Sunday night we smoked about a pound of salmon in our water smoker. The night before I put a rub of dill, brown sugar and salt and pepper all over the salmon filet then let it rest in a plastic bag in the refrigerator.
We ate half of the salmon on Sunday along with basmati rice and a killer caesar salad. The better-half made the real-deal dressing with actual anchovies and I made very tasty croutons.
Last night I made salmon cakes which I fried up in the pan (and never let you forget you’re a man). We had some couscous this time around with another delicious serving of caesar salad. The better-half used some of the dressing on his salmon cakes and I tried it on my second one. It was killer.
I’d never made salmon cakes before so I checked a couple of recipes online and in the Joy of Cooking (usually I get a good idea on what to do from that venerable cookbook but their suggestion of cream o’ something soup made me gack). I ended up consulting my mother’s crab cake recipe and winging it. Here’s what I ended up doing. I’m sorry but I can’t really tell you any measurements–you’ll just have to fly by the seat of your pants too if you use this recipe.
1/4 cup milk and one egg mixed together (this is an accurate measurement)
about a 1/2 pound of salmon smoked the night before, shredded using the two fork method
a generous shaking of old bay seasoning
dijon mustard
mayonnaise (Duke’s to be precise–a hometown favorite)
I sautéed some onion and green bell pepper in bacon fat (just a little so they still had some crunch)
I dumped all of that into a bowl and then mixed using a fork. I then added some panko until it was close to the consistency I wanted. I remembered that I never make cakes dry enough so I added a little more panko. Then I formed patties (5 of them). I decided, since the mixture was still a little moist and I was worried they’d fall apart in the pan, to put some panko on a plate and dredge the patties until well covered but not caked (he!) on.
I heated some olive oil and butter in a skillet and cooked the cakes for about 5 or 6 minutes total.
They were really, really good.