Smoked trout in a bag

Last week I have discovered an easy way to add smoked flavor to baked or grilled fish - smoker bags for oven or grill - and I used it to "smoke" whole trout several times, with great success.




The bag is made of several layers of aluminum foil, there are alder wood chips between the layers, and tiny holes in the inside layer. You rub the fish with olive oil, salt and pepper inside and out, place a few lemon slices and/or herb sprigs inside each fish, put the fish in the bag and close it. Then you can place the whole thing on a pre-heated gas grill, or in a hot oven. The chips release the smoke inside the bag, and it imparts it's flavor on the fish while it cooks.




Because the fish is enclosed, it doesn't lose any moisture, the way it does in real hot-smoking. The result is a moist, tender, steamed-fish texture, with a smoky flavor.

I found that one bag can accommodate 2-3 large trouts, up to four pounds total weight. Baking in the oven at 400 degrees for about 40-45 minutes works very well. The best results, however, I got when I grilled the fish package over very hot grill for about 30 minutes. The fish got a little charred on the edges while the centers stayed moist.




Update 4/7/2011:
Today I smoked a 2.5 pound slab of pork ribs in a bag. I used a pre-made dry rub on the ribs (Jake's Righteous Rub: paprika, brown sugar, garlic, parsley, tarragon, oregano, salt - thank you, Jake! I've added fresh ground black pepper, and more paprika for color). My gas grill goes from zero to 600 in about 15 minutes. I kept the bag at 550 degrees until the chips started smoking, 15 minutes or so, then reduced the heat to 325, and cooked the bag for a little over an hour.




Although the meat came out very tasty and falling off the bone tender, there is a lot of room for improvement:
- alder wood smoke is not as dramatic on pork as it is on fish; the bags are also available with hickory chips - I'll try this next
- the surface of the meat is somewhat dry; reduce the time at high temperature, and reduce the slow-cooking temperature too. It may be a good idea to marinate the meat instead of using a dry rub
- the bag had room for much more than just one slab of ribs; I'll toss in some onions and garlic, and may be even small potatoes next time.




- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Smoking in the rain: Canadian bacon

Many years ago, when I was growing up (yes, I am old), chicken used to be the lean diet meat, and pork was juicy and fatty, definetely no good for dieting, with the distinct flavor - love it or hate it. I don't want to know what they do to the poor animals now, but the roles have reversed to a degree: the huge chickens that you buy in a grocery store are almost 50% fat (unfortunately, it doesn't improve the flavor), and the pork is lean, and yes, mostly tastless. The good thing is, pork easily accepts flavors during marinating or curing. The leanest cut, pork loin, after curing and smoking becomes wonderful Canadian bacon.

I used Canadian bacon recipe from my favorite Charcuterie book. Since I had 2 smaller pieces of pork loin, and because of the shape of the dish, I cut the brine recipe in half; I've also adjusted the quantities of the ingredients a little, to accomodate my taste for less salty meat, and unlimited garlic. To cure two 2-pound pieces of trimmed pork loin I used
2 liters water
1/2 cup kosher salt
1/3 cup brown sugar
20 gram pink salt
bunch of sage
bunch of thyme
6 large garlic cloves

The pork spent 2 days curing in the brine, covered and refrigerated. 

I then took the pork out of the brine, rinsed it under cold running water, dried with paper towels, tied in a few places to keep the shape, and let it rest at room temperature while I was busy starting my primitive charcoal smoker. This took a little over an hour of blowing on the charcoals, trying to contain the sparks while not getting burned myself, moving the hot and sparkling smoker farther from the house, running to the store to get more charcoal, moving the smoker closer to the house to protect it from the beginning rain, swearing in four or five languages all the while. Finally, the little no-good termometer on the lid moved to the mark between "warm" and "ideal" and froze there. No matter what I did, it wouldn't go higher.

Not to waste all the heat, I also smoked a couple of shallots, a boiled potato, a head of garlic, and a couple of handfuls of sea salt.

