cheese.

This salad is definitely more of a side salad than a main course salad as my boyfriend and I both wanted additional servings (that we didn’t have) after polishing off our plates.

For anyone about to make this recipe yourself, I’d recommend either doubling the recipe to create more or making an accompanying dish to eat with it.

Final Thoughts

As I mentioned before, this recipe was the fasted cook time of all so far. Combining its simplicity with delicious taste, and the ease of shopping for ingredients, I would 100% make this dish again!

Total estimated cook time: 15 min

Total actual cook time: 20 min (I think this is the smallest discrepancy so far!)