Saturday, March 1, 2008

Smoked Salmon Pitas

I try to cook dinner at least 6 nights a week. Both for the sake of budgeting, and healthwise. With most restaurant potions nearing 2-3 normal serving sizes, its far too easy to overeat.

That said, I'm always trying out new recipes on the husband to keep things interesting. Thankfully, according to him, my "Hit-to-miss" ratio errs way to the hit end of the scale.

This week, inspired by Cooking by the seat of my pant's Smoked Salmon Pizza, I opted for a smoked salmon faux-greek dinner.

Smoked Salmon Pitas

Ingredients:

  • 4 pocket pitas
  • 1/2 cup sour cream
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced
  • The juice of 1/2 lemon
  • 2 tbsp fresh dill leaves, chopped
  • 1 package boneless skinless salmon
  • 1/4 tsp liquid smoke
  • 1/2 cucumber, thinly sliced
  • 1/4 red onion
  • 2 leaves Romain Lettuce Chopped
  • 4 button mushrooms, sliced
  • Salt and pepper to taste
I stayed true to Pants' recipe for the dill sauce, mixing up the sour cream, garlic, dill, lemon juice, salt and pepper.
In another bowl, mix the pink salmon with the liquid smoke. If you have it in the house, you could of course use some nice smoked salmon for a more authentic taste, but I usually always have the regular salmon and liquid smoke in the house for my smoked salmon party dip. Note- These vacu-packed salmon packages are the best invention ever. When my mother taught me the above mentioned party dip, affordable packed salmon only came in cans, and always had bones in them. It was always a test of patience to carefully dig out all the tiny bones. Yeah, you COULD buy the canned stuff, but why on earth would you?

Slicing the top off the pita pockets, save the tops. Inside each, add a fiew pieces of the chopped lettuce, onions, cucumber, 2 tablespoons of the salmon, mushrooms, and a tablespoon of the sauce to the pita.

Back to the tops we reserved, cut them into small wedges and lay them on a small pan. Pop them in the toster oven and toast them until lightly browned. If you don't have a toaster oven, you could probably pop them in the oven on broil for a couple minutes, just make sure not to burn them like I almost did.

Now, back to the sauce... After stuffing the pitas, I still had a good 1/3 a cup or so left, perfect for our pita leftovers. Putting them in a bowl, heart spoon optional, I set them on the table with the chips for dipping, or for spooning over the pitas for extra sauce. Heck, the sauce was so good, after we ate our pitas, I sliced up the other 1/2 the cucumber and started dipping slices of that in the sauce. Its that good. Note to self, next time make a gallons worth.

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