This is a lovely combination of flavours and textures and creates a really stylish looking dish.
Ingredients
The various elements of the dish can be prepared ahead for last-minute assembly. The lightly cooked texture of hot smoked salmon is lovely with the labneh and the vivid watercress oil adds sparkle and great flavour to the dish. If you have never made labneh before, perhaps this is the moment. It is simplicity itself and is useful in so many different ways. The recipe is on page *.
The technique for making the watercress oil is also easy but is perhaps one of those recipes that is hard to believe until you have actually made it once. The resulting flavoured oil is wonderful and a truly fabulous shade of green. When you have made it for the first time, you will quickly realise that many other leaves will also work brilliantly. I make it with chives, wild garlic, rocket and basil with terrific results all of which would be good here.
This dish can be served family style passing the salmon, labneh and oil separately for guests to serve themselves. It also looks great with the labneh spread on a large platter with a dip in the centre to hold a pool of the verdant oil. The pieces of smoked salmon can then be draped over the edge of the labneh to handsome effect. If you prefer to arrange individual plates, care needs to be taken to assemble the ingredients in the correct proportion. If you can't find coriander flowers, sprigs of watercress or leaves appropriate to your oil of choice will be perfect.
I usually serve brown bread and butter alongside this dish.
Serves 4
- 320g labneh see recipe
- 300-350g hot smoked salmon
- 4-6 Tablespoons watercress oil
- 4 pinches of chilli flakes
- Coriander leaves and flowers
- Sea salt and freshly cracked black pepper
Watercress oil
- 200g watercress leaves or tender stalks or spring onion greens
- 320ml sunflower oil
Labneh
- 500g natural full-fat yoghurt
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
Method
- Divide the labneh between 4 plates. Season with salt and pepper.
- Using a wet tablespoon, make a shallow depression in the back of each mound of labneh. Place a piece of salmon beside the labneh.
- Drizzle on the oil making sure some of it rests in the little depression. Scatter a pinch of chilli flakes over each plate followed by the coriander leaves and flowers. Serve.
Watercress oil
- Roughly chop the greens and blend with the oil in a liquidizer or blender on full speed until completely smooth. Strain the oil through a square of muslin.
- You will have to squeeze the muslin to extract the green oil otherwise if you have time you can hang it up and allow it to drip overnight. Freeze the strained oil.
- Once the oil is frozen, scrape the frozen oil into a new container leaving behind the frozen water residue. You can discard the water residue. This process will give you perfectly clear green oil.
Labneh
- To make the labneh, take a double thickness square of muslin and place it over a sieve sitting over a bowl. Add the yoghurt and olive oil and tie the four corners of the muslin to make a knot. Secure the knot with some string.
- You now need to hang the tied muslin bag by the string over the bowl to allow the whey in the yoghurt to drip off leaving you your soft cheese. I hang the bag from a cup hook attached to a shelf and that works perfectly. If that all sounds too complicated, just sit the muslin bag in a sieve over a deep bowl and that will also do the job quite successfully.
- When the whey has all dripped out, simply remove the muslin and chill the cheese, covered, until you are ready to serve it.
- Save the whey that dripped out of the yoghurt for another use.
