smoked trout & potato salad w horseradish-crème fraîche dressing

Fabio, his gal pal + Jonas and I recently ate at Eathouse Diner and were inspired by their fantastic smoked trout salad. Jonas and I decided we had to replicate it at home and this is what we came up with.

As was the original, this salad was DELICIOUS.

We did make a few changes, for instance they used watercress and we switched our greens to baby spinach. It’s not as crunchy as the watercress, but it works well nonetheless.

This is a perfect summer dinner. You can serve it as your entree (starter) but Jonas and I happily ate it as our main course. It would be wonderful at a picnic too.

Smoked Trout & Potato Salad w Horseradish Crème Fraîche Dressing

Jonas & Anna’s very own recipe. Serves 4 as an starter.

Ingredients:
½ cup (125ml) crème fraîche
3 tablespoons (60ml) lemon juice
2 teaspoons lemon zest
2 tablespoons chives, finely chopped
2 tablespoons parsley, finely chopped
3 teaspoons grated horseradish
700g potatoes, boiled then cubed
400g smoked trout, chopped
50g baby spinach
6 radishes, finely sliced

Method:

1. Make the dressing by whisking together the crème fraîche, lemon juice, lemon zest and grated horseradish.

2. In a large bowl add to the potatoes, radishes, chives and parsley enough dressing to suit your tastes and toss gently.

3. When you’re ready to serve, add the spinach and combine well. Top salad with trout.

achiote & tequila cured beef w pozole rojo

Image supplied by Ellie

"Paddock to Plate" Beef Degustation

A few weeks ago I participated in a very exciting event organised by Meat & Livestock Australia (MLA) and hosted by Warren Turnbull and his team at Assiette.

A lot of organisations are jumping on the social media band wagon, not understanding the differences between social media and traditional media.

You can’t just broadcast one-way to bloggers and expect them to pick up your content with interest. Blogging is about interacting with your readers and the world, not just a blathering monologue.

Sorry, was I blathering?

The point I’m trying to make here is that MLA created a social media event to draw food bloggers in a fundamental way: they made us the event. Clever.

So, eight bloggers were invited to learn more about beef with the help of a well-known Sydney-based chef, Warren Turnbull of District Dining and Assiette.

Each of us were allocated a cut of beef to create our own recipe and then Warren and his team would transform it into a restaurant dish for a special degustation dinner. Genius.

Beef producer, Alison McIntosh, handed over one of her prized Angus steers and Anthony Puharich, CEO of Vic’s Premium Quality Meat and owner of the fabulous butchery Victor Churchill, made the cuts and shipped them out.

I got given the beef knuckle. I had no idea how to cook a beef knuckle or even what it looked like! I thought it might be something I’d need to braise for hours. Nope!

Luckily Warren explained that a beef knuckle is a big slab of meat, often called a beef round, and is usually slow cooked as a roast.

One of the best parts of the challenge was talking through my ideas with Warren. It was fun to workshop recipes with a chef and even more rewarding to introduce him to some new ingredients (like hominy and achiote).

I think he was pretty excited about the opportunity to experiment too.

I steered him towards a pozole recipe, and he encouraged me to give curing a go. I think we were both happy with the results.

Here’s what I came up with.

Achiote & Tequila Cured Beef Knuckle with Pozole Rojo

Anna's recipe. Serves 8-10.

Achiote & Tequila Cured Beef Knuckle

Ingredients:
1.5kg beef knuckle eye, trimmed
330g (1½ cups) raw sugar
100g (1 cup) sea salt
190ml (¾ cup) tequila
1½ teaspoons achiote paste
4 teaspoons coriander seeds
2 teaspoons black peppercorns
½ teaspoon dried epazote (or dried oregano)

Extra for roasting:
1 teaspoon achiote paste
2 tablespoons olive oil

Method:
1. Grind the peppercorns and coriander seed with a mortar and pestle until coarsely crushed.

2. Add sugar and salt and grind a little. Add oregano.

3. Mix achiote paste with tequila to loosen it up, then add to sugar and salt. Mix until it has the texture of wet sand.

4. Lay a few layers of plastic wrap down, then coat all sides of the meat with a thick layer of the curing mix.

5. Wrap tightly then refrigerate for 24hrs (use a plate in case it leaks).

6. The next day, unwrap the meat and scrape off all the curing mixture. Wash and pat dry with kitchen paper. The meat will be darker and the exterior will have hardened a little.

7. Preheat the oven to 170’C (350’F).

8. Mix together the olive oil and extra achiote paste as well as you can. Rub the achiote oil mixture all over the meat.

9. Place on a roasting rack in a roasting tray. Set aside and allow the meat to come to room temperature.

10. Roast in the oven for 30 minutes for rare, but no more than 1 hour or until the centre reaches 50’C (120-125’F)

11. Remove roast and allow to sit for 20 minutes before cutting. Serve in thin slices.

Pozole Rojo (Red Hominy Soup)

Ingredients:
822g can pozole (hominy)
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon achiote paste
2 onions, grated
12 garlic cloves, grated
2 chipotles chillies (in adobo sauce)
2 tablespoons tomato paste
2 litres beef consommé
Pinch of sugar
Salt, to taste

Garnish:
1 avocado, cubed
3 limes, juiced
½ iceberg lettuce, shredded
¼ cup fresh coriander, finely chopped
½ cup diced radish
½ cup crumbled queso freso (or tangy feta)
Thin slices of Achiote & Tequila Cured Beef Knuckle (above)

Method:
1. In a medium saucepan, bring water to a boil. Add pozole and cook for 15 minutes. Drain.

