As a cook, I love this time of year. The clocks have changed and the nights are drawing in. Our cooking style is switching to winter mode with the longer cooking methods starting to appear. The whole point of comfort food is to make use feel comfortable during a time of change and this is the time that mother nature puts on the big show and changes her whole wardrobe.
So lets celebrate the changing of the season with a French classic. Poached pears cry out for a bit of pastry and a crème anglaise but why not be a little different and serve them warm with some blue cheese and walnut shortbread.
Poached Pears in Red Wine
Pears hold their shape really well, as long as you don’t allow the liquor to boil once the pears have been added.
Serves 4
4 pears
1 split vanilla pod
1/2 bottle full bodied Hawke’s Bay merlot or cabernet sauvignon
120g sugar
1/2 small cinnamon stick
zest and juice of 1/2 orange
a bunch of fresh thyme
125g butter
- Add all except the butter and the pears to a small casserole pan, bring to the boil turn down to a gentle simmer and add the pears. Simmer for about 1 hour or until tender.
- Remove the pears and reduce the liquid by half.
- Away from the heat, add the butter and agitate for a while.
- Put the pears back in and leave until ready to serve.
- Warm is the best temperature to serve this dish.
If you going for the blue cheese option then make it a Port from Mills Reef
New Zealand whitebait is primarily the young or ‘fry’, of three species of the herring family: inanga (the most common), koaro and banded kokopu. Popular the world over, whitebait are sold with guts intact at little more than 5cm long. There are only three places in the world where whitebait is caught: Patagonia in South America, Tasmania and New Zealand, which has the greatest numbers. Although caught in rivers all round New Zealand, most are found on the West Coast where white-baiting is an important seasonal industry.
Most people love their fritters, but for me it seems such a shame to just surround them in batter when we could be celebrating every delicious bite. Make a big pile on a large board with a bowl of Aioli and try not to worry about the double dipping, every time I make this dish it’s always the hardened kiwi hunting type that positions themselves closest, eats the most and all the while sharing whitebait stories and favorite fritter recipes.
Deep-fried Moorish Whitebait
The usual way of cooking whitebait is as fritters, but in this recipe the fish are eaten whole, deep-fried and crisp enough to rustle as they’re served on the plate.
Serves 4
450g whitebait
Oil for deep-frying
4 tablespoons flour
salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 teaspoon smoked paprika
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon dry English mustard
1/2 teaspoon caster sugar
lemon wedges to garnish
1. Pick over the whitebait, discarding any broken fish and dry with paper towel.
2. Heat the oil in a deep fat fryer until a crumb of bread sizzles in it.
3. Sift the flour with the salt, pepper and spices. Dredge over the whitebait, ensuring that they are all well coated.
4. Put a small handful of whitebait into the hot oil and cook for no more than 2 minutes.
5. Lift out and drain on absorbent paper, repeating the process until all the fish are cooked. They should be crisp and golden. Drain well and sprinkle with a little salt.
6. Pile onto a serving dish and serve with lemon wedges and aioli or tartare sauce.
The Moorish flavours in this dish almost demand an ice cold Gewürztraminer and luckily Lawsons Dry Hills make a cracker
Don’t you just love this time of year, after more than eight months of resisting the urge to buy imported strawberries at exorbitant prices, the New Zealand Strawberry season is here at last. I realise that I’m a bit of a masochist as I also avoid the first few weeks of the season as quite frankly they lack in flavour and the last thing I want after waiting so long is to be disappointed.
What is it with a strawberry that makes us all feel happy? Maybe it’s just the promise of summer reflected in the perfect redness or that exquisite aroma as you bite into a freshly picked one still warm from the sun.
Preparing strawberries is a delicate task, as they really don’t like being washed in water. If you must then wash very briefly before hulling them as once the little plug of leaves is out, water can get in and spoil the fruit. Alternatively try washing them in orange juice; you’ll be astonished at the enhancement of the flavour.
