Smoked Bluefish and Mackerel

A few weeks back, I took a little trip to the south shore of Long Island. Aside from seeing family, I had an ulterior motive: to bring back a large quantity of fish to smoke. It had been a while since I smoked some trout, and I wanted more. By that I mean quantity. I had two ideas: mackerel and bluefish. I don't really love either one except for when they are smoked or pickled. Walking into the fish store I like, the first sign I saw was for Long Island bluefish, right off the boat, for $1.99 a pound. Score! It was that cheap, of course, because no one really likes bluefish. The mackerel was from the Atlantic, off the shores of Boston. I bought about ten pounds in all, and had them butterflied, with the skin left on. Back home I had to jump right into production. With oilier fishes, you don't want them to sit very long at all. Ideally, you want to catch them yourself and get them going as soon as you dock. Being quite the landlubber, except for the eating of fish, I am not yet at that stage.

I brined them in different brines. Let them rest and dry, to form that good old pellicle, and smoked them at 190 degrees until they were done, which was about two hours. The bluefish, being bigger and thicker, took a tad longer. After they cooled they were wrapped up and put in the freezer for consumption over the year. Smoking fish does not preserve the fish. It must be refrigerated for up to a week, or frozen for up to six months. It freezes, I have learned, beautifully. Now I will always be prepared for guests, and the occasional bagel, that comes my way.

Bluefish:

5 to 7 pounds of butterflied fish, skin on, heads removed

For the brine:

2 quarts of water
3/4 cup kosher salt
3/4 cup sugar
1 tablespoon of molasses
2 bay leaves
1 teaspoon of fennel
lemon and orange peels (I used a whole lemon and orange)
1 teaspoon of peppercorns
pinch o' red pepper

Dissolve the salt and sugar in the brine. If you use hot water, let it cool, preferably overnight before adding the fish. Brine the fish for three hours. Let it dry on a rack for a few hours until the pellicle forms, the fish is sticky or tacky to the touch. Hot smoke at 190 degrees from 2 to 4 hours.

Mackerel - follow the same directions using this brine:

2 quarts of water
3/4 cup of salt
3/4 cup of sugar
2 bay leaves
4 grapefruit peels
1 teaspoon of pepper
pinch of red pepper

Heavily coat the mackerel with cracked black pepper after the brine, before the drying.

Smoked Trout and Canadian Bacon

This is the fourth month of Charcutepalooza, and I'm still in the game. You know what I have to say about Charcutepalooza? I have now made all of these things that I always had plans for but hadn't yet gotten around to it. There is so much that I jump right into, but for some reason my plans for charcuterie had been more daunting than most of my endeavors. And let's hear it for Charcuterie, the guiding tome. You know what? I finally got my copy in the mail! Finally!

As a new comer to smoking, it took me a while before I compartmentalized smoking foods into those two simple categories: cold smoking and hot smoking. Cold smoking foods does not cook them, but imparts the smokey flavor, and as such it is important to use a curing salt because cold smoking invites bad bacteria as the temperatures are less than 100 degrees F. Hot smoking, however, utilizes higher temperatures (above 150 degrees F.) and thus cooks the food, while imparting the smoke flavor, and in my mind, it is not quite so important to use curing salt. (The book recommends using curing salt, or pink salt, in all cases unless you are hot smoking at 300 degrees F.)

Cold smoker.

Last summer, my father in law brought me a smoker. This was a Little Chief, with an electric element, and I later found out, a cold smoker. You know how I found out? I smoked some trout in it, and it took six hours, and it was still not done so I had to bake it off in the oven. I will definitely return to this smoker to make cold smoked salmon.

Hot smoker.

The trout that I cold smoked wasn't very smoky. I didn't brine it. I did it all wrong, but at least I cooked it fully. (This may be why jumping into meat curing isn't the brightest idea. You've got to have some bit of knowledge, and that's why Charcuterie, the book, is so great.) Undaunted, I pestered a friend to loan me his smoker that was stuffed in a storage space. He graciously delivered it to my house, seemingly shamed by it's neglect. (He will be repaid in Canadian bacon, I assure you.)

