I fear that this recipe lands somewhere in the weird-but-delicious category. When I came home from book club last night (I am a well-read, worldly woman!) (never mind that I didn’t read the book), I was hit by the lingering smell of onion, curry, and salmon. Remnants from the recipe I’d been testing earlier that afternoon. At first, it struck me as kind of unpleasant, and I wondered—should I even share this recipe? Is it one of those dishes that only sounds appetizing to me because it’s nostalgic? Or is it actually, universally appealing? Not that every recipe has to be, of course—but it never hurts.
Collin assured me that when he walked in the house he had the opposite reaction. According to him, it smelled delicious. And honestly, it is. When I was growing up, my mom made these whenever we had leftover salmon—which didn’t happen all that often, so they felt like a treat. She found the recipe in a cookbook full of elaborate, not-so-weeknight-friendly meals that she sometimes turned to—almost exclusively on weeknights. My dad handled the cooking on weekends. I remember her making a green curry and butternut squash lasagna from that book. Like I said—elaborate.
My mom doesn’t especially like to cook. Left to her own devices, she’d happily eat cheese and crackers for dinner every night. She also worked full-time when I was growing up, so I can only now appreciate what a feat it was to come home after a long day and still get dinner on the table. That’s something I really respect about her. I like cooking and still—you would absolutely never find me putting a lasagna together after work. Yet, occasionally, using seemingly every dish in the kitchen to do so, she would.
Isn’t that sort of a core part of growing up? Realizing how hard your mom must have been working to keep everything together?
And while cooking wasn’t one of her interests, she built a repertoire of meals we loved. Tacos with crunchy store-bought shells and ground turkey with Taco Bell seasoning (an all-time favorite), creamy pasta with chicken sausage and sun-dried tomatoes (I still love this one), and these salmon triangles—all classics in our house.
Other than the wrapping in phyllo, they’re simple: sauté onion in olive oil with curry powder, salt, and pepper. You can dress the filling up with whatever you have on hand—scallions, cilantro, parsley, maybe some ginger or lemon. Then fold in flaked roasted salmon. Wrap it all up in phyllo dough triangles and bake until golden and crisp. I can’t remember what we ate them with growing up, but these days I serve them with a bright herby yogurt sauce. It’s the perfect tangy contrast.
I thought to make them this week because, somehow, we ended up with seven portions of leftover roasted salmon from Scratch Made. We almost never have extras, but this week, I walked out with a small mountain of salmon (sorry…gross?). And while salmon with lentils and fennel salad is delicious, I wasn’t about to eat it seven days in a row.
So, triangles it was. I’ve only made them a couple times as an adult, and they’re just as good as I remember: buttery salmon, crispy phyllo, zippy sauce. The perfect light lunch or dinner. They pair beautifully with a simply dressed green salad—or, as I discovered, with the leftover fennel slaw. It’s wildly simple and completely addictive. The trick is to shave the fennel paper-thin so it softens and lightly pickles in the lemony olive oil dressing. It’s bright, crunchy, and way too easy to eat a whole bowl of.
Anyways—thanks, Mom. Love you!
Curry Salmon Triangles with Herby Yogurt Sauce
Serves about 3-4 people as an entree with a salad or about 5-6 as an appetizer
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