At my smoker's uncertain temperature, it took the pork about 4 hours to get to the internal temperature of 145 degrees. By that time the exterior was covered by beautiful, glossy and aromatic smoked "skin".
I let the bacon cool, removed the twine, sliced it, and vacuum-packed most of it for storage.

The next day I decided that my homemade Canadian bacon deserves homemade English muffins for breakfast. The recipe I used, http://allrecipes.com//Recipe/english-muffins/Detail.aspx , calls for shortening - I replaced it with melted unsalted butter.

Also, it took only 4-1/2 cups of flour, instead of 6 in the recipe, to make workable, relatively soft dough - must be due to variations in flour and humidity.

I was very happy with my adjusted recipe, and by 3 pm I already had a perfect homemade breakfast:

Toasted English muffin, Canadian bacon, lightly poached eggs, chives from the garden, Hollandaise sauce made with 1 egg yolk, 1/2 unsalted butter, juice of 1 lemon, salt and freshly ground white pepper; Turkish coffee.

By the time I finished breakfast, it was time to think about dinner.

Slow food.

Pacific ring of food, where bread is baking, and ducks and goats roam

After someone on craigslist food forum mentioned going to Salmon Creek Ranch that raises duck for eggs and meat, and goats, I wanted to go too. I called them a few times, and every time got an answering machine telling me that everyone is outside with the animals. No wonder: if they have all these fine birds and beasts to tend, why would they sit in the office, waiting for my call?

This Saturday it was nice and sunny. I wanted to go for a ride with the car top down. R. wanted to see the ocean, and a snack or two. So we went on our favorite route to Bodega Bay, stopping at our friend Jed's bakery in Freestone to smell the dough, have coffee with a sticky bun in the vegetable garden, and chat with the owner.

Jed was in the shop, busy as always, but spared a few minutes to talk with us about salsa dancing and to tell the exciting news that his samba drums CD is coming soon. Yes, we’ve been waiting for it!

As we were sipping coffee and blowing on the hot straight out of the oven bun in the sunny garden, the wind started to pick up, so we hurried on before it gets too cold.

Since Salmon Creek Ranch is on the way to Bodega Bay, this time we just drove up to their gate and pressed the intercom button. The intercom gave us the same message as the answering machine, no one in the office. Luckily, John, the owner, was riding his Range Rover not far from the gate. He saw us, opened the gate, and instructed us to follow him to the house.

The gravel road winds around the hillside for about a mile before it gets to the little yellow house surrounded by emerald hills. I didn’t realize how low my convertible is until I scraped the muffler on a couple of bumps. The rainy season took its toll on the gravel road. Have to be careful, we are not in a Rover. This mostly kept me from enjoying the view, which is breathtaking, as R. told me later.

Finally we arrived and parked on the grass between the farmhouse, fenced duck yard, and a tiny wooden shack titled “Merchandise” in large friendly letters. The merchandise shack holds a cooler full of super-fresh duck eggs, and a freezer that contains a wealth of vacuum-packed Muscovy duck breasts and legs. To get fresh duck, you have to be there on the harvest day. Next time I’ll know, I’m on the mailing list.

$38 got us a dozen of huge, dirty, wonderful duck eggs, and two breasts, one large, almost 2 lb, for the smoker, one small, a little over a pound, for the grill. Beats the farmers market. And we got to see the animals.

We didn’t actually meet the egg laying ducks. They roam free, so they were probably hiding from the piercing ocean breeze on the other side of the hill, protected by the hillside and the trees. Meat ducks don’t have this luxury: their yard right on top of the hill is exposed to the wind all the time, guarded by an electric fence and a large shepherd dog Moose, their wing feathers trimmed to prevent them from flying over the fence to meet coyotes and mountain lions. So the meat ducks were all crowded together to keep warm, but refused to go into their little houses. Apparently, the fresh air is more important than comfort.
Goats are too fluffy to care about the wind. The snacks are what they want.
We were greeted by a couple of cute kids, and then the whole herd appeared from over the hill crest, coming right at me.