2. Heat olive oil in heavy based saucepan.


3. Add achiote paste, onion and garlic. Mash paste throughout and fry until mixture becomes dry.

4. Add chipotles and fry a little.

5. Then add tomato paste and fry until thickened.

6. Next add beef consommé and sugar and bring to the boil. Simmer for 10 minutes.

7. Add pozole and simmer a further 5 minutes.

8. Remove from heat and stir in lime juice to taste.

9. Ladle soup into bowls. Pass garnishes separately so people can add to taste.

~ ~ ~

So, how did it look when Warren and the team were done with it?

Much more beautiful of course! It’s actually amazing to see how much skill and artistic talent chefs bring to humble home cooking.

Warren said they stuck to the curing recipe pretty closely, but reduced the tequila. But the biggest difference was the addition of agar agar to the soup broth transforming a warm dish into a cold one served with a thick sauce rather than soup.

The Assiette team were quite nervous that I wouldn’t like it, or that the flavour of the soup wouldn’t be the same, but once you mixed all the ingredients together and started to eat it could have been the very same dish as mine.

It was quite an amazing experience and the best social media PR event I’ve been invited to take part in because we were truly included rather than just bystanders. Kudos to Haussmann Communications for coming up with it and bravo to MLA for having the sense to agree. Take note other PR agencies!

Image supplied by Ellie

The full list of dishes served on the night really showed the diverse ways beef can be cooked and eaten.
- Beef & Ale Pie
- Achiote & Tequila Cured Beef Knuckle w Pozole Rojo
- Seared Sirloin, Buttered Roots, Horseradish & Wakame
- Thai Beef Salad w Mint, Peanuts & Chilli Dressing
- Beef Satay w Spicy Peanut Sauce, Rice Cake & Herb Salad
- Scotch Fillet w Moghrabiyeh
- Pulled Beef & Pine Mushroom Cannelloni
- Braised Beef in Coffee w Brandied Cumquats & Onion Milk
- Slow Braised Brisket w Cauliflower Cream & Pedro Ximenez Muscatels

If you want to see all the dishes of the night, check out these posts on my fellow blogger’s site:
Almost Bourdain
Aficionado
The Food Blog
The Gourmet Forager
Inside Cuisine
Taste
 

hot smoked mackerel

As I browsed aimlessly through the shops yesterday, I noticed that the fishmonger was almost giving away bright, shiny mackerel at a mere A$2.50 per kilo! Outrageously cheap!

I snapped up two with the intention of bonding over the smoker with Jonas, whose loves mackerel as all good Swedes should.

My first ever experience with fresh mackerel was in June 2008 during our sailing adventure along the Swedish west coast. Jonas and his mum threw baitless hooks into the sea to test the line, then pulled it up with five fat fish already attached! We didn’t even need to fish after that!

This recipe was our first real attempt at smoking anything, part of my 2011 Food Challenges, and it was an absolute success. We now have four (oh Jonas!) three fillets of sweet, smoky, juicy fish to eat throughout the week.

If you’re thinking about smoking yourself, I highly recommend our compact Nipper Kipper smoker which is the perfect size and allow us to smoke food on our inner city apartment balcony. It’s very small and tidy, so doesn’t take up any space on our balcony, and yet each shelf is big enough for four fillets of fish. Frankly, I couldn’t be happier with it.

The Nipper Kipper is made from galvanised steel, cost us about A$50 and came with a burner, two internal shelves and some wood dust to start us off. We paid an extra A$14 for a stand to keep the hot elements off the balcony tiles. You can get a slightly more expensive version in stainless steel too.

Hot Smoked Mackerel

Recipe based on this and this. Makes 4 fillets.

Ingredients:
1kg blue mackerel (about 2 fish)
50g (⅓ cup) brown sugar
50g (¼ cup) fine salt
1 litre water

Equipment:
Smoker
Smoking dust
Metholated spirits

Method:

1. Wash the mackerel then fillet. Pull out the more obvious bones with tweezers but don’t worry too much because after they cook it’s easier to debone.

2. Prepare the brine mix by stirring the sugar, salt and water. You can also add other ingredients at this stage, like garlic or onion powder, pepper, bay leaves, spices etc. Mix until the sugar and salt are dissolved.

3. Lay the fillets skin side up in a ceramic dish then cover with brine and allow to rest in a cool place for 2 hours.

4. Remove the fillets and dry thoroughly with paper towels. Some people even go as far as to give them some time under a cold fan to make sure they’re extra dry as you want as little moisture in the smoker as possible.

