Salmon and spinach tart

The buttery richness of the base in that egg custard tart got me thinking of all-butter-puff-pastry-pasties which are soooo delicious (butter = delicious). I especially love Finnish egg and rice-filled pasties, which gave me the idea for this recipe. Math has never been one of my fortes and in high school I finally learnt what it feels like to get the lowest grade possible. Yep, you guessed it - math. The most elementary kind. Though already the math teacher at my junior high felt that nothing will ever come out a person who won't go for the advanced courses. Well, I suppose there's a chance she was right - my career hasn't exactly taken off...

But the following equations even my art school-graduate humanist-brains can process: if egg+spinach=good and spinach+salmon=good, then egg+spinach+salmon must = good, right? Well, as the end result proved, that is indeed the case. And since lemon works with both salmon and spinach, I also tossed in lemon zest left over from the lemon herring too!

Of course you can use any pastry you like, but after the recent pie-baking frenzy I dare say there's no need to resort to shop-bought ones - putting the crust together only takes minutes and you probably already have all the ingredients. Another, less buttery (but equally easy) choice would be the crust I made for the onion galette, harvest pie and kale quiche. 

A trick that makes rubbing the flour and butter together really easy is grating it through a cheese grater (the biggest blade) into the flour - easy peasy!

Base:

3,5 dl flour

125 gr butter

3-5 tbsp cold water

Rub the flour with butter to a crumbly mixture. This should be done as quickly as you can so it won't get too warm. Then add water 1 tbsp at a time until the mixture starts sticking together. Wrap tightly in cling film and let rest in the cold for half an hour.

Then roll it to a thin disc slightly bigger than the tart tin and, rolled around the rolling pin transfer to the tin. Trim the edges and let rest in cold while you're making the filling.

Filling:

200 g salmon
1/4 leek or 1 small onion
100 g spinach leaves
2 tsp lemon zest
largeish pinch of nutmeg
salt, pepper
2 hard-boiled eggs
dill to taste

Cut the salmon to slices of about 1/2 cm thickness. Trim the spinach by removing the stalks an, if needed, by removing the hard core running through the bigger leaves. Sauté the onion in a pan (without any oil, as the salmon is so fatty that we don't need any more)  - add a dash of water is it seems to be sticking to the pan. Once they're soft, add nutmeg and lemon zest. Then add spinach leaves and continue cooking for half a minute or so until they've just about wilted. Season and remove from heat. Let cool, squeeze out the excess liquid and chop roughly. Boil the eggs, cool in ice water, peel and chop.

Egg mixture:

2 eggs
1/2 dl milk
1,5 dl cream
salt

Beat the eggs lightly. Before you add the erst of the ingredients, dip a pastry brush into it and brush the base with it. This helps seal the crust so all the moisture from the filling won't make it go soggy.Then add rest of the ingredients.

Place the spinach and onion-mixture on the bottom of the pie crust. Scatter the chopped up eggs on top and then layer the salmon slices on top. Leave gaps in between so the egg and cream mixture can get all the way through. Scatter the dill on top of the salmon. The dill can be scattered in the pie before the dill, you know, for a less wispy appearance.

Pour the egg-cream mixture on top and bake at 200° for 20-25 minutes until it has set. Let cool and serve.

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