Recipe video above. Fabulous finger food, fast to make vast quantities rather than the usual fiddly assembly! Happens to be HEALTHY. By far the most popular finger food I've served at gatherings in recent years - people love the freshness of the cucumber with the richness of the smoked salmon mousse! (Which is just a fancy name for pureed smoked salmon dip LOL!)
150g / 5 ozCream Cheese, softened (I use Philadelphia, Note 2)
2 tbsp/ 30g sour cream
2 tbsp/ 40gmayonnaise
1/3cupfresh dill, roughly chopped (sub chives)
1garlic clove, minced
2tsplemon zest(1 lemon)
2tbsplemon juice
1/4tspsalt and pepper, each (Note 3)
Cucumber:
3long cucumbers (Telegraph / English)OR 6 standard cucumbers (Note 4)
Garnish:
Extra dill sprigs
Lemon slices, for serving
Instructions
Salmon Mousse:
Place Salmon Mousse ingredients in a food processor. Blitz until completely smooth, scraping down sides as needed.
Fit piping bag with wide star tip nozzle (1.5-2cm / 0.6 - 0.75" wide), then transfer Mousse into piping bag. Refrigerate for 5 hours until firmed.
Cucumbers:
Cut into 1.5cm thick / 0.6" slices.
Use a small melon baller or teaspoon to scoop a well out.
Assemble:
Pipe mousse into cucumbers. Top with dill and serve immediately.
Notes
1. Salmon can be substituted with smoked trout or other smoked fish (even if not thin slices like smoked salmon)2. Cream cheese - in the UK and some parts of Europe, you can only get spreadable cream cheese in tubs which is softer than block cream cheese. In this case, skip the sour cream.3. Salt - the smoked salmon is very salty and it releases it into the mixture, so go easy on the salt.4. Cucumbers - the long ones are better because they are less watery, so they don't dilute the mousse as much when eating. But the short ones work just as well! Scooping - better ratio of cucumber to mousse, and also removes watery centre. If you can't be bothered to scoop out the centre, make the cucumber slices slightly thinner so you end up with a similar ratio of cucumber to mousse.5. Making ahead - place mousse in piping bag, ready to pipe. Keep up to 3 days in fridge. Cut and prepare cucumber. Assemble just before serving. Once assembled, the cucumber starts sweating at around 30 - 45 minutes (still super tasty though!).6. Variations - these are variations I served at a gathering last month using the same base "mousse" recipe:
Sun-dried tomato - switch salmon and chives with 225g/7oz sun dried tomato strips in oil (including oil) and chives. Blitz until smooth, use per recipe (makes slightly more in quantity)
Olive - switch salmon with 200g/6.5oz green or black olives, and parsley or chives for dill. Blitz until ALMOST fully smooth - little bits of olive is nice.