You wouldn't mind being paid in bacon, would you?

So, the second time around I got four whole trout, brined them a few hours and let them sit over night. It was a chilly night, about 33 degrees, and I locked the porch doors hoping rodents wouldn't get in. I then hot smoked it for almost two hours at 180 degrees with alder wood.  I used this Alton Brown recipe for the trout. There is one in Charcuterie (look under the recipe for trout rillettes--yum), but I didn't want to use pink salt, and didn't feel it was necessary for safety (because it was being hot smoked, and fully cooked at safe temperatures) or taste (this was a guess, but I was right). A little bit of knowledge and suddenly I'm a know it all, huh?

Can I talk about the pellicle for a second? Do you know how much I enjoy that word? I especially love how essential it is to smoking anything. The pellicle is formed when the once brined or cured meat is patted dry and allowed to completely dry, and get a little sticky, before smoking. I think the word sounds like oracle. And when my trout had sat over night in a nice chilled evening with a light breeze it formed a wonderful pellicle and I knew, as if it were an oracle of future goodness, that my trout would rule. Or maybe I was just smoking something. Regardless, I like that word. But dang, that trout did rule.

Oh, goodness.

Because I wasn't satisfied with just smoking fish, I opted to make Canadian bacon, too. I was able to order a local pork loin via my supermarket, which was convenient. Because I still had a big bag of that Morton's Tender Quick, I figured why not use it? So I followed a recipe on their site. It was very simple and not quite a brine, a rub that made it's own brine as it sat, much like making bacon. I let it cure for three days and then smoked it with hickory wood for almost three hours at 225 degrees, when the internal temperature reached 150 degrees. When I pulled it out, I felt immensely proud of myself! And, whoa nelly, it was freaking good! Four pounds of Canadian bacon is a boat load of the stuff, and let's be honest, I probably won't make this again any time soon. Although, wouldn't it make a super cool Christmas present along with some good maple syrup? With the rest of the bacon, I sliced it and put it in the freezer to pull out on special occasions.

Pickled green beans and pickled green tomatoes. 

I had some friends over for dinner last night, and I decided to make a few small plates with my smoked goods. It was all very simple and very tasty. Here's what happened.

Smoked Trout Dip

1/4 cup of cream cheese
1/4 cup plain yogurt
one to two whole smoked trout, depending on your tastes, skin removed
a tablespoon of capers

Let the cream cheese sit out and soften. Then add the yogurt and whip them together (I used a fork, then an immersion blender) until smooth. Add the flaked trout and capers and fold them in. Serve with crackers.

Canadian Bacon and Leek Frittata

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Heat a large cast iron pan with a small bit of olive oil to coat it. Saute a half of a cleaned large leek, sliced thinly, until wilted and golden. Remove leeks to a plate.

Can we squeeze a veggie in here?

Add a spot more oil, leaving pan on medium heat. Layer slices of Canadian bacon to cover the bottom of the pan. Add 6 eggs, beaten with a splash of milk or cream, and about 4 ounces of grated cheese (I used a nice sharp cheddar) and cook until the sides seem set but the center is still very wobbly. Put the pan in the oven for about ten or fifteen minutes, until the center seems set. Remove and let cool a bit.

Before.

Using a knife, cut around the edges and using a spatula check to see if the bottom is sticking. If all looks good, put a plate on the pan and invert, so that you have an upside-down canadian bacon pie when you're done. Serve slightly cooled with a bit of chives, in thin pie wedges. No forks needed.

After. Slightly 1950's Better Home and Gardens?