At some point I thought that I can actually tempt them with a handful of grass to come close enough to touch them, but they figured that I don’t have anything unusual to offer, and lost interest.

The larger goats expertly get up on their hindlegs and chew branches off the trees and tall bushes. The little kids look at them with envy. They are cute eating machines. John rents them out to clear hillside lots.

---

By the time we got to Bodega Bay it was blowing so hard that we didn’t want to get out of the car. I almost decided to stop and close the car top. We just drove around, took in the view, and went home.

The larger of the two duck breasts that we got at the farm I brined with red wine and blood orange, then smoked in my water smoker over cherry wood chips. Actually, a smoked duck breast is delicious even without any seasoning besides salt and pepper. I just did this complex brine because I could: the red wine that I open and don’t finish; the blood orange from the market; herbs that grow happily in the garden, enjoying this season’s endless rain.
It’s sufficient to brine the duck breast overnight. Due to circumstances beyond my control, mine spent full two days in the brine. The resulting flavor was strong, but beautiful.

Treat the smoked duck as you would treat ham. Serve it cold, thinly sliced across the grain, over green salad, roasted vegetables, or on a slice of bread with fire-roasted pepper and duck egg (or any) mayonnaise.

Smoked duck breast
Serves 4 as the main dish, 6 as an appetizer

1 cup water
1 Tbsp kosher salt
6 whole + ½ tsp crushed black peppercorns
2 sprigs rosemary
5 sprigs thyme
2 bay leaves
1 blood orange
1 cup red wine
2 garlic cloves, sliced

1 large whole boneless Muscovy duck breast, skin on

About 2 cups cherry wood or other hardwood chips

Prepare the brine: Boil the water in a small pan. Stir in the salt, whole peppercorns, rosemary, thyme, and bay leaves. Remove the skin from the orange with a vegetable peeler, cut the orange in halves. Drop the orange skin and halves into the brine. Let cool. Remove the orange halves, squeezing the juice into the brine. Add wine.

Brine the duck: Press the garlic slices into the duck breast. Season the breast with crushed black pepper. Put the duck breast into a large zip lock bag, pour the brine into the bag, close, and shake to distribute the brine. Refrigerate overnight, or up to 48 hours.

Smoke the duck: Remove the duck breast from the brine, rinse under cold running water, wipe with paper towels, and leave out to dry. Remove and discard garlic slices. Add the wood chips to the brine, and soak for about 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, prepare the charcoals in a smoker, or heat up a covered grill for low indirect grilling.
Put the duck breast, skin side up, on the grill. Add a handful of soaked hardwood chips to the charcoals (or put them into a smoker box and place on the hottest part of the grill).

Smoke to the enternal temperature of 160 degrees. Remove from the smoker and let cool.

With the skin side up, slice thinly across the grain. Serve.

The Sauvignon Blanc that I had with this duck was a huge mistake. This is a red meat, and it deserves a red wine. Try a big Pinot or a light bodied Merlot with it.

Charcuterie in the middle of a storm

It's an El Nino year, the weather pattern that repeats every seven years and brings a lot of water to our otherwise dry coastal desert. The last storm went on for two weeks, with the water pouring down from the sky continuously, the roofs leaking, ponds and creeks overflowing, highways flooded, visibility zero or less, and driving a nightmare. Stay home and cook. I used the time to do more charcuterie.
This time I used lots of herbs and spices on both my duck legs confit and the bacon, with mixed results. The bacon cured for 6 days with sea salt, sugar, a dash of pink salt (sodium nitrite), torn bay leaves, rosemary, thyme, garlic, and black pepper, then slowly oven-roasted at 200 degrees (no smoking), developed a deep and interesting flavor. On the other hand, the same spices (minus sugar) made almost no difference for the duck legs.
After I cured the legs with salts and spices for about 24 hours, rinsed, dried, let rest for an hour at room temperature, then slowly cooked them in mixed duck and goose fat in a Dutch oven for a couple of hours, and then seared them over high heat in a skillet, the confit didn't taste much different from the previous batch made with just salt and pepper. The duck flavor and the salts overpower all the spices.

