Madhouse Family Reviews: Recipe : Fresh Spinach Salmon En Croûte

Spinach is a vegetable that finds it way on to the Madhouse menu occasionally - the Madhouse Mini-testers came home from school dinners telling me (to my surprise, I must admit !) that they love spinach in Laughing Cow sauce. A quick bit of trial and error and I discovered that this is just cheese spread traingles melted in a little cream and poured over spinach - how simple is that?! But I have to admit, I usually buy frozen spinach so I was rather impressed to receive this fresh spinach, roots and all, in my fruit & veg box this week.

I decided I wanted to make something a bit special with it and ended up going for this:

Fresh Spinach Salmon En Croûte.

Ingredients :

for 3 portions

a 500g pack of ready made puff pastry

some fresh spinach leaves (although frozen would work too)

fresh salmon fillets

garlic granules, garlic pepper, salt, lemon juice

3 tbsp pesto

First thoroughly wash the spinach leaves. If you look closely at the top picture, you can see that some of them are covered in mud ! Rip them into fairly large pieces. Heat 1tbsp olive oil in a frying pan, toss in the spinach leaves and stir for 2-3 minutes to gently wilt them. The vibrant green colour is amazing !

Cut the puff pastry into three pieces (or more if you want smaller portions) and roll it out until each piece is larger than the salmon fillets. Divide the cooked spinach between the puff pastry pieces, leaving a wide margin around the edges.

Season the salmon fillets with a generous sprinkling of garlic granules and garlic pepper, a small pinch of salt and squeeze the juice of half a lemon on top. Spread a tablespoon of pesto on top of each fillet.

Place one salmon fillet on each pile of spinach. Fold the edges of the puff pastry to the centre and pinch them together to enclose the salmon and spinach.