Salmon Rillettes/Salmon Spread

I love salmon (period)! Salmon it's one of my favorite type of fish. I heart it both raw and cooked, regular and smoke. This pretty pink fish not only trigger my taste bugs it also triggers those fond memories of my Berkeley life - the life with my favorite ladies (Ca, Joyce and Galeen). why? because it was one of our favorite dishes on the dinner table. It's one of those stable items on the weekly Costco run must buy list. We brought it to our dinner table at least once a week and never got tired of it because we invented so many different ways to cook it (i.e. grilled salmon filet, salmon tofu stew, etc)......enough of history...so I was actually going to share this newly found favorite salmon recipe which I tried out last night. This dish is super easy to make and it tastes fabulous. It liternally take less than 15 minutes! It's a great dish to serve as appetizers before a dinner party. And it can also be made a couple of days in advance!

Ingredients
· 8 ounce (250 g) piece of salmon, preferably wild, bones removed
· Salt
· 5 tablespoons (75 g) unsalted butter
· 1 tablespoon olive oil
· 1½ tablespoons fresh lemon juice
· 2 tablespoons chopped chives
· 4 ounces (125 g) smoked salmon, cut into thin strips, then cut into ½-inch (2 cm) pieces
· ¼ teaspoon chili powder or smoke paprika (I use pimente d’Espelette) or a few turns of freshly-ground white pepper

Procedures
1. Season the salmon on both sides lightly with a bit of salt. Steam in a steamer basket until just cooked, about 8 minutes.
1. Once cooked, remove from heat and let cool.
2. In a medium-sized bowl, mash together with a fork the butter and the olive oil until very smooth. [Note: This is très important; otherwise there’ll be big chunks of butter in the finished rillettes.]
3. cut smoked salmon into small little pieces
4. Stir in the lemon juice, then the chopped chives and smoked salmon.
5. Remove the skin from the salmon and flake the cooked salmon over the mixture, then fold the pieces of salmon into the rillette mixture along with the chili powder.
6. Season with salt, if necessary.
7. Scrape into a serving dish, cover, and chill for at least two hours. Let come to room temperature before serving.

The spread can be eatten with either toasted bagguet or cracker. I personally like it better with cracker.