Sunday Recipes

Sunday morning I made Red Velvet pancakes for breakfast, using this recipe. I didn’t have the full amount of red food coloring, so they were a bit more pinkish than reddish, but they were really, really good. So good we ate the whole batch. Of course, you can omit the food color entirely. I wouldn’t have used it except that I had a little left in the pantry, and figured I’d get rid of it. The pancakes will be a bit of an odd color no matter what, because of the cocoa. I served them with warm maple syrup and fresh blackberries. They were fine for breakfast, but I could also see making a dessert out of them by topping them with a bit of vanilla ice cream, some fudge sauce, and whipped cream. Yum.

Sunday night I made Salmon Strudel. I had a box of phyllo sheets in the freezer that I wanted to use, so I looked at recipes I’ve collected that use phyllo dough to see if there was anything I could make without a trip to the store. This was the winner. I didn’t have any sun-dried tomatoes, so I just added a glug of sun-dried tomato salad dressing. And at this time of year, I had to use dried herbs instead of fresh. But otherwise, I followed the recipe, and we quite enjoyed it.

I was somewhat mystified by the instructions to cut the salmon into 2 1/2″ strips. Thick? Wide? Long? What did that mean? Is the portion of the strudel that’s filled with salmon supposed to truly roll up, or is the phyllo just sort of folded over it? I ended up cutting my salmon into strips about 1/2″ thick and wide, by 2 1/2″ long, and laid them crosswise on the phyllo. But it was still too thick to really make into an actual roll.

In retrospect, I think it means to take a 1-lb salmon fillet, cut it crosswise into portions that are about 2 1/2″ wide, and arrange them on the dough in a strip so that the cut edges are running parallel to the long edge of the dough. Overlap the fillets as needed so that the thinner ends of the fish portions (the belly edge) are about the same thickness as the thicker parts, so that you have a fairly even layer of fish that is 2 1/2″ wide crosswise on the dough, and runs lengthwise to about 1 1/2″ from each short end of the dough. When you “roll” it, you’re really just flipping the dough over the top of the fish, then using the parchment paper to help you flip the section containing the fish over the far end of the dough. It’s more of a flat package than a roll. That’s my plan for next time.