To make the mousseline
Take 200g of smoked salmon trimmings and add to your food processor. Then add 50ml cream and blend until smooth. If you’re a perfectionist, you can pass the mixture through a drum sieve, but it’s not essential.
Once blended, and sieved if you wish, place in a bowl. Take a second bowl and cover the bottom with ice, then place the bowl with the mix in over the top to make a bain-marie.
Add the remaining 300ml of cream to the mix and gently work in the rest of the cream, carefully using a spatula so it doesn’t split, keeping the bowl over the ice.
Work gently until you achieve a consistency like that of whipped cream. Add a dash of lemon zest, freshly ground white pepper and salt if needed. Set aside until you’re ready to use again.
To make the smoked salmon jelly cubes
Take the side of smoked salmon and remove the skin. Place the skin into a pan of 250ml cold water. Bring it to the boil and leave to infuse for 3 hours.
Pass off the liquid using a sieve, then add a tablespoon of agar-agar and mix. Pour into a shallow tray. Leave to set in the fridge for a couple of hours.
To make the cucumber dice
Peel the cucumber, but keep the skin, cutting it into small triangles. Blanch the skin in water, then remove and set aside for plating up. Take the flesh of the cucumber, remove the seeds, and cut into tiny dice.
Very quickly boil the dice in salted water, then sieve, drain and refresh in iced water, then set aside.
To make the lemon confit
Peel the lemon, cut into small triangles the same size as the cucumber skin. Blanch, bring to the boil 3 times from cold to boiling, and cook in a stock syrup.
To make the filo tuile
Pre-heat the oven to 170C/Gas Mark 3. Take the 3 sheets of filo pastry. Brush each sheet with clarified butter and layer the three sheets over one another.
Cut into 4 9cm squares. Wrap each square around a metal cylinder. Put into the oven for 6 minutes, turning halfway through to get an even colour all the way over. Remove from the oven, and very, very carefully remove the pastry from the cylinder.
To serve
Place your rectangular cutter in the middle of a plate, and fill with cucumber dice until you have a smooth layer about 1cm deep on each plate.
Cut a piece from the whole side of salmon, and cut into 12 equal cubes.
Remove the smoked salmon jelly from the fridge, turn it out of the tray and cut carefully into 12 cubes.
Place cubes of salmon and jelly alternately on each plate to the side of the cutter filled with cucumber, as in the photographs.
Dress the other side of the plate as you wish with the cucumber skin and lemon confit triangles and the keta caviar.
Pipe 3 small circles of the crème fraiche along the cucumber layer on each plate.
Carefully take your filo tuiles and gently fill with the mousseline using a piping bag. It is easier to do this if you hold it on its side horizontally.
Remove the cutter from each plate, and carefully place the tuile on top of the three dots of crème fraîche.
Take your blinis and pipe a dot of the crème fraîche on each blini, then dress with the remaining caviar and a watercress leaf. Place the blinis carefully on top of the tuile and serve.