For smoked beef sausages I used 2/3 beef chuck and 1/3 pork belly, ground through a small die and seasoned with salt, pink salt, sugar, pepper, rosemary, juniper berries, and red wine. Stuffed in hog casing and tied into handsome rings, dried at room temperature for a couple of hours, then smoked in my water-smoker for two hours over apple wood chips. The sausages came out pretty dry, fully cooked, and tasting very meaty and savory.

They are good sliced thinly as a part of our late-night cheese and fruit board. I have also cut them into thick chunks and fried them with bacon and potatoes, and chopped them for a pasta with cauliflower and cavolo nero (drop them in hot water for a few seconds to loosen the casing, then peel it off).

The salted duck breasts hang dry-curing, wrapped in cheesecloth and tied with kitchen string, in my outside laundry closet right now. The temperature in the 50-ies and the high humidity are perfect. I'll try them in one or two days.

Another storm is coming.

Barbecue Spareribs

We were getting ready for a long hot summer of chilled wine and fresh figs, no cooking, but m-elle posted a photo of herself in the Distillery, wearing summer clothes, without the usual blanket, sweater, and fur boots, and this scared the summer away. So we are freezing here, in the beautiful sunny California, once again.
Wine and figs are not nourishing enough in this chill; the body needs some smoked meat. And here it is:

I rubbed the pork spareribs with a mix of Old Western BBQ Spices (sea salt, paprika, coriander, pepper, curry, onion, garlic, oregano, celery and mustard powder) and chili powder the day before cooking, then refrigerated them for about 20 hours. When ready to cook, I wrapped the ribs in aluminum foil and baked them in a medium hot oven for an hour. This helped to melt out some fat, while keeping the meat tender, and gave me time to clean and heat my water smoker grill.

I used about 1/3 of a bag of lump hardwood charcoal for the heat, and a few handfuls of hickory chips, soaked in water for an hour, for the smoke. Every time the grill stops smoking, about every 30 minutes, I add another handful of chips. The sauce is made while the ribs are smoking. I got the idea of smoking the onion for the sauce together with the meat from Jamison and Jamison Smoke & Spice book, one of the very few cookbooks without pictures that I own and read for inspiration anyway.

The recipe for the sauce makes about 3 cups; if you don’t eat the sauce with a soup spoon, there will be some left over. It keeps refrigerated for about a week and is good with any grilled meat too.

The entire process keeps you warm and moderately busy for five hours. And then we eat.

Smoked Pork Spareribs with Tomato Barbecue Sauce
Serves 3

3-1/2 lb slab pork spareribs

2 Tbsp Old Western BBQ Spices
1 Tbsp chili powder

2 cups meat drippings
1 smoked onion (or fresh onion), diced
2 large garlic cloves, minced
½ cup red wine vinegar
½ cup red wine
6 oz can organic tomato paste
2 Tbsp molasses
1 Tbsp Dijon mustard
1 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce
1 tsp cayenne pepper
salt, pepper

Rub the ribs with BBQ Spices and chili powder, wrap in aluminum foil, refrigerate overnight.

Preheat the oven to 375 F. Bake the ribs in their foil wrap for 1 hour.

While the ribs are in the oven, prepare the water smoker. Heat it up to about 200 F.

Remove the ribs from the oven. Carefully open the foil and pour the rendered fat and meat juices into a small bowl. Chill the drippings for an hour or so to separate the fat.

Place the ribs together with the unpeeled onion in the smoker. Smoke for 4 hours, or until the meat is very tender and falls off the bones. Check the onion 90 minutes through cooking. It should be somewhat softened but not mushy. Remove the onion and set to a side for 15-20 minutes to cool. When cool enough to handle, peel and chop the onion.

Remove the bowl with the meat juices from the refrigerator and carefully scoop and discard all the fat that is beginning to solidify on top. Pour the meat juices into a small saucepan; bring to a boil over medium heat. Add all other sauce ingredients, reduce heat, and simmer for 10-15 minutes.