The recipe today is an all time standby, put simply 10 minutes to make and 10 minutes to bake, couldn’t be easier. You’ll notice the addition of basil leaves, trust me its not a typo. We often forget our herbs with sweets and its a shame as they can add so much, strawberries need a bit of natural acid to bring out their sweetness so give it a try, you’ll love the result.
Swiss Meringue Roulade
Serves 10
6 egg whites
150g caster sugar
50g flaked almonds
Method
Preheat the oven to 220˚C. Line a swiss roll tray with baking parchment. Whisk egg whites until very stiff. Gradually add sugar a little at a time. Spread on the lined tray and sprinkle with flaked almonds. Bake for about 10 minutes.
Sprinkle the surface with icing sugar and invert onto another sheet of parchment and cool. Remove cooked baking parchment in strips. Spread with whipped cream, strawberries and basil leaves. Using the new parchment, roll into the swiss roll shape and serve.
A sweet wine is the obvious choice with this, but for me the strawberries need the acidic sharpness of a good cold Sauvignon Blanc li the one from Bird wines.
Yes I know what you’re thinking, burgers are fast food and what is he going there for? Well it’s simple really they taste great and are a load of fun. In some ways this is the problem with modern food, the fast food industry gets hold of a good idea and then cheapens it to the point of extinction. Where the reality is that, made well, burgers are really good for you, especially if you sneakily pack as much vegetable content into them as you can get away with. It’s all about knowing what’s in you’re food, especially the fun food.
As a chef I spend most of my time trying to dream up recipes using the most elaborate ingredients possible and then attempting to come up with new and innovative ways to cook and present them. This is all great fun and is a major part of cooking these days, but sometimes food just needs to be there for the family in a fun and nutritious way. Try to avoid the pre minced stuff on the supermarket shelves and instead go to a real butcher and ask them to mince some lean beef for you, this way you know you are getting good lean beef instead of any old rubbish packed with fat.
Easy Burgers
500g minced beef or lamb
2 onion, diced finely
3 clove garlic, chopped
Salt & pepper
Chopped fresh herbs or dried herbs
2 tbsp plain flour
1 egg, beaten
Avocado oil
Optional additions:
2 red capsicum, diced finely
150g mushrooms, diced finely
1 courgette, grated
1 carrot, grated
1 teaspoon fresh Thyme, chopped
1 tablespoon fresh parsley, chopped
Method
Mix all ingredients together well. Take large spoonfuls of mixture, shape into balls, place on a floured surface and flatten with your hand. Heat avocado oil in a frying pan and add 2 or 3 burgers at a time. Cook both sides until crisp and brown. Alternatively, the burgers can be cooked on a BBQ or finished off in the oven at 180°C.
Split the hamburger buns, place the burger inside with lettuce, tomato, avocado salsa (see below), cottage cheese and serve.
Avocado Salsa
2 ripe avocado, diced
2 de-seeded and finely chopped red chillies
2tsp chopped fresh coriander
4 tomatoes de-skinned, deseeded and diced
2 tbsp Thai fish sauce
Pinch salt
Zest & juice 1 lime
Method
Place all ingredients in a bowl, mix well and leave at room temperature for at least 30 minutes to let the flavours develop.
Burger Buns
Ingredients
500g strong white bread flour
20g instant yeast
20g sugar
10g salt
60g unsalted butter
280ml warm water
Optional
2 egg white
4 teaspoons of sesame seeds
Method
Weigh out the flour, salt, sugar and yeast into a large mixing bowl. (If your yeast needs activating in water, follow the instructions on the packet and subtract whatever water you need to use from the 280ml water listed above.) Mix them together so that they are evenly distributed.
Heat the butter (either in the microwave or in a pan) so that it has just melted, it should be just warm, not hot. Weigh the water into the mixing bowl with the dry ingredients, pour in the melted butter and mix it all together (using your hands) to form a dough.
