Förhandsgranska - Salmon with dill and lime

Stockholm these past couple of days has brought with it an alarming little display of food stuffs I have easily been forced to admit I have never tasted the like of before. From the subtle bleak caviar heaped onto crispy buttered toast, to the rightly acquired taste of surströmming. An extremely heavily fermented herring, quite a flavour I'm still working out how to describe. Next dish planned is the blodpudding, which quite clearly doesn't need an awful lot of translation, but the charm of it being traditionally eaten with lingonberry jam, potatoes and grated carrots has the better of me already.

At this time of year, and in particular back home, pâtés and terrines are particularly useful for what is going to prove to be a summer of many lunches, requiring no last-minute preparation beyond making a few rounds of that buttery toast. Strictly speaking, this dish isn't a terrine in the classic sense, but I serve it as such: the coarse, textured salmon in a china dish together with crisp Swedish inspired rye toast and paper-thin slices of pickled cucumber. It is the perfect light lunch with maybe some salad and cheese to follow. Or, in a more formal meal it would do as a refreshing first course before you move onto the beast that is fermented fish!


Salmon marinaded with dill and lime

500g wild salmon
4 tblsp mild olive oil
2 tblsp dill leaves
2 large ripe limes
1 tblsp capers

To serve - hot rye toast

Remove the skin from the salmon and, using a large, heavy knife, chop the flesh finely. You want it to be fine enough to stick together, but by no means a purée. Scoop it into a bowl. Mix in the olive oil, the chopped dill, the lime juice and the capers. Season carefully with salt and black pepper and pack the mixture into a terrine or china dish and leave overnight. Eat the next day with hot rye toast and pickled cucumber.

Pickled cucumber

Half a large cucumber
4 tblsp white wine vinegar
2 tblsp chopped coriander leaves
caster sugar

Peel the cucumber and slice it very thinly - you should be able to see through each slice. Put the slices in a colander and sprinkle with sea salt, then leave for a good half hour.

Rinse and pat dry with kitchen roll, put in a bowl with about 4 tablespoons of white wine vinegar, a couple of teaspoons of sugar and the chopped coriander leaves. Season with black pepper and toss gently. Set aside for a couple of hours, or overnight.