A house speciality: applewood smoked salmon with vodka

It’s my son Karel’s birthday tomorrow. I won’t tell you his age because it’s a bit scary – for all of us, but Happy Birthday, Karel!!

Naturally, we asked what he’d like for his birthday dinner. His answer was not unexpected: roast beef and Yorkshire pudding with Caesar salad on the side. He also wants my mom’s lemon pie, but not with meringue. Karel is a whipped cream kind of guy.

He sort of shrugged when we asked about an appetizer, though. When we have a family meal, we like to sit around and chat first, so we generally do without a first course, opting to relax in the living room enjoying some sort of “nibbly” and a glass of wine before adjourning to the dining room for the main course.

For Karel, I’m making some of his garlic bread (a recipe we’ll share in the future because it’s a bit out of the ordinary and extra tasty). To be honest, Vicki and I, along with our other son, Jan, and his lady, Rena, although we might join Karel in a small piece bread, would prefer something a little different. Vicki and I settled on poached asparagus spears wrapped in a bit of smoked salmon with a dab of the special cream cheese (more like mascarpone) we buy from Chris’ Cheese Mongers at the St. Lawrence Market.

To be honest, though, part of our reason for this choice was merely an excuse to smoke some salmon. Now that we have a vacuum sealer and can freeze it without the worry of ice crystals forming in the meat, it’s something that is now going to be a staple item in the house, rather than an occasional treat.

Our fickle weather even cooperated. I’ve been trying to smoke salmon for several weeks now, but couldn’t seem to find a day where the weather was going to be warm enough to cold smoke. That sounds sort of silly, but last winter I smoked a chunk of salmon and it froze solid. Our A-Maze-N Pellet Smoker really gives off that little heat. It’s a good thing when the temperature is pushing 60° in the spring or fall, but not a good thing if it’s −10° – and it was down there quite a lot the past month!
With an eye on the long-range forecast, I decided to pick up some organic Irish salmon from Domenic’s, our preferred fish monger at the St. Lawrence Market, and get to work.

Ready for the top layer of cure, lemon and dill.

People always seem stunned when we tell them we smoke our own salmon, but let me assure you, as long as you have some sort of way to cold smoke (and we heartily recommend the A-Maze-N Smoker line – whether pellet or sawdust), producing great smoked salmon is simplicity itself. I know I say that a lot when talking about charcuterie, but it really is true. Subtract the time needed for curing, drying and smoking (where you do zero work), and all told you’re looking at no more than a half hour of actual work time.

Want to try our recipe? Read on. But ours is not the only way to go. There are lots of alternatives for flavorings out there on the internet. However, I do recommend our approach to curing the salmon for smoking because it works very well and will give superior results every time.

Applewood Smoked Salmon with Vodka
Will serve a crowd

Ingredients
2-3 pounds of really fresh salmon filet
1/2 cup kosher salt
1/2 cup dark brown sugar
2-3 tsp freshly ground or cracked white pepper
1 lemon, thinly sliced
1 large bunch of dill
4 oz vodka