Smoked Trout and Collard Greens

Happy New Year! Our night was spent very quietly with some bubbles, and a light snack: cheese, figs, nuts and bread to start, followed by fried oysters with a hot chili mayonnaise, and french fries. Slightly decadent, but hey, we went to bed at 9:30. We celebrated with the mid-Atlantic ocean! (Having a toddler who gets out of bed at 5 a.m. is the reason.) I meant to smoke two trout as well, but didn't get to it for various reasons. The french fries were out of desperation--I had potatoes cooked off for home fries. Ends up they made fabulous fries. I love it when things go wrong! They sometimes turn out right!

So, this morning I busted out the Camerons stovetop smoker we received from out friends Ken and Molly so many years ago. This thing is awesome. I think I'm in love again. I'm thinking bacon and cheese and chicken thighs and all sorts of smoky goodness. I'm a total smoking amateur, and this is perfect for me. It works great on your stove and makes your house smell nice, too, without any smoke at all. Very easy to clean and stores nicely.

For the two trout I had, I used pepper and lemon juice. They fit snugly in the silver box and cooked for thirty minutes. I used cherry wood because the only other wood I have is hickory. I think alder would have been better...

See that nice local lamb in the background? Mmm. Dinner.

We had this for an early lunch with horseradish cream, capers, and collard greens sauteed in garlic, lemon and olive oil.

Oven-Roasted Cod, Portobello Mushrooms and Buckwheat Noodles

This was Christmas in a nutshell: a wonderful holiday spent with family, visiting with people who sorely needed a visit, some driving in cold, nasty weather, and way too much random and purposeless eating. Which is the point, right? However, the excesses of the holidays are now behind us. I always sigh in relief after the holidays are over. I have usually had enough. And essentially, they are over, because New Year's isn't really the exciting night it once used to be. Steve and I simultaneously (and probably half the country) realized that the time was now upon us to return to healthful (ish) eating. Last night we had this really delicious meal which felt healthy and hearty; a great combination in my book.

Put fish on a large cookie sheet lined with foil. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Olive oil, salt and pepper on the fish. I used northern atlantic cod, though I'm sure many filets would do. Check with the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch. (I really like their Super Green List.)

Top with a dressing of

3 or 4 cloves grated garlic,

1 large knob of ginger,

1/4 cup light olive oil,

splash of tamari or soy sauce, and

1 T lemon-lime glaze (or use some lime juice, lemon juice, a teaspoon of brown sugar--a mix of citrus and sweetner)

Mix this up and use most of it on the fish. Put the fish in the oven for about twenty minutes.

On the lower rack put a tray of sliced portobello mushrooms, drizzled with olive oil, salt and pepper. These two trays will take the same amount of time. Halfway through you could flip or toss the mushrooms around while checking on the fish.

Meanwhile, cook buckwheat noodles, reserving two cups of the cooking water after draining. Put the reserved liquid back on the heat to simmer, add two heaping tablespoons of mild miso and dissolve. Return the noodles to heat up.

To serve: ladle broth into bowl, add noodles, fish on top, portobellos on the side. The mushrooms get slightly crispy in the oven, seasoned perfectly, they are meaty and dense. The fish is light and the sauce is a perfect blend of garlic, ginger and sweet citrus. Add to that the hearty noodles and savory broth, you've got a perfect bowl of repentance.

Shrimp and Scrod Soup

Today started out sunny, but cold. Then it slowly turned cloudy, hazy--that hazy shade of winter, you know? It is December, last time I checked. By dinnertime it was slowly raining, cold and foggy. We were in by 4 o'clock, down in the basement where we have our wood stove. Sounds weird to have a stove in the basement, right? But it's cozy and a little like a den from the seventies, or a rec room, if you will. For numerous reasons, it was the right thing to put the stove in the basement, and now it's the equivalent to our porch in the summer. In the winter we spend all of our time downstairs, hunkered down in the bunker. It's a furnished basement; didn't everyone have them in the seventies? Well, maybe not my family, but all my friends did. Half skeleton and half plush, it was where you and all your friends would hang out with cookies and milk, and then, fast forward a few years, whatever you could find in the liquor cabinet. Maybe there was a dart board (we have one), and perhaps a record player (check), and probably also a oddly stocked bar, containing creme de menthe and some crappy gin (odd? yes, crappy? no).

