Happiness is my latest pie, a dilled salmon potato

Dilled Salmon Potato Pie

28 oz cooked salmon, flaked (I used canned, boneless, skinless, Atlantic, drained)

2 lbs Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled, boiled, mashed

2 eggs, beaten 

1/2 stick salted butter

1/4 yellow onion diced

1 T sea salt for the potato water plus 1/2 tsp for seasoning

1 handful fresh dill fronds, chopped

1/2 lemon 

 

1- Set the oven to bake at 425F.

2- Start the water on the boil; peel and quarter the potatoes; boil covered by water salted with 1 T salt, about 20 minutes to fork tender; remove to a bowl and mash with a potato masher, plain, and let cool.

3- Meanwhile, dice the onions; melt the butter in a skillet and gently saute the onions until transparent, and set aside to cool.

4- Drain the salmon and flake it; add salmon to the potatoes, mashing in until thoroughly distributed.

5- Add the butter and sauteed onions to the potatoes and mash. Season with 1/2 tsp salt.

6- Chop the dill and mash it in.

7- Squeeze one half lemon with your hands over the mixture and mash.

8- Add the beaten eggs and mash.

9- Turn out the mixture into a large pie pan, sculpt until level, and bake in the middle of the pre-heated oven 42 minutes until golden brown on the top, because 42 is the answer to everything.

10- Let cool 5-10 minutes, slice and serve on warm plates with a fresh vegetable or a side salad.

 

Makes eight servings.

 

Two slices will stuff you with seven ounces of salmon, which is 40% of the US RDA for protein. You can fiddle with the quantity of salmon down, and the quantity of dill and lemon up, as desired. The last time I made this was with 21 oz of salmon and two slices seemed not quite enough at just over five ounces of salmon, even though it seemed to me that it should have been enough.

 

You could probably make salmon cakes with this, frying them in oil using one less egg and no lemon juice in the mixture to reduce the moisture content, since this is the bones of a Newfoundland cod cake recipe. But at the end of the day, I'd just rather shove it in the oven down here at 42.9704° N latitude.

 

IYKYK. 

 

 

 

 

 

   

Sour Cream Blackberry Pie

I had no intention of making this. The blackberries were on sale, half off, and they were enormous. So I bought three packages, just over a pound, for three bucks. And they sat there in the refrigerator, screaming at me, "Make something with us already!"

So my first impulse was to reach for the Project Love Bethesda Cookbook, Volume III, courtesy of my cousin Ruth, in Iowa Falls, Iowa. And low and behold, there was the recipe, and I knew I had to make it because it also called for the left over sour cream which also has been waiting to be used up.

This is NOT a super foods recipe. It has fresh fruit in it, and some oat bran, which I used in place of the called for bread crumbs for the topping, but other than that, we're just talking fresh fruit delivery device here, that's it. But when you try it, you'll agree you've just had a slice of heaven. And for all you Sheboyganites out there, I guarantee it will remind you of the sour cream coffee cake we used to get from the bakery down by Prange's, and so? Same unique combination of sweet and sour, the German way. Mm. Mm. Mm.

Sour Cream Blackberry Pie

Filling:

1 cup sugar

1 cup dairy sour cream

3 T flour

.25 t salt

18 oz. fresh blackberries, washed

1 unbaked pie shell (or make your own, as the lady of the house did for me)

For the topping, mix together in a separate bowl:

.25 cup oat bran

1 T butter, melted

2 T sugar

In a medium bowl, whisk together the sugar, flour and salt, and the sour cream. Drop the berries into the unbaked pie shell prepared for the oven, and spread the sour cream mixture over the top. Sprinkle with the oat bran topping and bake at 375 degrees F. for 40 minutes.

Allow the pie to cool down completely before serving, or the filling will not hold together and ooze out all over the place. Really good ooze.