Method

1. It’s critical to find the freshest and best salmon you can find. If it smells fishy, take a pass. Check to make sure all the pin bones have been removed. You’ll feel them immediately if you wipe your palm down the meat side of the filet from front to back. We keep a needlenose pliers in the kitchen drawer to pull these out whenever we filet a fish or buy a fish filet and discover some. You don’t want to run across one of these by accident when you’re eating!
2. Rinse off the salmon on both sides and pat dry.
3. Mix the salt, sugar and pepper together to make your dry cure. Place half of it in the bottom of a non-reactive dish (glass is best) that will just hold the filet. (You want to keep the salmon bathed in the liquid it will produce.)
4. Place the filet skin side down on top of the dry cure, then put the remaining cure on the meat side of the filet, getting more on the thicker top portion and less on the bottom. Rub it in gently.
5. Top with a layer of lemon slices, followed by the bunch of dill just torn up by hand.
6. Cover with plastic wrap. Now place some folded foil over it, or if you’re lucky like us, a second glass dish that will nest on top of the salmon. Weight it with some food cans or maybe even a couple of bricks (what we use). You need around 6-8 pounds of weight to squeeze out the liquid that the salmon will throw off.
7. Refrigerate for 24-30 hours. You’ll see longer in other recipes, but we find the shorter time gives you more succulent and buttery salmon. And it won’t be too salty!
8. When the salmon is done curing, rinse it thoroughly and pat it dry. Throw away the liquid in your curing dish, wash and dry it. Now place the salmon back in and pour half the vodka over it. Cover it again with plastic wrap and return it to the fridge for an addition 6-12 hours.
9. Next, remove the salmon from the dish, put it on a rack and let it dry uncovered in the fridge for 24 hours (or at least overnight) so the surface of the filet develops the “pellicule” (stickiness) that will help the smoke adhere to the meat’s surface.
10. Fire up your smoker and when it’s going well, smoke the cured salmon for 4-8 hours. We generally prefer it smoked around 6 hours, but I’ll give you the latitude depending on how smoky you like your food. We’ve found that going past 8 hours is too much and throws off the balance of flavors.
11. When the salmon comes out of the smoker, place it back in the glass dish, dribble the remaining vodka over the surface and let it sit for a few hours before slicing it thinly, on an angle, for serving.
12. If you’re going to freeze it, I’d suggest slicing it into hunks and vacuum sealing it (really, the only way to keep it at its peak of flavor and texture). If you don’t have a vacuum sealer, ask your fish monger to do it for you. When you want to serve some, just thaw it completely before you slice it.

The Lonzino Report, Winter 2014

My latest efforts. Note the fancy 4-string tie.

Since I seem to be spending January talking about what’s going to come and updating where this blog has been, it seems sensible to talk about one of my ongoing projects: curing and drying our own in-house lonzino.

To bring everyone up to speed on what this is, a description is necessary, since it’s not a very well-known commodity. If you need to know more by way of background, click HERE to read the first part of our ongoing series about this delicacy.

Clear now? One thing that got me interested in making this less-know Italian delicacy is the fact that I really like well-made bresaola (something I’ve yet to try my hand at – unexplainably). Our household also likes peameal bacon, a Canadian specialty, which can most easily described as pickled pork loin that’s been rolled in cornmeal. Sounds not as appetizing as it is, doesn’t it? Think of it this way: corned beef is pretty much the same thing – and who doesn’t like corned beef? Sliced thinly and fried up, then served on a fresh hard roll, there’s nothing quite like a peameal bacon sandwich. (If you ever visit Toronto’s St. Lawrence Market, Paddington’s Pump and the Carousel Bakery make worthy versions).

There’s also something called Canadian bacon, which, oddly enough, is not the name we use north of the 49th parallel. You do see it in the States, though. Up here (and in Britain) it’s called back bacon. Regardless, it’s made from (you guessed it) pork loin that is dry cured and then smoked. Think of this as a very meaty bacon-like product. (And it’s something else I should also make sometime.)

As far as lonzino goes, though, it is a lovely thing when it’s made well. My first attempt, as noted in the above linked post was slightly less than successful because it dried too quickly. Once we figured out that higher humidity than our basement generally produces was necessary, our subsequent batches have been things of loveliness and have become a favorite gift to pass on to friends. Now that we have a professional meat slicer (our Avantco 9" deli slicer), things are even easier – and more professional in appearance.

Being an inveterate recipe tinkerer, each time making it (8 now) has seen one thing change in the cure. We started with mattikaarts.com’s recipe, then took a bit of a left turn based on what flavors and aromas we like in our cured meats. The current herbs and spices I’ve used are simply lashings of fennel seed, black pepper, juniper berries and fresh bay leaf. What I changed up this time out was to toast it all to change and intensify everything – especially the aroma, it seems. I’ve resisted sampling the results since the two pieces of lonzino were only hung to dry a week ago, but it does smell incredible. Once I’ve settled on our recipe, I will share it here. I’d be interested to see what other people think.

