Improv: Grilled Salmon Sliders with Dill Avocado Sauce

It's time for this month's Improv Challenge.  The premise of the Improv Challenge is easy: each month there are two assigned ingredients.  The participants must make a recipe using both ingredients and blog about it. 

This month's assigned ingredients were fish and avocado.  I said that "fish" could be anything that came from the sea.  I had planned to make some kind of tuna and avocado rice bowl that I had pinned on Pinterest a while ago, but then I saw something new a couple of weeks ago that I just could not resist trying.  Salmon sliders with an avocado sauce on Rachel Schultz.  I had never thought to do salmon sliders and that avocado sauce sounded amazing.  I changed a few things; here's my adaptation.

 Grilled Salmon Sliders with Dill Avocado Sauce

Ingredients:

8 small salmon filets

Seasoning of choice (Lemon pepper is good)

1 avocado, cubed

1 tsp white wine vinegar

1 tsp honey

2 tbsp olive oil

¼ cup fresh dill

Salt, to taste

8 slider rolls

Tomato slices

Green leaf lettuce

Directions:

Preheat grill to medium heat.  

Season the salmon however you like.  Grill salmon for a couple of minutes on each side.  (I recommend using a grill pan.)  Remove from grill and set aside.

Meanwhile, combine the avocado, vinegar, honey, and dill. Blend using a small food processor or a stick blender.  Taste for seasoning, adding salt if desired.

To assemble sliders: Cut slider rolls and place a salmon filet on each one.  Top with lettuce and tomato.  Slather the top bun with the avocado sauce and place on top.

Makes 4 servings, 2 sliders each.

I decided to grill the salmon because 'tis the season!  My husband has been rocking the grilled salmon lately, so that was a no-brainer for me.  If grilling is not an option for you for whatever reason, you can still certainly make these by either baking or pan-searing the salmon.  But the grilled flavor goes so well with the summery tomato and avocado that grilling would always be my preference here.  

About the seasoning: You can definitely season the salmon any way you like.  Lemon pepper would have been my first choice, but my kids don't like it (too peppery for them), so I used Penzeys Mural of Flavor and some salt.  Mural of Flavor is so great on salmon because it has lemon in it.  So yummy on all kinds of seafood.  So it worked really well here.

It's hard to measure fresh dill, so here's a pic of how much I used.  The original recipe called for lemon juice, and even though I only used half of what was called for, the lemon was way overpowering to me.  I added more honey to balance it out.  So that's why I left the lemon out of my recipe.  I think the white wine vinegar gives it all the acidity it needs.  It also called for red pepper flakes, but I left that out.

These little sandwiches were so good!  The salmon was flaky and the sauce was cool and creamy.  I can never cut even slices of tomato, so mine was a little messy because it was lopsided, but I didn't care!  Sometimes messy things taste the best.  My five-year-old was leery of the sauce because she saw me putting the dill in it and she thought it was cilantro, which she claims she doesn't like.  But my seven-year-old absolutely loved it.

I can see this avocado sauce being good and in infinite number of sandwiches.  Grilled chicken sandwiches, BLTs, hamburgers, etc.  Any sandwich that is good with fresh avocado would be even better with this sauce.  And it's really easy to whip up.  

Be sure to check out all the other great fish and avocado recipes below and come back next month to see what I make with pretzels and mustard!

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