Some Completed Cooking

Well, I finally got some cooking done on Sunday. 

First, I made the Rillette.  It's a lot of work: you have to sauté some celery and leek in butter, add some salmon fillets and wine and cook until tender:

After that, you have to strain and reduce all the juices, cook some salmon trimmings, let it all cool, remove the skin from the fillets, and mix everything together in a bowl with some fromage frais.  If you don't know what fromage frais is, don't worry, you're not alone.  It turns out it's a lot like reduced-fat cream cheese, which is what I used, only I accidentally got the kind that's pre-seasoned with pepper (which I didn't even realize was a product until I opened the tub and wondered why it had all these black specks).  Anyway, when it was all done, it looked a little like this:

I tried it, of course, and basically it tasted of salmon.  Now, I'm a great lover of salmon, so I rather enjoyed it, but it made me wonder what all that work with the sautéing and reducing was for, when it probably would have tasted just as good if I had cooked some salmon and mixed it with a bunch of butter.  Maybe my palette just isn't refined enough to truly enjoy the experience.  Here's a picture of me enjoying the experience anyway:

I brought it in to work today, and it was a big hit, so I think that it was an overall success. 

I also made some dark chocolate truffles and some hot cocoa on Sunday, but now it's my bed time, so I'll have to tell you about them tomorrow.