Shabbat Cookery - Part II

In Part I of Shabbat Cookery, we focused on making food for Friday night dinner or, to leave in a warm oven overnight for the next day. Part II focuses on Shabbat lunch food for a crowd. Remember, we want to focus on color, temperature, and taste.

Our main recipes for the day were Poached Salmon with Watercress Sauce, Tri-Color Orzo Salad, and Chicken Paillard with Roasted Vegetables.

My partner, Eugenia, and I worked on the watercress sauce. We spent way too long trying to detangle the meat grinder and eventually transferred the watercress and cucumbers to a food processor to blend. The sauce came out delicious, though, after all of our hard work.

Here, Chef was describing how to prepare peppers for roasting: the best way is to cut around the seeds and end up with a long, thin piece of pepper that can be put on and taken off the grill easily.

To poach salmon in a shape, you can skewer it, like so:

My piece was not skewered:

I garnished with blanched sugar snap peas and red pepper inside a radiccio leaf with a cucumber cup of tri-color orzo salad. The salmon is sitting on a spear of watercress sauce.

Here is our Shabbat spread! Some dishes were packed from the day before, warmed, and served today:

Hope you had a wonderful Shabbat!


------
Poached Salmon
2 quarts of water
3 oz white wine vinegar
2 oz fresh lemon juice
2 lbs carrotsonioncelery, or whatever you have around
4 bay leaves
1 tsp cracked white peppercorns, or 1/2 tsp ground pepper
1 tsp thyme
20 parsley stems
 3  4oz boneless filets of salmon

Combine all ingredients except the salmon in a pot and bring to a boil. 
Reduce heat to simmer and cook for 45 minutes.
Strain the liquid and place into a new pot.
Bring the pot to a very low simmer.
Gently slide the fish under the surface of the broth so it is completely submerged.
Let the fish sit in the broth for 8 minutes.
Remove with a spatula and drain on a clean board.
Place on a serving plate or platter.
Serve with watercress sauce, or any other light-colored dairy-based sauce, like a dill cream sauce.

Enjoy!