Grilled Salmon and Avocado Pesto Sandwich & Prosciutto Salad

This isn't actually new, seeing as I made this back in June, and have featured it on my more personal blog, but I thought I'd share it here anyway because it is relevant.

My last day of summer freedom before I started my incredibly intense summer job was spent cooking and baking a bunch of yummy stuff with my friend Adrienne, so that we could 'inaugurate' her new oven. I'll just be talking about the sandwich and salad that we made, because even though we made cupcakes, too, they aren't by any standard presentable as blog material! I mean, they tasted good, but they just look really amateur.....I will do a separate post on them if someone asks, though.

Anyway, we adapted a recipe by Helene DuJardin at Tartelette, because I honestly would have no idea how to make my own pesto. We followed the recipe as closely as possible, but because our trip to the supermarket was rather disappointing (no arugula or apricots!!), we had to make a few improvisations and replacement ingredients, and then carry everything back to Adrienne's kitchen, which wasn't so pleasant in the 33 degrees celsius heat! We also weren't terribly concerned about whether it was gluten-free or not, so this is a more...simplified version of the original recipe.

INGREDIENTS (Makes 2 sandwiches):

For the pesto avocado spread:

• 1 cup of fresh basil leaves
• 1 clove of garlic
• 1 tbsp. grated parmesan cheese
• 1/4 cup of extra virgin olive oil
• 1 avocado (the original recipe said 1/2, but we had a pretty small one)

Pulse all the ingredients together in a food processor until smooth and creamy. Our pesto didn't turn out that way, because we couldn't find any ripe avocados, but it was nevertheless still very good!

For the Sandwiches:

• 120g/4oz of salmon fillet with skin on
• basil, parsley and thyme
• lemon slices
• 1 large loaf of whole wheat bread
• 1 tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
• tomato slices
• handful of arugula (or rocket, in our case)
• pesto & avocado spread

Heat a grill pan to medium heat, and place the salmon fillet on the pan, skin down. Lay the lemon slices, parsley, basil and thyme on top of the fillet and leave it cook for 8-10 minutes, or until it is completely cooked through. Let it cool down for a bit until it's bearable to touch, and then flake it into bits.

Lightly brush the bread with olive oil and toast in on the grill pan until all crispy and toast-like. You don't have to brush it if you don't want to; we didn't. We just used the remaining olive oil from the salmon because gurlll olive oil be expensive here! We also didn't use whole-grain or gluten-free bread like the original recipe; we just used what was fresh out of the bakery that morning, which happened to be a large whole-wheat loaf, which we sliced into half and through the middle to create sandwich pieces. Like so:

Spread a thick, even layer of the pesto onto one slice of bread. Assemble the tomato slices, salmon flakes and rocket/arugula onto the toasted bread. Like I said, we couldn't find arugula, so we ended up using rocket instead...I don't know if it really makes the world of a difference, so do what you like (: 

Place the last slice of bread on top, and your sandwich is done! We had a good 10 minutes of just being social media geeks, snapping photos, trying to find the best lighting and angles to take good pictures....of a sandwich. Yup. Looks really good though, doesn't it? 

Moving onto the next part, we made a salad to go with it, just as the recipe shows. However, we couldn't find any apricots, so we ended up just skipping those altogether and making it a prosciutto and mozzarella salad.

For the Salad:

• 1 tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
• 1 large ball of fresh mozzarella
• 8 slices of prosciutto
• handful of arugula
• salt and pepper

Slice up the ball of mozzarella. The recipe said to slice them thinly, but neither of us are particularly skilled with knives, so we decided it was better to have thicker slices than severed fingers. It turned out just fine, anyway.

We layered the salad ingredients together on the plate, then drizzled olive oil and sprinkled the tiniest amount of salt and pepper on top. This is possibly the fanciest lunch I've ever made for myself, and it was so worth the effort. I kid you not, if I had the time, I would make a proper lunch every day. Unfortunately, being a full-time student and having a part-time job doesn't really allow for that, so I'll have to wait till holiday season again!

Anyway, I hope that made your mouth water, and I'll make sure to take pictures next time I'm cooking (:

Llamas and rainbows,

Evelyn