Salmon al Pesto in Filo Pastry with Lemon and Rosemary Rice

Woow, I haven't posted anything for a month. It doesn't mean I haven't been baking, but I haven't made anything new.. I baked a lot of brownies :-) I also did some nice dinners, but forgot to take pictures..
Anyways, yesterday I had some friends home for lunch and I wanted to make something yummy of course.
I had filo pastry in the fridge, and had to use it. So I made this delicious salmon with pesto rolled in the filo pastry, accompanied by lemon and rosemary rice.
It's easy, and there's not so much cooking to do:-)

Ingerdients (for 4 people)
4 pieces of salmon
Fresh pesto (homemade: whizz together basil, garlic, olive oil, pine nuts and parmeasn)
Filo Pastry
15gr melted butter
250gr rice
2 lemons
Rosemary

Preheat the oven at 180°C. Place a long piece of salmon on a sheet of filo pastry. Cover the salmon with pesto, then roll it in the filo sheet, and close it. Do the same for the other 3 pieces. Place on a tray, brush some melted butter on the pastries and bake in the oven for 20-22 minutes.
At the same time: place the 250gr rice and 500ml rice in a sauce pan. Add the juice of 1 lemon ( the 2nd lemon is to serve with the salmon), and 2tsp of rosemary. Bring it to a boil, then lower the gas, cover it and leave it to cook for a good 15min. Stir and check the seasoning as it will lack salt.

Salmon and rice should get ready at the same time and is ready to be served.

I forgot to mention that I made a lovely chocolate mousse for dessert and obviously forgot to take a picture of it. We ate them too fast. But who doesn't know what a chocolate mousse look like??!
I made chocolate mousse many times and never got the lightness I was looking for. I always compared them to the one my mum makes (mum's recipes are always the best). So I simply copied her recipe for once, and got THE best and easiest recipe of a chocolate mousse: light and not too sweet and with only 3 ingredients:
eggs; salt and chocolate.
For 4 servings, you will need:
3 eggs
100gr dark chocolate
 pinch of salt
Separate the egg yolks from the whites. Melt the chocolate. Whisk it to the 3 egg yolks. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites with a pinch of salt until stiff. Add the egg whites slowly to the chocolate mixture.
Pour into individual (or not) glasses. Chill for min 2hrs. Easy, isn't it?

Egg Noodle & Vegetable Stir Fry

A quick and easy yummy lunch: veggie stir fry with egg noodle. Just stir fry some red pepper, spring onions until they soften. Then add the carrotts and courgettes. Boil the egg noodle for 4 min.
Finish the stir fry with some soy sauce/ ketjap, and nuts ( I added sesame seeds, but I thin cashew nuts would be great!) Mix it all together and you get this yummy meal:

Lunch from Perigord

Perigord is a region in France where we eat foie gras. We call "assiette Perigourdine" a first dish that is made of foie gras, smoked duck breast (magret de canard), duck gizzard, croutons and a nut-dressed salad. This is simple to prepare but need access to the fresh products from the region which is not always easy outside of France. We have had the chance of eating this today. It was really tasty and a not so heavy start of a long Sunday lunch.

This was just the starter... We then had another French classic dish: rabbit cooked in cider, dauphinoise potatoes ( gratin dauphinois) and carrots (usually served with rabbit).

The dauphinoise potatoes is easier to prepare than you think: place all the thinely cut potatoes in a dish. Add salt, pepper and gruyere to your taste inbetween layers. Pour the "appareil" (half milk, half single cream, pepper, salt, nutmeg), and cover with gruyere.. in the oven and its ready.

To end up a already excellent lunch, we had a "pièce montée", which is assembling choux à la crème (choux filled with cream patissiere) together with caramel. This one was not home made, as we were already busy with the rest, but I put it down on my list of things to try. I kept eating the choux.. they are so light and puffy!