It's The Sauce

Making Gravlax for Salmon Benedict.

This is my absolute favorite breakfast. When Bonne Femme realized I was making a run the sauce this morning, she said, we're gonna eat it right? You're not gonna get mad and throw it away this time right?

I have a checkered past with hollandaise, at school I could bang it out with my eyes shut, I was teaching other folks how fix their slowly curdling pots. But at home it's been a different story; one way or another I wreck it, the last time I attempted it the emulsion broke so bad I could not imagine watching poeple eat it, I threw it away, and sauced with some Löwensenf. After that I determined that I would spend several days making lots of sauce nailing down the technique.



I never got around to making buckets of sauce, but last week Walt's had a sale on Salmon, so I knew the day would come again very soon when I would have to face the sauce. Salted salmon is a regular feature here on the blog, it's so easy to make, and so delicious, I think everybody should be making it.



It's salt sugar pepper and whatever seasoning sounds good



For this one I used some white pepper and hazelnut brandy.

As for curing time it can be anywhere from 18 hours to 3 days. I started this one Wednesday, so it has plenty of time to firm up.



The cured fish made it debut at the Friday Night Pizza Party, on a pie with caramelized onion, goat cheese and jalapeño.



I have been thinking about hollandaise sauce all week, like Shaun White setting to drop in on the half pipe, I visualized my ingredients, my moves, but my nerves were a mess. I decided to chuck it and turn to something completely different. The Saucier's Apprentice, by Sokolov (A gift from my Grandma and my Uncle), is very good introduction into the world of sauce and the hollandaise recipe rocked: No double boiler, no blender, no cold butter. The gravlax could not have been any happier with brunch on a Sunday morning.









Cheers.


Links

MAC on Gravlax Nation

The Saucier's Apprentice by Raymond Sokolov

Smoked Trout

Like I was saying in a previous post, I brought some fish home from Rushing Waters Fisheries in Wisconsin. I was ready to try my hand at smoking some fish. Since I had never smoked fish before I consulted The Easy Art of Smoking Food, by Chris Dubbs and Dave Heberle. The book suggests curing fish such as trout for five to eight hours before smoking.

For the salt mixture I used the proportions from my Gravlax recipe, about 3 grams of salt and 5 grams of sugar for each 100 grams of weight. So I applied the cure, put it in the fridge and took the boys to the Museum of Science and Industry.

When we got back, we fired up the cold smoker. The cold smoker consists of my Weber Bullet, an electric burner from K-mart, and a stainless steel bowl in which heated hickory sawdust smolders.

However on this day instead of saw dust, I used the branches from a basil plant I had saved from the garden. I got the idea from The Herbfarm Cookbook, by Jerry Traunfeld, it's at the library go check it out.

I chopped the shrub into bits. By the handful, the basil burned for about an hour. Due to the cold outside temp, the smoker stayed around 100F. The basil had a light sweet smoke, an hour was all the smoke I wanted, so I took the fish inside.

I brushed them with a little canola oil then finished them to firm and flaky in a 250F oven, about 30 minutes.

Holy smokes is it good. Bonne Femme ate a whole filet during the taste test. The skin is very good too. Mix it up with some crème fraîche and some herbs or make rillettes and you got yourself a smoky canapé. But like I said most of this fish didn't even make it to the toast. To Conclude: You don't need to live near a fancy pants deli to live the high life, just fresh ingredients and something in your yard that can burn.

Cheers.

Gravlaks Nation

photo: Erik in Oberlin

Photo: Erik in Oberlin


(Dear MAC: )

I just made gravlaks this morning--two kinds actually; one the kind we brought last year (you know, the one Jen loved so much.), the other kind a new one with caraway, red pepper, aniseed and whisky. We're using two recipes in Kitchen of Light, by Andreas Viestad. We're also doing a kransekakke, and will try to send a pic or two of it as well.

All the best,

Erik in Oberlin

Dear EIO:

Thanks for the pictures. Merry Christmas. There is nothing finer than cured fish on Christmas morning. Gravlaks, as spelled by the Norwegians (Graavilohi for our Finnish friends, or gravlax in Stockholm), is so easy to make, I don't know why every red blooded American isn't salting away a fillet right now. We went through two and a half pounds in two days.

Slice and sweep.

Christmas Day with hollandaise and mustard

Next day picnic lunch at Cedar Falls.

Here's how you do it:

Grind spices, combine with salt and sugar.

Rub it on both sides of the fish.

Don't be shy with the dill.

Wrap em up together and cure in the fridge for 3 days. Flip daily. Slice thin, using your sharpest knife, in a sweeping motion leaving the skin on the board. Garnish however you want, I like mustard,

Christmas mustard if you've got it.

Here's the quantities I used:

2 lbs 8 oz (1136 grams) Salmon fillet, skin on

40 g Kosher salt

65 g Sugar

5 g white pepper

1 g caraway

a bunch of fresh dill.

Cheers.

Christmas Party

The proper way to open cava as demonstrated by Zack.

Office Christmas Party 2007

Once again the holiday party for Bonne Femme's office was held at a tony Lincoln Park location. As with any party I like to bring some food:

Rôti de porc à la porchetta.

I love this roast. A boneless pork loin is wrapped with a pork belly. In between the layers a cream of olive oil, salt, rosemary, juniper berry, garlic and pepper is applied, then smoked over hickory.

Fazzoletti della nonna coi funghi secchi e spinaci.