Taste the sauce and adjust the flavor if needed: add more cayenne for hot, molasses for sweet, or vinegar for sour. Puree in blender, holding down the lid to avert a disaster.

When the ribs are ready, remove from smoker, cut into portions, pour some sauce over the ribs, or serve separately in a bowl.

Welcome Back, Downtown Market!

Downtown San Carlos is a cozy and friendly place. The weather is mild, the traffic is slow, and the locals come out to walk their kids and dogs and to chat lazily at outdoor cafe tables. Every time we spend a weekend at my boyfriend's, we take a short walk to check out the coffee houses, old family-style and new upscale restaurants and wine bars, some on the main street, some in the side alleys, overhung with flowering vines, boutiques, antiques, and, until recently, two gourmet grocery stores - two, on the same street!

Then one of the stores closed for remodeling, and stayed closed for several months. We were anxious for it to reopen, tried to peek through its windows, blocked by construction panels, to see the progress; the progress was slow. In these uncertain times you soon loose the hope that your favorite store will open ever again, and after a while we concentrated our attention on the second one. Just as we were getting used to having only one gourmet store in town, it closed, and the sign on the door announced that it was moving to another town. Picture this: no gourmet store in downtown San Carlos. Nowhere for me to run for a marinated hanger steak or homemade sausages if the weather calls for barbeque in the park. Nowhere for my dear man to get good thick-sliced bacon for breakfast, or a deli takeout salad on his way from work. We actually had to drive to get a selection of cheeses for our late-night cheese and fruit plate! The downtown lost a part of its charm.

And then, a couple of weeks ago, I was driving by the first store, the Bianchini Family Market, and it was open! And with a flare: the shiny new shelves hosted dozens of olive oils, balsamic vinegars and San Marzano tomatoes; the meat case made you want to buy every juicy cut of Neiman Ranch beef, veal, and lamb, or a hand-made sausage, and start grilling at once.
In the olive bar, you can pick luqcues, picholine, gaeta, nicoise, kalamata, cerignola, or any type of pitted and stuffed olives (that I don't really care about). The cheese section if stuffed with a small but exquisite selection of California artisan cheeses, as well as ones from France, Italy, and Spain. Wine selection isn’t large or fancy, but they are all good food-friendly wines at reasonable prices. The fruit and vegetable department shows all the fresh picked, seasonal produce, shown to their best advantage to wet your appetite. I approached a man who was kneeling on the floor, carefully arranging potatoes on the lower shelf, and asked if I can take a few pictures. The man turned out to be one of the Bianchinis, the owner family, and no, he didn’t mind me photographing his produce.



When we went to check out the downtown on Saturday, everyone was out for a sunny afternoon, and the Bianchini’s market had a grand opening party: a string band at the entrance, local artisan food tasting throughout the store, and a huge smoking grill out in the parking lot, pork ribs on one side, halved chickens on the other. The grill master handed me a full rack of ribs, bathed in aromatic and spicy Bourbon sauce:
“Here, they’ve been grilling since 9 am”.
He told me that the ribs can be grilled from four hours and up to a whole day, but the temperature shouldn’t get higher than 225 degrees, then they won’t dry out, and he taught me how to control the temperature in my home smoker.


Why didn’t I ask for the sauce recipe? Guess I have to come back for it next weekend.

Smokin' fish

It must be my childhood spent by campfires, or the Russian traditional love for smoked food, or both. I just cannot pass a slice of smoked meat or sausage, I'm addicted to some smoked cheeses (braided mozzarella, oh yes!), and I would actually enjoy the smell on my fingers after cleaning a smoked fish.

So after my friends bought a simple electric smoker and started smoking trout in their backyard, I come to their place more often now. And, after a few successful cookouts, I wanted a toy of my own. And of course my had to be the real thing, charcoal. About the same price, twice the headache. That's my way.

Got it for about $40 in Home Depot, spent a whole afternoon assembling some 50 pieces of fine Chinese craftmanship that didn't really fit together - and now it works!

