What a lovely day, our grandchildren brought carefully crafted valentines and Taite and Matthias woke up early and made some for us too.  It was Sunday, it was Valentine’s Day and it was the one year anniversary of being in our new home.  We needed to have a special meal.

We bought salmon  and  normally we just fire up the grill, rub the salmon with wonderful spices and grill it but we wanted a feast to celebrate this day and wanted to do something a little out of the ordinary so we made Coulibiac from a book I reviewed and like (and you can be assured that I reduced the recipe to its most streamlined form for you) from the Essential Rice Cook Book:

Coulibiac

2 oz. butter        1 onion, finely chopped

6 1/2 oz. mushrooms, sliced           2 T. lemon juice

7 oz salmon filet, skin and bones removed, cut into 5/8″ chunks

2 hard boiled eggs, chopped       2 T. fresh dill & parsley, chopped

1 C cooked long grain rice            1/4 C  thick cream

12 oz block puff pastry         1 egg, lightly beaten or 2 T butter

1. Melt half the butter in a frying pan, add onion and cook until soft. Then add the mushrooms and cook an additional 5 minutes.  Transfer to a bowl

2. Melt remaining butter in same pan, add salmon and cook 2 minutes.  Transfer to a bowl and add choppped egg, dill & parsley.  Gently combine.

3. In a small bowl mix rice and cream, season with salt and pepper.

4. (This is where I took a little turn as you will see from my photos and used phyllo dough instead of the puff pastry.)  Puff pastry is the authentic way to make this dish.  but either way, you need a base dough of 7″ X 12″ rectangle placed on a baking tray.  Spread half the rice mixture leaving a 1″ border all around.  Top with salmon mixture, then mushrooms and finally remaining rice.

5. Place another 7″ X 12″ layers of phyllo or puff pastry on top, crimp or fold to seal.  If phyllo, brush with butter; for puff pastry, brush with egg.

6. Bake 15 minutes at 415º, then reduce heat to 350º and bake another 15 minutes.