Don't cook it! If you insist on using it in a hot dish, add it at the very end, after cooking, and just let the heat of the dish warm it up. Otherwise you'll loose so much of the flavour that made it so delicious! This might be nice with bella's suggestion, for example.

Smoked salmon pizza is about as good as it gets. Google "Wolfgang Puck Salmon Pizza" and you'll get the recipe....Jacques Pepin has it in one of his "Fast Food" books as well. You put the salmon on after the crust is baked, with creme fraiche, capers and thin sliced red onion. It's fabulous.

If you really want to use it in a dish, try a pasta with some creme fraiche and lemon zest. I'd use a thin light pasta. You want the salmon to shine through.

Thank you...it's true! If it is cold smoked why cook it further?...now to find some excellent russian black bread!

It's pretty wonderful to, at the last minute, fold it into an alfredo sauce and toss pasta with it. Don't know that that would work so well at a potluck. If I had good smoked salmon, I'm afraid I'd be highly selfish and NOT take it to a potluck!

Using a cold-smoked salmon in a warm dish cooks the salmon, destroying what made it so good in the first place. So follow amysarah's advice or do something else that doesn't cook the salmon.

99% of the smoked salmon from the Northwest is hot smoked. . . very different texture and flavour. Your instinct of chowder is a great idea. . . anything drowned in cream is fantastic. The best chowders I have had are the simplest ingredients . . another words, don't try too hard. I would do a cross between fish stew and fish chowder.

Does it have to be a cooked entree or soup? Because my instinct with really good cold smoked salmon is to let its delicious and subtle taste/texture speak for themselves.

If you can bring an hors d'oeuvre, I'd say to get some very good fresh black bread (NOT those dry/tasteless pre-packaged square slices), have it sliced thin and cut it into small pieces, top it with a piece of salmon, a dab of creme fraiche (or sour cream) and a sprinkling of chives or fresh dill. Or just top it with a few tiny capers and a squeeze of lemon. (You could also use blini instead of black bread, if you have the time/inclination to make them.) Beyond that, maybe a salmon mousse, with some of the smoked salmon folded in. But if it's the really good stuff, my advice would be: the less you 'do to it', the better.