It's basically a metal cylinder on legs, and on the inside wall of the cylinder there are little shaky metal supports that hold the bowl for the charcoal on the bottom, the water bowl above it, and two grills for the food. If you remove the water bowl and put one of the grills right over the charcoals, it can be used for grilling. The thing is topped with a lid with a termometer that doesn't have numbers, but "low", "ideal" and "hot", so it's useless, need to replace it. The ventillation is provided by holes and gaps in the construction. Cheap and simple gadget, just the way it should be for this ancient cooking method.

I've already used my smoker to barbeque pork ribs and to smoke-roast beef.
Now it's time for fish.

I like to buy fish in Oriental markets, they have the best selection, including some exotic seafood, and it's usually much fresher than in your local supermarket. However, since I moved to Marin, getting fresh fish is not easy anymore. There is not a single Oriental market in the entire Marin county. There are bridges to cross, and traffic on the bridges, so if I plan to buy fish I have to remember to bring a cooler, and then go straight home, and fast.

This week it all came together nicely (lots of planning over the weekend), and I am the happy owner of a whole farmed salmon trout, a large sturgeon steak, and a couple of pounds of frozen sardines.

The sardines are not in season, but these ones defrosted so nicely (in the fridge, covered) that they almost looked alive!

There is no precise recipe for smoking fish, because all smokers are different, conditions affect the proccess a lot, and yes, we all have very different tastes when it comes to smoked fish.

What I did is this:

Brine the salmon trout and the sturgeon steak in the brine made of 8 cups of warm water, 3 Tbsp. kosher salt, 2 Tbsp. brown sugar, and a handful of Key limes, juice and rinds. Refrigerate for 4-5 hours. Remove from brine, rinse and dry with papper towels.

Defrost and clean the sardines. Rub them with a little kosher salt, leave for a few minutes, rinse and dry with paper towels.

Lite charcoal in the smoker. I used hardwood lump charcoal from Home Depot, about 1/4 of a bag. Pour approximately 2 Qt. of hot water in the water bowl, and try to set the bowl in the smoker without burning yourself with either fire or water. Brush the fish and the grills with oil (I used grapeseed oil), arrange fish on the grills, and place into the smoker. Close the lid.

Add a handful of applewood chips to the charcoal to create smoke. Add more chips every 30 minutes or so (when the smoke stops coming out).
If I were to trust the little termometer, my smoker never went higher than between "low" and "ideal". It was hot, however, and the big fishes registered the internal temperature of 140F after 3 hours. Sardines I took off the grill earlier, after 2 hours.

Sardines came out on the dry side but not overly dry, the flavor concentrated and blended with the smoke wonderfully. Eat them with your hands, right off the bone (little bones are edible), or fillet them and toss with a salad or pasta.

The sturgeon is firm but still very oily. Next time I'll smoke the flesh only, and save the skin and cartilage for an excellent soup. After smoking the trimmimgs had be discarded, the strong smoky flavor is great for the flesh, but it's probably too much for the soup.

Almost forgot: I tossed a whole head of garlic, with the top removed, on the grill for the last hour of cooking. This scent is heavenly. I am making salad dressing with it.

Here the cold sturgeon fellet is served with sorrel and other greens from the garden, and a market tomato. The tart flavor of sorrel is perfect with the oily fish. Dressed with just a splash of good olive oil.

Added slices of boiled egg as an afterthought, for color and texture.


The salmon trout was perfect (and is, I had to freeze half of it, it's big).



Served the smoked salmon trout filet on top of the salad of Boston lettuce, tomato and avocado, with smoked garlic dressing.

Smoked garlic salad dressing
makes about 1 cup

1 head of garlic, smoked as described above, peeled
juice of 1 lemon
1 tsp brown sugar
salt, pepper to taste
1 cup extra virgin olive oil

Combine garlic, lemon juice, sugar, salt and pepper in a blender. Blend untill smooth. Add olive oil in small portions, blend in each portion. Adjust the seasoning and serve.