Foodaloque Culinary Tour stops in Russia. The Culinary Tour is aiding Bloggeraid to stamp out world hunger.
For this stop I made a Russian inspired classic French dish Coulibiac. I have not made this since cooking school 19 years ago. I remember when we made it took a couple of days to make because there are so many components, I did not make the puff pastry from scratch like I did back then so it did not take as long. This is a great dish for a cook that wants to learn classic techniques because it is full of them. There are many variations to this dish but this is pretty much the one that I learned. Russians eat this dish during the Christmas Holiday.
Coulibiac
4 Salmon Fillets or one whole salmon side
1 Cup Mushroom Duxelle
1 Cup cooked spinach, all water squeezed out, and chopped
2 Hard Boiled eggs, sliced
8 Crepes
Salt and Pepper
4 Sheets of Puff Pastry
1 Egg, whipped with water to make egg wash
Salt and Pepper salmon, place on lower half of the puff pastry. Top with 1/4 cup spinach, and 2 slices of egg. Wrap the salmon, spinach and egg with one crepe,, with the seam on the bottom. Make another layer of 1.4 cup mushroom on top of crepe, wrap again in the same way. Brush the edges of pastry with egg wash fold over the puff pastry encasing the whole fillet. Poke a few steam vents in the pastry, and brush with egg wash. Bake in 400 oven until the pastry is golden brown.
I served this with a white wine sauce.
This is a basic recipe, as I was making it I thought of a few ways to jazz it up:
Add Saffron to the crepe batter
Add a layer of caramelized fennel
Do an Asian twist, using bok choy, shiitake mushrooms, and chive crepes