My one other nod to experimentation in this batch was to cure it for slightly less time. We don’t appreciate salty salume around here, and my previous two batches of lonzino were a tad on the salty side, not badly mind you, but less would have been even nicer. One of the main reasons commercial products tend to be so salty is that the manufacturers are trying to disguise the flavor of inferior ingredients. Since we’re going the extra mild to source humanely-raised and butchered pork, why hide its exquisite flavor?

To make sure everything is safe for consumption considering it was a bit less cured, I used the requisite amount of curing salt based on poundage. Again, this is something I don’t normally use because I’m lonzino is a whole muscle meat. Another reason to use curing salt where I don’t in bacon or guanciale, for instance, is that lonzino is not cooked before eating, much like prosciutto. The last thing I want to do is kill my guests with tainted meat. Botulism is not fun.
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Update: I wrote this piece last Thursday and since then the lonzino is drying quite nicely. Currently it’s lost 20% of its weight. The goal is 30% and we might reach that by Sunday. I can’t wait to taste this batch!

Addendum: You’ll notice some white on the casing of the righthand piece of lonzino. This is white mold and something that’s encouraging to have on this or homemade sausage you may be drying. This kind of mold discourages the formation of bad mold (green and especially black mold) and also slows down the drying of your meat. This is a good thing (as noted above). I’ve also heard tell that white mold also improves the flavor. Not having enough experience of that, I won’t comment – but it would be nice to know!

Getting ready for a weekend of cooking!

Our charcuterie just before the mouse invasion!

I just did a quick run down to Gasparro’s, our favorite butcher on Bloor Street here in Toronto. We always like to have a chicken on hand and our spare got used last week in an experiment with brining and smoking – which was a spectacular success (more about that in the future: we’re still in the research stage).

Nick Gasparro sold me a beautiful pork roast (why are all butchers suddenly “Frenching” the rib ends on their roasts?), six ribs-worth. Karel and I are going to cold smoke it on Sunday in another experiment, then hot smoke it to finish. We’ll use two different woods: maple and hickory.

Normally, Karel and I do our weekly food shopping on Saturday mornings, mostly at Toronto's fabulous St. Lawrence Market on Front Street. Today, though, I needed to get the brining of the pork roast started since it needs twelve hours in the liquid and then to rest in the fridge for several hours so the salt can spread evenly through the meat. Our goal is to have the roast lightly salted and with brining it’s pretty easy to overdo it. Since we’re using salt in this case more as a seasoning than to preserve the meat, it’s better to leave it in the brine for too little time than the opposite.

The brine recipe is from my current favorite cookbook (we have over 100), Charcuterie (link is live in case you wish to order it). It’s Brian Polcyn’s creation and he doesn’t smoke it after brining, he grills it, which does add some smoke flavor. But we’ve got a really good reason for branching off on our own: we’re going to serve smoked pork chops to enjoy with homemade sauerkraut we made in October under the expert guidance of the Gluch family – of great sauerkraut renown. Vicki has come up with what looks like a great recipe for baking raw sauerkraut (herbs, spices and riesling wine), and if it works out, we’ll be sharing that with all of you, too. As a teaser, the brine we’re using is flavored with dark brown sugar, juniper berries, fresh sage, garlic and black pepper. Right now it’s cooling on the back step and the roast will soon go in for twelve hours or so. It smells heavenly.

A CURING UPDATE: Currently, we have four hog jowls (guanciale) and two pounds of pork loin (lonzino) air-drying in our basement. It all smells heavenly. Only problem is, it also smelled heavenly to some deer mice that must have come into our house when the cold weather hit. Not having checked the two jowls finished at that time and hanging from our water pipe, I was shocked to see how much had been nibbled away. We’ve decided to let the damaged ones continue hanging after dispatching two of the little rodents (both female, thank heavens). Seeing no more of their little carcases in our traps for the past two days, I think we’re safe. We’ll just cut away the nibbled parts, and keep the remaining guanciale to be enjoyed “chez nous”, using the two we’ve cured and hung since to share with other people.

