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June 29, 2009

Side jaunt: flavored butters for Salmon

Time for a couple more recipes. This time they are both flavored butters, which are an elegant and very tasty way to take something simple like Salmon or Chicken or a steak to a whole 'nother level. I made both of these specifically for Salmon, although they would be great on any other type of fish too.

With a slight tweaking to make a larger quantity, I found this on a local Portland food blog called Je Mange la Ville, which translates roughly into "I eat the city." But the original inspiration that sent me hunting for the recipe is the amazing Salmon with Hazelnut-Lime Butter that I ate at the Reedville Cafe.

Hazelnut-Lime Butter
1 cup unsalted butter, softened
1 cup chopped roasted Hazelnuts
1/2 cup chopped Parsley
1/8 cup chopped Cilantro
3 tsp minced Garlic
3 tbsp Lime juice
Salt & Pepper to taste

This would be divine on a wide variety of things, up to and including toast. It's very, very tasty!

And here's what I ended up with after dividing the roasted Hazelnuts and butter in half for a side jaunt into experimental territory. It was guided in rough terms by a nearly identical experiment several years ago with a friend except then it was blueberries and this time I went with Huckleberry jam.

Huckleberry-Hazelnut Butter
1 cup unsalted butter, softened
1 cup chopped roasted Hazelnuts
1/2 cup chopped Parsley
2 1/2 tbsp Huckleberry Jam
1 tbsp Lime juice
Salt & Pepper to taste

On Salmon this one is absolutely to die for. It was easily my favorite of the two on Salmon. Because of the Huckleberries I suspect that it would not be as versatile as the other one. But that's just a hunch which I intend to put to the test.

Lastly a word about roasting Hazelnuts. I personally like to roast them on the slightly dark side. It produces a very coffee-like background taste which is amazingly addictive. If you've never roasted Hazelnuts before I would suggest experimenting by pulling a few out and eating them, noting how long they'd been in the oven until you find what pleases you the most. What I did was set the oven at 300 degrees and roasted them on a cookie sheet for half an hour.

Posted by Kevin at June 29, 2009 06:39 PM