I stepped out on the porch tonight, while a rich and tomato-y broth waited for me in the kitchen, simmering away, as I finished my last sip of wine. Waiting for what, you ask? To put the fish and shrimp in, so they could poach quickly and be finished off with parsley and Pernod. I took my time on the now defunct porch, taking in all the sounds: the howl of the fire alarm siren, the distant, slow choogle of the freight trains running, the sad, quiet patter of the rain. All the lights in the distance from neighbors' porches had a fuzzy glow about them, and I breathed in the air, wet and cold, and thought, here is December. It only gets colder from here on out.

And so, I turned in to the kitchen, warm and sputtering with the shimmery red broth waiting for me to slip in the shrimp and scrod, to finish it's duty to warm our souls on this gently wintry night.

Saute chopped garlic in olive oil. Add one large diced onion, and one peeled, diced carrot. Bay leaf, please! Slowly, one quart of shrimp stock (or some fish stock). One can of peeled tomatoes. Let that business simmer for a while if you can handle it, adding some oregano, fennel, salt, red pepper flakes and ground black pepper. When it's all looking and smelling right, and you are ready to eat, ease in a half pound of shrimp (I kept them in the shells; more work and yes, messy, but more flavor) and a half pound of homely, but proud, scrod. A handful of chopped fresh parsley, a tablespoon of Pernod, if you have it, and then sit down by the fire and sup.

Scrod with Tomatoes, Capers and Fennel

I love fish, but I hate that the ocean is pretty much fished clean. So, I generally don't have fish at all. It's so sad. I grew up close to the water, and we always had amazing, fresh, local fish. And we didn't call it local, it just was. One of my fondest memories is of walking the beach where we spent most of our summer, as the sun went down, picking mussels to make for dinner. This is the North Shore of Long Island back in the seventies. The water was probably horrible then, but what did we know? 

It was West Neck Beach on the Long Island Sound. I remember exploring every nook and cranny of that beach as a child. Passing leathery brown women in little bikinis doused in baby oil or Hawaiian Tropic, the smell of baby powder or coconut overwhelming in the heat, with those silver reflectors so they could really burn to a crisp. The lifeguard chairs, the beach house, the rocks that separated the swimming lesson section and all the way to the end of the spit where no one would go. You could be alone there, or mostly so, and pretend the little streams were rivers and that a feather was a boat and that you could sail to the end of the world and still be home at six for dinner. We weren't a fishing family, so we got our fish from Jeff's by the harbor. We had a lot of flounder sauteed in butter. It was all very simple. In the summer, for a treat, my mother would buy lobsters, or my brother would bring home lobsters that he helped catch. It was a big, lovely production: a bag of wriggling lobsters, big steaming pot of water, melted butter, big huge plates, nut crackers for the claws. Divine and exciting. 

Yesterday, I bought some wild-caught scrod. I just looked it up on the Monterey Bay Aquarium's Seafood Watch Program website and found out I bought something I shouldn't have. Oh, well. I guess I should practice what I preach. It was 7.99 a pound, a great deal and looked beautiful. I love cod and it's brethren. I should have gotten Icelandic scrod, but then that's not local, right? That's why I avoid fish entirely. It's complex enough to need an up to date report on it! Anyway, this is how I cooked it. It was incredibly delicious, entirely easy and quick.

Oven on at 350. Olive oil in baking dish. Fillets in pan. Drizzle more olive oil, salt, pepper. Chopped super ripe, fresh tomatoes on top--big chunks. A few teaspoons of capers and their juice. Some fennel seeds. Heavy splash of white wine. Bake for twenty minutes. Finish with chopped parsley and serve over whole wheat cous cous.