Fortunately, the little critters didn’t seem to care for lonzino (probably the fennel I used in the cure) or I would have been really put out. To combat further mice invasions on our larder, I’ve left the traps out, and moved everything to a place where they shouldn’t be able to get at it again. But the whole thing remains a huge bummer. For the future, I may need to make some sort of wire box since with our house’s foundation resembling Swiss cheese, we tend to get a few of the little buggers in every autumn.

To conclude, stay tuned for our report on the results of this weekend’s culinary adventures. We haven’t written much about German food on the blog so far, and what could be more Teutonic than Kassler Rippchen, boiled potatoes and sauerkraut?

In praise of buying locally, part 2: The Potato Guy

At the end of my last post, I said I would be “digging deeper”. I wasn’t kidding.

Today, as part 2 of my series on sourcing local, well-grown food, I’m going to be talking about potatoes. But first, you need a little background.

For years, my son Karel and I have been going to the St. Lawrence Market in downtown Toronto nearly every Saturday. It is a fantastic resource for this city to have. Saturdays, as well as the South Market, there is a farmers market in the north building. We always start there and purchase most of the week’s fruit and vegetable needs. There are also vendors who also sell meat, poultry, cheese, baked goods, etc., very much in keeping with most farmers markets, but we ignore them most of the time. We’re there for fruits and veggies!

Sadly, there are also some vendors who “pretend” to be farmers. Their stalls look much the same as the others, but their wares come straight from the Ontario Food Terminal. It didn’t take us long to figure out which was which, and Karel and I generally make our purchases from those selling fruits and vegetables that they’ve grown on their land.

One of our favorite stops is at The Potato Guy, as Karel calls him. Bob Taylor of Cedar Creek Farms (Rockwood, Ontario) is an affable man who knows more about these amazing tubers than anyone I’ve ever met. (We haven’t been out to visit his farm yet, but that’s something I hope to rectify this coming summer.) Everything for sale on his tables was grown on a farm that’s been in the family for generations, and it shows in the quality of his potatoes and the pride with which he sells them.

If you only buy potatoes at a supermarket, you may have noticed that you see the same three or four varieties over and over. With the exception of Yukon Gold, the potatoes you see in the average supermarket are not marked as to what strain the are. They’re sold as generically white potatoes, redskins, and Idaho. But what strain are they? I don’t think anyone in the store could tell you.


Not so when you buy from Bob Taylor. He’s at the market every Saturday around 5:00 a.m. with plastic crates full of all different kinds of heritage potatoes. These go into either pint or quart baskets and are laid out on the table according to strain. The key here is the signs that each of the orderly rows has. These identify the strain and which way(s) is best to cook them. And I’ll bet you’ve never seen any of the names before.

Want to know the best mashing potato? Bob will tell you. You’re making a roast and want to throw some potatoes in to cook with it. Bob will have the perfect suggestion. And the thing about all his potatoes is that the taste is fantastic – and each one is different.

Some of these strains have been around for a very long time. You just don’t see them much anymore. Why is that? “Because they may be a bit harder to grow,” Bob told me a few weeks ago. “Or maybe they don’t look as nice as the potatoes in your supermarket.” He picked up a particularly knobbily spud. “See what I mean? These would be hard to wash mechanically and they look a bit funny. But when you stick a forkful of these in your mouth, you’ll know why I grow them.”

Besides bringing better tasting potatoes to his customers, Bob is helping keep these heritage strains alive. He has made lots of converts over the years.

Sadly,with winter winding down, so is his stock. Some of our favorites have already sold out. The only thing to do, then, is wait until late next fall when Bob will again lay out two large tables of potatoes with names like Irish Cobbler (our favorite masher), Linzer, Kennebec, Shepody. It’s a dizzying list and the flavors and textures are dizzying, too. Because of Bob, we don’t eat many potatoes in the summer, when he has none for sale. Why eat something mediocre when you know what the real thing tastes like?

Cedar Creek Farms sells potatoes that taste the way they used to, grown because of their flavor and texture, not how they’ll look in the store or how long they keep. Isn’t that the way it should be?

Next: eating in season, or why you shouldn’t bother buying asparagus in November.