Suzi’s Blog
Smoking at Home
Today’s post is about technique, not a recipe. But this technique — smoking foods indoors easily at home — is one that you’ll value forever.
That picture above is of the Cameron home smoker, a device I’ve used for twenty years and bless every time. You may have seen these devices in a kitchen supply store. You may have a friend who uses one. Or, you may have bought one years ago and now it’s stashed somewhere in the garage or basement. If that’s the case, get a flashlight and find it.
Why smoke at home? It’s simple: you gain enormous control over the flavor and moisture of the product. Yesterday Brian and I were at the store looking for some smoked salmon to use in a recipe test. I knew what I wanted. And the store had a wide selection of smoked salmon types, but not what I needed. I did the simple thing: bought a chunk of fresh salmon, took it home, broke out the wood chips, made a custom blend of wood flavors and lit the burner. In twenty minutes I had exactly what I wanted.
The Cameron home smoker is a metal box. The top lid slides and forms a tight seal. Inside the box, you put a layer of wood chips, then a metal rack, and finally put the food you want to smoke on top of the rack. Close the top, put the metal box on a burner, turn up the heat and in a matter of minutes, you are done.
The Cameron folks make a variety of wood chips, from Apple to Mesquite and beyond. Strength of flavor surprising, in English, follows the letter of the wood. So, apple is mild, cherry is stronger, and mesquite will give you quite a smoky flavor. For my salmon dish, I used apple with a pinch of mesquite.
What can you smoke? We’ve only done proteins, but a lot of fish and chicken. We have yet to do pork chops but this post is inspiring me.
How long do you smoke for? Well, my one pound slab of salmon took 15 minutes. Here’s the payoff. That salmon was smoky. But it was still deliriously moist. This technique lets you avoid drying out the food until it become leather. That’s a very, very key benefit of this technique. My smoked salmon was going into a verrine, a vertically layered dish with veggies and sauce. The salmon consistency had to complement those layers by retaining softness. A dried piece of smoked salmon, one with any hint of toughness, would have been a failure.
I invite you to investigate the Cameron smoker. It’s a rewarding experience and one that will earn you culinary plaudits.
Homemade Mayonnaise
The easy way to get mayonnaise is to open the jar. The better way is to make it yourself.
Why bother? Taste, quality, texture, and just that wonderful satisfaction that you’ve done everything, yes everything, yourself.
Jar mayo can be good, but the store-bought versions come with limitations. The flavor is often muted, just subtlety descending into blandness. And that texture may be wonderfully uniform, but it is not really creamy. It’s too viscous, and if you look at the list of ingredients on the side of your jar you’ll begin to understand why.
Homemade mayo can be prepared with a whisk or a blender. Go with the whisk. There is a great blender recipe in The Joy of Cooking — I know because I tested and refined it. But many other blender recipes fail — I know because Brian and I just had a kitchen misfortune with one we were faithfully following as part of a recipe test.
No, save the electricity and pick up your whisk. This recipe, from Sauces by Michel Roux, is quite simple and totally delicious. And you control the flavor. You can add more vinegar or lemon juice or mustard to achieve a deeper flavor. If you try to do that with store-bought mayo, all you get is a modified emulsion with your additions suspended in that white mayo mass. The time to integrate flavor is at the time of creation.
This recipe takes you less than 10 minutes. That’s less time than it takes to get in the car, drive to Wal-Mart and stock up with stuff from China.
In terms of variation, this recipe originally called for peanut oil, but I like the flavors of my favorite olive oil. Different oil, olive and otherwise, will give you great variety here. Similarly, you can experiment beyond simple white vinegar to generate a variety of distinctive notes.
And, of course, there are always the variations to convert even this delicious simple mayonnaise into other wonders:
- Curry Mayonnaise: dissolve 1 tablespoon of curry powder in the vinegar or lemon juice
- Remoulade Sauce: mince 2 cornichons plus 1 tablespoon capers and 1 anchovy fillet and fold into the mayonnaise with 1 teaspoon of Dijon and 3 tablespoons of chopped herbs [parsley, chervil, and tarragon]
Homemade Mayonnaise
Yield: 1 ¼ cups
Ingredients:
- 2 egg yolks, at room temperature
- 1 tablespoon strong Dijon mustard
- 1 cup olive oil
- 2 tablespoons white wine vinegar or lemon juice.
Preparation:
Stand a mixing bowl on a dish towel on the counter. Put the egg yolks, mustard and little salt and pepper into the bowl and mix with a balloon whisk.
Slowly add the oil in a very thin stream to begin with, whisking continuously. [You may want two people here: one to hold the bowl and whisk and the other to maintain a very steady pour of oil].
As the mayonnaise begins to thicken, add the oil in a steady stream, still whisking all the time.
When the oil is completely incorporated, whisk more rapidly for 30 seconds until he mayonnaise is thick and glossy. Add the vinegar or lemon juice, taste, and adjust the seasoning as necessary.
Source: Sauces, Revised and Updated Edition by Michel Roux