Italian crepes. I think it literally translates to "grandma's headscarf with wild mushrooms and spinach." I got the idea from Marcella Hazan.

I got these Criminis (baby bellas) River Valley Ranch in Burlington Wisconsin. Stop by if you are in the neighborhood.

I made the mushrooms into a Duxelles, pureed sauteed spinach, and made a white sauce with Parmesan cheese. Making crepes was fun.


Rillettes du canard.

After receiving Brian's letter, The Jersey Report: Confit du Canard, I got a duck. I like to think I aways read the label but in this case I didn't and when I got home I realized that my pintail had been "flavored" with a brine solution. So I skipped salting it. Rillettes is potted meat, but to get the meat I have to make a confit first.

I threw away the orange sauce, saved the neck and the carcass for stock, and rendered the skin and fat.

I got about 12 ounces of fat from the duck. I needed more so I made some lard.

For the confit I probably added 16 ounces of lard to the duck fat to make sure everything was covered. I put in the meat the gizzards and the wings. They cooked in a 200F oven for about 6 hours.

For the rillettes, I took the confit meat and a little duck fat and ran it through the Cuisinart.

Gravlax.



I feel no holiday is complete with out some home cured fish. This one with dill, white pepper and caraway.



Other Additions:



Kiff made a magical mango chutney to go with the pork. Audrey roasted chestnuts for a superb chestnut cheesecake. Corine's spinach salad added color and balance to the holiday fare. JJ made Christmas cookies, and Bonne Femme made her signature bacon and onion tart, polenta and the ever popular Ice box cake. Thanks everybody for a great party.



Merry Christmas



Cheers.

Hush: Breakfast Before BBQ

eating light the day after, gravlaks et un peu de moutarde de d'dorf.

Sunday in the kitchen part 3: Salmon Benedict.

I have always liked watching the academy awards. I always think about having a party but I never make plans. This week things just sort of fell together: I wasn't planning on smoking brisket, my neighbor sent it over. I wasn't planning on making hot links, but I wanted something to go with the brisket. I wasn't planning on having a busy Sunday, but I already started curing some fish...

Mom (and gma) came to visit last weekend and she bought some of the freshest laid eggs from her girls. Mom also brought her double boiler. Mom loves the cured salmon, we did this once before (see the previous post gravlaks) and it is so good and so easy, I don't think there is any need to buy lox at the store. Here's what I did:

300 g salmon fillet, skin on, about 1 inch thick.

92 g salt

150 g sugar

small handful of fresh chopped dill

Grindings of black pepper

splash of brandy

EDITOR'S NOTE 12-28-07: Yeouch too much salt and sugar for quanity of fish. See this Gravlaks Recipe for better proportions.

I rinsed and patted dry the fish, then rubbed the salt and sugar, scattered the pepper, splashed the brandy and applied the dill. I wrapped it tight in some plastic wrap, then into a ziploc bag and then into the fridge for three days. I flipped it daily.

After three days the fish is noticeably firmer. To slice, I got my longest sharpest knife and started with the blade perpendicular to the fish then swept diagonally as I cut, finishing with the blade parallel to the fillet, leaving the skin on the cutting board.

Now for breakfast. Mom started making the hollandaise sauce( we sort of used a recipe from Joy of Cooking). Watching her stir stir stir, I figured I could help, I had never made hollandaise but what could be hard about stir stir stirring? Ma hesitantly turned over the whisk and started poaching eggs.

You always hear the warnings from the fancy pants chefs about sauces breaking for no reason and I think, phooey, they are just trying to scare me. Well right before my eyes...

Umm honey?

What ma?

It's not supposed to look lumpy...

What tha.....?

And in a matter of seven seconds it was (as we say on the Southside) all broke up. S being the cool calm museum professional, assessed the sit and resuscitated the patient with the immersion blender.

Final assembly on cinnamon raisin toast. Sounds funny, but with the toast, it tasted as good as I had imagined. You gotta make the bread a day ahead, of course. Broken sauce and all, not going to win any image awards, but robo-yum. What did you do this weekend?

Cheers.

Sunday breakfast

A poached egg, pickled fish, last night's rye toast. A dab of dijon.

Wednesday Gravlaks

So I start worrying about some sort of appetizer for the St Patty's boiled dinner. Sure I'll have cabbage and carrots and potatoes and even a parsnip, but what's before that? Some cheese, some something....how about some cured fish. You may not find it on any pub menu, but I had a small piece of fish in the freezer so why not? This really started back in December when I saw New Scandinavian Cooking, on PBS. On the Christmas show they showed Gravlaks (ground fish?) as one of the traditional dishes. I was hooked. Since the recipe (from the New Scandinavian Cooking website) only called for six pounds (and I had seven)I chopped off the tail end and threw it in the freezer. This was my first time at curing anything so I was a little nervous. But Christmas morning the gravlaks turned out better than I could have imagined; it simply melted in your mouth. We also had an expert among the crowd that morning, our good friend from Finland was with us and she declared it the most wonderful Christmas miracle. She also showed me how to cut it right too.

So this is pretty simple: One part salt, two parts sugar, a handful of dill, a grinding of pepper and a splash of brandy. Cure for three days. Flip it daily.

Now at Christmas time I thought that the lack of cold smoking would be noticeable when comparing the gravlaks to the smoked fish you get at the store. I was wrong; I did not miss it at all.
However I still want to smoke some salmon. Maybe this Summer for the Mid-Summer celebration. I have to build a cold smoker first, and that is going to have to wait until it gets a little warmer outside.