This Christmas you may be looking for an less-traditional, elegant main course to serve your family and friends. This year indulge yourself with one of two distinctly different entrées.

There is almost nothing as impressive and elegant as a whole poached salmon served on a beautiful platter. Perfect for a Christmas dinner or any special occasion, poached salmon can be served hot or cold and with many different types of sauces, mayonnaises or vinaigrettes. For our Christmas dinner, we chose to serve our salmon hot with a creamy Bearnaise Sauce. Hot poached salmon is a delicate indulgence and truly heavenly when combined with a velvety sauce.

To poach your salmon you will need a fish poacher or a large rectangle roasting pan. We used a Calphalon roasting pan.

When poaching large fish, the poaching liquid should be cold to start, while smaller fish should be started in hot liquid. Cold liquid for large fish, allows the fish to cook all the way through instead of overcooking the outside and undercooking the inside.

To serve Whole Poached Salmon, place the cooked salmon on a large platter and simply cut the skin at the base of the head and just before the tail. Cut along the backbone and peel away the top side of the skin. It should peel away easily. Remove the fins and let your guests serve themselves. Be sure to peel away the skin while it is still hot as it may be more difficult to peel a cooled fish. A cold poached salmon can be decorated with a pattern of cucumbers, flowers or other vegetables covering the meat portion of the fish.

Sauces for Poached Salmon

Poached salmon has a mild, delicate flavor and is complimented by delicately flavored sauces. Hot poached salmon is best when served with butter based sauces such as Bearnaise, Hollandaise, beurre blanc or flavored butters. Cold poached salmon can also be served with flavored mayonnaise or vinaigrettes.

Which ever way you decide to serve your salmon, we’re sure it will make a spectacular main course for your holiday feast.

Even though ham is a little more traditional, our recipe takes a different approach to cooking the ham as well as a slightly unusual basting mixture. Instead of baking the ham at a low temperature for a few hours, we actually poach the ham. Not only does this free up some oven space, but it draws out some of the salt. In addition it keeps the ham very moist and will heat the center more quickly than in a dry oven. One word of caution, when you are poaching the ham, make sure that the water stays below the boiling point (180°-190°F). The basting glaze is made with coffee which gives the ham a beautiful color and flavor.