Smoked royal salmon fillet medallions

This is a salmon dish that Hollywood actor and cowboy icon Clint Eastwood is very fond of and orders it specifically from room service at the luxurious Hotel Royal Deauville in France. Here, Chef Henri Morel shows us how to make this simple yet elegant salad recipe for Royal filet of smoked salmon with Mesclun salad and a walnut vinaigrette mixed with pimpernel herbs.

For this recipe, you need delicately smoked Norwegian or Scottish Royal Salmon, which you can buy in the deli or grocery sealed and packed with a guarantee of freshness. This kind of salmon is cured with only little salt and trimmed of its fat so you can really taste the natural silkiness of the pink salmon with a softly smoky flavor that melts in your tongue like butter. The smoked salmon is cut into medallions approximately one centimeter thick for a perfect bite.

You can get mesclun that have been premixed or buy different types of lettuces and mix them together yourself. If you have a salad garden and can get fresh salad greens straight from your backyard then that is even better. In this recipe, Chef Morel uses Paris mushrooms, which is a fancy term for good old white button mushrooms. The mushrooms are cut into thin strips and only the white parts are used. The raw mushrooms give an earthy and meaty quality to this sumptuous salad dish.

The leeks are also cut into thin strips, julienne-style and are sautéed until they are nice and crispy. Topped over the mesclun, they should look like a small bird’s nest. Finally, for the dressing, Chef Morel uses walnut oil and vinegar flavored with pimpernel herbs. A wild plant, pimpernel is not that tasty in itself but it gives a great flavor to the salad.