Home-made Hot Smoked Salmon - yes you can

I love hot smoked salmon. I can take or leave the cold smoked, but the hot (ie cooked) smoked salmon I find versatile and scrummy and I’m told the oils are good for the brain and for your mood.  So the perfect food. 

Except that it’s really expensive.

So I’ve been making my own. Sounds difficult, but is not!

Firstly, you’ll need something to smoke in.  You can buy something new, but I bought something old – from the Sally’s around the corner.  A decades old roasting dish.  I only use it for smoking, so it doesn’t matter how tarnished it gets and it does the trick beautifully. 

That plus tin foil and something that will smoke when it’s hot are the only essentials.  The rest are choices. 
Here’s how I do it.

I line the roasting dish with tin foil.  Then sprinkle that with something to burn.  I’ve been using this wood recently. 

But in the past, I’ve tried rice.  You need something to slowish burn – so wood or rice are good.  Then some flavours – the wood is pre-flavoured being lovely manuka and kanuka. I’ve also soaked it in booze (pinot gris – cougar-juice as someone advised me the other day – or beer work well).  If you do soak in booze, then let it dry afterwards.  Or at least semi-dry.  Try rosemary or tea (green or earl grey maybe) as flavour enhancers.

On top of that, you need another piece of foil.  If you’re lucky enough to have a metal rack that fits in your dish, this is where it comes in. I don’t, so it’s foil for me!

On the foil goes the fish (pin bones removed with tweezers if it’s salmon).  I used to oil the foil, but forgot to once and the fish didn’t stick so now I skip that step. 

There’s more options for flavour here.  Some add salt, pepper and a bit of sugar.  Chilli flakes would be good.  Or one of those steak rubs.  I’ve been using the smoked salt Smoke & Spiced Solar Salt from The Original Smoke and Spice Co.  It’s brilliant.

Once you’ve flavoured the salmon – or not, it’ll be grand without more flavour – it’s time to get hot.  I put the whole thing on the very  hottest element and turn the element up.  Once it starts smoking, which can be a matter of a minute or so, I turn it down to low (though it’s quite a big element, so it’s still pretty hot) and time the fish for 5 minutes.  No more. 

If you can avoid peeking, please do.  The smoke can ruin curtains! 

Once the 5 minutes are up, turn the heat off.  Don’t lift the lid!  Then let it cool.  And enjoy.  In pasta, on pizza, in salads, on crackers, make it into a mousse with crème fraiche.  Try this terrine.  Put it in pie.
 

I have done this with white fish, which also worked well.  I made that into traditional fish pie, in combination with fresh fish. 

Pigs in a mud spa

It’s my partner’s birthday tomorrow so I made cake for him and, apparently, his workmates.  It’s very cute so I thought I’d share it.

 

The power of this is in the decoration.  I made chocolate beetroot cake, one of my favourite chocolate cakes.  You could make anything you like.  Any chocolate or vanilla or lemon cake, even fruit cake if you’re into landfill, would work.  The construction is the impressive part.

 

I based the bits beyond the actual cake on the one on this site: fine craft guild with personal adaptations. 

 

I’ll give you my Beetroot Chocolate Cake recipe to use if you want to.  Because of the beetroot, this is a moist cake which gets better with (a little bit of) age. 

 

Line one large or two medium sized cake tins with cooking paper and oil spray.  This is a big cake, so you can make two if you want to.  If you do that, for this particular decoration you can stack them one on top of the other, filled with ganache or something else.  I made one cake. 

 

Pre-heat the oven to 180°C.

 

Take a huge bowl and sift into it:

2 ½ c plain flour

2 t baking soda

½ c cocoa (use the good stuff)

1 t salt

 

Drain an 850g can of beetroot.  Set aside. 

 

In a food processor, mix together:

4 eggs

2 c sugar

1 ½ c cooking oil (I use canola)

2 t vanilla essence

 

Mix that into the flour.  In the meantime, and don’t mess abut as you don’t want the soda to get too excited before the whole thing goes in the oven, blend the beetroot to a fine slush in the food processor (don’t bother to clean the bowl of the food processor). 

 

Mix that into the flour and sugar mixture and pour into the tin(s).  Cook for 45-50 minutes for 2 tins, longer for one large one.  It’s cooked when a skewer comes out clean when poked all the way through.  Cool completely before decorating.  I cut the very top off the cake to make it a bit flatter before decorating. 

 

So for the fun, impressive decorating bit.

 

Pour 1 ½ cups of cream into a clean saucepan.  When it’s hot but not boiling, take it off the heat and stir 200g of dark chocolate into it until it’s all melted together.  This is called ganache.  Set aside until it cools. 

 

To make the pigs I used white pre-made fondant mixed with a tiny amount of pink food colouring.  The fondant needs playing with to make it pliable and mouldable.  Mould into pig shapes – anything you like.  I used these shapes:

 

 

Make sure that they’re cool and hard before you place them on the cake.

 

Once the ganache is set and spreadable, which may take a while (I chilled it in the fridge for a bit) and when the cake is cool.  Spread some ganache around the edge of the cake and and stick chocolate fingers around it to resemble a fence.  Other recipes use Kitkats.  I wonder if twix would work?  Tie a ribbon around the ‘fence’ to keep it all there.  Clearly a pink one is the best idea.

 

 

Pour/spread the rest of the ganache on the top of the cake.  The ganache needs to be quite thick at this point to ensure that it doesn’t slip through the fence.  Gently park the pigs in the most elegant poses possible and chill for an hour before serving. 

 

 

Please send me photos of yours.  I like the idea of it with frogs instead of pigs.  Are you game?