Edamame and Smoked Salmon Toast

Not exactly related to this recipe, just a little chat here about switching to a more fish-focused diet. If you have been following this blog for quite some time, it's not hard to find that there's only a few beef recipes from the past couple years. The main reason is that I've been trying to eat less red meat, especially beef. 

My main meat sources have been chicken and pork, and now the new goals has been set to serve fish every week, hopefully it'll further reduce my pork intake. Put the scientific data aside, changing to a more fish-oriented diet, I really do feel lighter, less burden so to speak. I also enjoy the possible beauty effect from the fish oil and a boost of calcium from such source. Looking at the elderly people I've known for ages, they have been eating fish all the time and they seemed pretty good with calcium retention, most of them have very good skin condition also. Either way, I'm going to swap out some pork in exchange of fish, let's see how it'll go from here.

Edamame and smoked salmon toast -

Ingredients (4 portions)?

• 2/3 cup edamame
• 100 grams smoked salmon
• 25 grams feta cheese
• 4 slices country bread or sourdough
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon dried herbs de Provence
• Some rainbow peppercorns
• Some olive oil 
• Some extra virgin olive oil

How?

Bring a small pot of water to a boil and cook the edamame for couple minutes. Drain and set the edamame aside to cool off.

Save a few whole edamame and add the remaining edamame to the food processor. Also add 1/4 teaspoon dried herbs de Provence, 1/8 teaspoon of salt, 1/8 teaspoon rainbow peppercorns, and 2 teaspoons olive oil to the food processor. Blend till the texture resembles tiny grainy bits.

Brush bread slices with oil olive on one side only. Toast in the oven using high heat, till the toast turned slightly crunchy, about couple minutes. Remove from heat once ready.

Top the toasted bread slices with edamame mixture, then add some smoked salmon slices. Top with crumbled feta cheese. Garnish with some edamame beans that we saved earlier, and freshly grind some rainbow peppercorns over. Drizzle some extra virgin olive oil right before serving.

Noticed that I only used 1/8 teaspoon of salt in the edamame mixture, that's because both feta cheese and smoked salmon can be quite salty already, so it's safer to start with less salt in the edamame mixture. If turns out too plain, we can always sprinkle some salt flakes on finished toast in the end.


Extended reading:

• Irresistible garlic bread
• Peas and crispy pancetta crostini