dill

This is the potato salad I made using the dill and rapeseed mayonnaise in my last post.

I was wondering how to use this can of hearts of palm shown below and read on the side that it went well with smoked fish. I tend to keep a wallet of smoked salmon in my freezer, they defrost within little more than an hour meaning you have smoked salmon pretty much whenever you fancy it without hurrying to use it after purchase. You can buy frozen smoked salmon from IKEA but I don’t recommend this as the fish is very pale and lacks flavour.

So whenever I spot a reduced pack of fresh smoked salmon in the supermarket, into my freezer it goes.

Hearts of palm are a vegetable I would use again – they’re soft and not strongly flavoured, a kind of fusion between bamboo shoot, asparagus and mushroom. They’re soft and mix in well with potato. I also stir fried some hearts of palm in left over rice the next day. An interesting backdrop vegetable rather than a main star of the dish. Handy to keep in the cupboard to add extra bulk or interest to a salad.

Smoked salmon potato salad with hearts of palm
There’s no fixed amount for most of the ingredients, just use as much or as little as you fancy depending on your favourites!

Ingredients:
dill and rapeseed mayonnaise
smoked salmon
sliced radish
cooled boiled new potatoes
sliced hearts of palm
salt and pepper to season
extra chopped fresh dill to garnish

This would make an excellent ideal picnic or lunchbox dish. Or a light lunch.

With thanks to Cooks and Co for product samples.

This may surprise some people but I had never made my own mayonnaise before.

I wasn’t scared or put off by tales of splitting, I just hadn’t got around to it.

So I waited specifically for when I wanted some mayonnaise and didn’t have any conceivable alternatives in the fridge.

I used one beater on my trusty electric hand mixer and the cup for my stick blender.

The trick is to not add the oil too quickly at first, I read in Rosemary Shrager’s Absolutely Foolproof Home Cooking that you should dip a spoon into the oil and let drops drip onto the eggs as you beat. Her mayonnaise recipes use 2 egg yolks and much more oil than I found necessary so my version ended up somewhat different to the one in the book. Also I used rapeseed oil because I hadn’t got enough non extra-virgin olive oil in the house. I didn’t want to waste extra virgin in mayonnaise as it would taste too strong. The bonus using rapeseed oil is the attractive golden colour – it looks more like a Hollandaise.

Dill and rapeseed mayonnaise

Ingredients:

1 egg yolk
1 teaspoon yellow mustard (I used French’s)
120 ml rapeseed oil
1 tbsp coarsely chopped dill
1 tbsp lemon juice
large pinch of sea salt flakes

Directions:

Beat the egg yolk and mustard with an electric hand mixer, dribble oil into the egg mix by dripping it from a spoon at first. As the mayonnaise starts to bulk out you can add the oil more quickly, eventually pouring. Add the dill and then the lemon juice and salt to taste. The mayonnaise will keep for up to 5 days in the fridge, stir it before using if it separates slightly.

This mayonnaise pairs beautifully with smoked salmon.