5. Prepare your smoker as per the manufacturer’s instructions. Cook for 20 minutes. Things to note:
- We used 1 tablespoon each (so that’s 3 tablespoons in total) of Australian native woods, American hickory and a rum drenched dust. If you’re not sure, I’d stick to pure hickory and only use 1 tablespoon.
- Oil the grill racks to prevent sticking (we used cooking spray).
- Cook the fish skin side down on the racks.
- Don't try to pack the smoker with too many fillets or it will generate too much moisture which prevents proper cooking. Better to do them in batches if you want to make a lot.

6. Cool the fish, wrap tightly and refrigerate.

Storage: Lasts up to a week in fridge or a few months in the freezer (where I’m told the texture won’t change upon defrosting).

Note: Blue mackerel is also sold as "slimy mackerel".

beef jerky

This is another post I wrote and scheduled before Jonas and I left Australia for our US vacation.

Today Jonas and I should be arriving in New Orleans to feast on Creole cooking, quench our thirst on a myriad of cocktails and meet up with a whole lot of American bloggers through the oh so conveniently timed Tales of the Cocktail festival. I can’t wait to report back on all the goodness!

~~~

My first American experience was in 1989 when my father took my brother and I for Dad’s first visit home since he’d migrated to Australia in 1972

My brother had even been born in the States (and didn’t have Australian citizenship) and yet he hadn’t been back since he was two years old.

My father was in heaven, introducing us to the treats of his childhood: root beer floats, peanut butter cups, chilli dogs and, of course, beef jerky.

You can’t buy beef jerky in Australia, or at least you couldn’t until a few years ago. Lately it’s appearing at petrol stations and cashier counters, but most Australians are disgusted by the chewy, dried meat.

I love it. From the first bite I knew I’d found something wonderful.
I love it almost as much as pickled sausages, which I would crawl over hot coals for.

So when Dad bought a smoker and started making his own beef jerky I was very happy. His jerky is softer and moreish, better than store bought versions.

Beef Jerky

Dad’s recipe.

Ingredients:
750g sandwich steaks (thin cuts)
2 tablespoons soy sauce
2 tablespoons Worchestershire sauce
2 teaspoons chilli flakes
2 tablespoons honey
2 tablespoons brown sughar
Salt and pepper
2 tablespoons hickory sawdust

Method:

1. Combine all ingredients well. Marinate meat for 2 hours.

2. Line the smoker with aluminium foil and scatter with hickory sawdust.

3. Lay meat on wire rack of smoker. Smoke for 15-20 minutes. The meat will have shrunk and will still be wet.

4. Preheat oven to 140’C.

5. Place smoked meat on wire racks and dry out for approximately 20 minutes.

6. Keep beef jerky in the fridge.

smoked rainbow trout

This Christmas my dad proudly showed off his new smoker and the excellent goodies coming out of it.

Not only had he made a delicious chilli beef jerky, flavoursome and not too chewy, but he managed to smoke up a succulent rainbow trout.

About a year or so ago, dad became obsessed with fly fishing. The flies he makes are so good he can sell them to fishing shops.

I suspected Dad was artistic when my school projects were finished with near-perfect sketches, but he’d hidden these skills well under his PE teacher, basketball-coach, platoon-commander bravado.

These days, now that his study is filled with peacock feathers, roe deer hair and fluorescent pink string, his artistic side is quite obvious. His flies are really beautiful and elegantly tied together. One particular blue set looked like some earrings I’d recently seen for sale!

With fly fishing comes trout eating and my father’s smoked rainbow trout is simply exquisite: delicate oils under the luminescent skin lubricating firm peachy flesh. None of this bright orange dyed stuff you get from supermarkets!

At Christmas he gave me one fillet and my sister another. Shamu and Tombo ate their's with pasta while I turned mine into a herb and caper potato salad.

It was this amazing fish (and his beef jerky) that convinced Jonas and I to buy a smoker (one of my 2009 food resolutions). Unfortunately when we visited the store on Boxing Day they were sold out of smokers. We're in line for the next delivery and are already dreaming up things to smoke: oysters, mussels, chicken, almonds and tofu!

Smoked Rainbow Trout
Recipe from smoker manufacturer. Makes 4 fillets.

Ingredients:
500ml water
2 tablespoons salt
1½ tablespoons sugar
4 fillets rainbow trout
2 tablespoons hickory sawdust

Method:
1. Mix brine and soak fish for 20 minutes (the longer the better).

2. Line the smoker with aluminium foil and scatter with hickory sawdust.

3. Lay fish, skin side down on wire rack of smoker. Allow brine to air dry.

4. Smoke fish for 15-20 minutes, depending on thickness of fillets. Eat warm or cold.

Tags: morsels and musings food blog food and drink australia recipes smoked rainbow trout smoked trout trout rainbow trout smoked fish recipes rainbow trout recipes smoked rainbow trout recipes smoked trout recipes trout recipes fish recipes seafood recipes smoking recipes