Feta, avocado and tomato salad with smoked salmon and dill as a starter / entree

I have previously posted this recipe here but this is a slight more fancy variation on the same salad.

I like to make this salad for a starter whenever we have company over, especially on the hotter Summer nights.

Here's the recipe again but also with the variations that I've made.

Ingredients:

• 1 ripe avocado, halved and stoned

• 2 tbs dill, finely chopped

• 1 tbs mint leaves, chopped

• Sea salt and pepper

• 1 tbs lime or lemon juice

• 100g feta cheese, crumbled

• Half a red onion, finely sliced

• 100g cherry tomatoes, halved

• 2 teaspoons of mini capers

• 2 tbs extra virgin olive oil

• Extra dill or mint for serving

• 200g smoked salmon

Instructions:

• Roughly chop the avocado with a fork, but don't make it completely mushy. Place into a bowl with 1 tablespoon of chopped dill, mint, salt, pepper and lime or lemon juice. Put in the crumbled feta and lightly toss it all together. Check the taste and add more salt and pepper if necessary.

• Put the cut tomatoes in bowl and add the sliced red onion to it. Mix with the olive oil, salt and pepper.

• Take the smoked salmon out of the package and cut into small bite size pieces. Mix through with the remaining tablespoon of chopped dill and capers.

• Once all three components are ready, set out the number of plates that you are serving this for and place on generous spoon of each heaped onto the place (like the picture above) in the shape of a triangle.

• Serve and enjoy!

Note: this recipe serves 4 people.

This presents a very pretty plate for a starter but is also very refreshing and tasty.

If you do make this, be sure to post pictures for me to see either on Instagram - be sure to tag me with @langshipley or on my Daz In The Kitchen Facebook page.

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Salmon mousse tarts ... in the Thermomix

It's Summer here and the weather has been hot, hot, hot. We were having guests over for dinner and since the weather was so uncooperative, I decided on a cold starter / entree dish, rather than a hot one.

I went looking for something and found this salmon mousse recipe which could be used as a dip, if blended really smooth, or as a filling for a tart, if kept slightly chunky. I decided to go with chunky and went with salmon mousse tarts.

Note: if you don't have a Thermomix, you can do this in a blender or a food processor. The result would be the same.

Ingredients:

• 1/2 small red onion, , halved
• 1 tbsp dill leaves
• 250 g cream cheese
• 120 g pouring cream
• 1 tbsp lemon juice
• 0.5-1 tbsp capers, salted
• 250 g smoked salmon
• chopped chives or dill to garnish
• salt and pepper to taste
  

Instructions:

• Place onion and dill into mixing bowl and chop for 3 sec/speed 5
• Add cream cheese, cream, lemon juice and Tabasco and mix for 20sec/speed 4-5. Scrap down sides of bowl.
• Add capers and salmon and mix for 30 sec/speed 5 for a smooth mousse. For a coarser texture, pulse for 1 sec / bowl lid shut / Turbo or until desired consistency is achieved.
• Garnish with chopped chives and dill.
• Serve in little tartlets as an entree or as a dip

To keep them chunky, I kept a close watch on the texture of the mousse and went with the pulse option in the instructions, rather than the smooth mousse option. It's important to really watch that carefully.

I had a few chunks of large smoked salmon still in the bowl when I checked the second time, after being really conservative with my blending, which pulsing once on turbo took care of.

I made these early in the day and just kept them refrigerated until it was time to serve them.

We served these in little vol-au-vent cases instead of small tartlet cases, as it held more mousse and I did not like the options I found of the tartlet shells that were on offer at the grocery store. The vol-au-vent cases worked really well.

These were delicious and this recipe is definitely a keeper. I will be serving these again for sure.


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Smashed avocado and feta on toast with tomato salad and smoked salmon

We're up at The House for the weekend and when we're up here, The Boy likes to get the weekend paper, sit and read the paper with a cup of coffee. It's something that he truly enjoys.

Very often, when he reads through the lifestyle sections of the paper, he'd pull out any recipes that sound interesting to him and suggest I make them. I confess, I don't often do but the recipe he pulled out this weekend sounded like the perfect meal for a dinner to me. In reality, this would also make a lovely weekend breakfast dish but we had it for dinner instead because we're crazy like that. :-)

The thing I love about this recipe is that there is no cooking involved and it's super easy to make. You just need to make sure you have all the ingredients and that it's thrown together quickly.

Here's the RECIPE for our meal.

Ingredients:

• 1 ripe avocado, halved and stoned
• 1 tbs dill, finely chopped
• 1 tbs mint leaves, chopped
• Sea salt and pepper
• 1 tbs lime or lemon juice
• 100g feta cheese, crumbled
• Half a red onion, finely sliced
• 100g cherry tomatoes, halved
• 2 slices of thick toast
• 2 tbs extra virgin olive oil
• Extra dill or mint for serving
• 200g smoked salmon

Instructions:

• Roughly chop the avocado with a fork, but don't make it completely mushy. Place into a bowl with chopped dill, mint, salt, pepper and lime or lemon juice. Put in the crumbled feta and lightly toss it all together. Check the taste and add more salt and pepper if necessary.
• Put the cut tomatoes in bowl and add the sliced red onion to it. Mix with the olive oil, salt and pepper.
• Take the smoked salmon out of the package and place onto the plate.
• Toast the bread and brush the toasted bread with butter or olive oil.
• Place bread on the plate and top with the avocado and feta mix, then add the tomato salad on top.
• Serve and enjoy!

This is a very simple meal to pull together and also very nutritious and tasty.

I didn't use any salt in the avocado and feta since the feta itself it quite salty but I used a fair bit of pepper because I like my pepper.

I also didn't crumble the feta like the recipe said, instead I just chopped it up into small pieces (about the size of my little fingernail) with a knife since the feta I used was not crumbly and quite hard.

Instead of cherry tomatoes, I also used grape tomatoes. I generally prefer grape tomatoes to cherry tomatoes since I think they are a little sweeter and also to me they taste more tomato-ey.

Half a red onion is a lot of onion so 1 only used 1/4 of an onion. If you really really like your onion, you can certainly use half the onion but then you would have more onion than tomato.

The Boy had his on toast, while I just had mine on its own without the toast. I was trying to be good and going a little carb free for the evening since I'm been a little carb crazy the last couple of weeks and I really need to cut back on it. My downfall is the steamed Chinese BBQ pork buns!

Anyway, I hope you enjoy this recipe. It's a fabulous summer dish since it's a very cool dish. We had a hot day up in The House last night, so this lovely cool dinner dish really suited us.

ps. I also just realised that it's been over month since my last post and for that I apologise. I've got another one lined up, which I hope I'll get up shortly.

© This work is copyrighted to Invest-Ex and Destiny's Fortunes Pty Ltd