Tip the dough out on to a floured work surface and knead it until it has formed a smooth, elastic dough. It will be sticky at first but will become smooth as you knead it. Form the dough into a ball, lightly oil the inside of the mixing bowl and put the ball of dough back into the mixing bowl. Cover the bowl with a piece of cling-film/plastic-wrap, put the bowl somewhere warm and leave it to prove until it has doubled in size (it depends on how warm it is but this usually takes 1 – 2 hours).
When the dough has doubled in size, tip the dough out of the bowl, cut it into eight and shape each into a ball. Leave the balls of dough on the work-top, cover them with a piece of lightly oiled cling-film/plastic-wrap and leave them to prove for a second time until they have doubled in size.
When the balls of dough have doubled in size, put them onto a lightly oiled baking tray and gently press them down to form the burger bun shape. Optionally, brush the top of each disk of dough with some egg white and sprinkle each with ½ teaspoon of sesame seeds.
Heat the oven to 170°c.
Leave the buns to rise for the final time until they have puffed up (not necessarily doubled in size but close).
When they are cooked, take the burger buns out of the oven and leave them on the tray until they have cooled to room temperature (when they come out of the oven they will feel very firm but leaving them to cool on the tray greatly softens the crust).
When they are cooled, cook your burgers an
Just had a great weekend at the Home and Leisure expo in Tauranga. All a bit different for me as I was in costume as Captain Cook, basically story telling with food.
Almost 250 years ago the Admiralty was asked by the King to provide a ship and crew to transport the Royal society scientists to Tahiti to witness the passage of Venus through the Southern Hemisphere. As you can understand the idea of using a ship of the line with a seasoned crew during a time of war to go on a suicide mission to the dark side of the planet had little appeal, however how do you turn down the King? Simple answer you don’t. What you do is find a thoroughly expendable officer with no wartime credentials, give him a crew of misfits and a secondhand merchant ship.
Enter Lieutenant James Cook, The son of a farm laborer from the north east of England. A man truly suited to the role of expendable explorer. Having first gone to sea from the village of Staithes and then on to the collier ships in Whitby, he joined the Royal Navy in his late twenties as an ordinary Seaman where he proved to be a fast learner and an exquisite cartographer. Who better to send on a pointless diversion than an upstart who happens to draw pretty maps, if he doesn’t make it back who cares? and if he does at least they’ll have some new charts. Only problem is that he isn’t an officer, he’s a bosuns mate and cartographer, The solution is easy, make him a lieutenant and send him.
So starts the first of James Cook’s three voyages, a catalogue of failure and glory traveling hand in hand. His orders for the first voyage were to plot the passage of Venus from Tahiti and then, in his secret orders, to travel west and find the great southern continent. They later found that his calculations for the transit were inaccurate and he couldn’t find Terra Australis.
The now Captain Cook’s second voyage didn’t fare much better, sent back to find the great southern continent that he had obviously missed on his first voyage, all he managed to do was prove that it did not exist.
Finally to his third voyage. The Admiralty had been trying to find the Northwest Passage, a short cut to Asia, from the Atlantic, with no success and so decided to try from the Pacific. Who better to send than the same expendable officer who had been there twice before? Yet again all Captain Cook managed to do was prove that the passage did not exist, and then to cap it all off he failed to stay alive, dying on a beach in Hawaii beaten to death by the natives who only days earlier had lauded him as a god.
This however only tells half the story. Without doubt, Captain James Cook was one of the world’s most glorious explorers. During his three Pacific voyages his wooden ships circled the world, went further north and further south than any wooden sailing ship had ever been before, or since. Navigating the ice bound fringes of the Antarctic and arctic circles, where the sails froze solid and the rigging hung with icicles. They sailed in tropical seas where they survived hurricanes, lightning strikes and volcanic eruptions; edged around uncharted lands and islands always in danger of shipwreck; and in one harbour after another, found unknown people. For any time and in any culture these were remarkable voyages. Like the first men in space they were truly off the map surviving on their skills and wits.
Along the way he managed to create charts of such exquisite accuracy that some are still in use today. His voyages epitomize the European conquest of nature, fixing the location of coastlines by the use of instruments and mathematical calculation, classifying and collecting plants, animals, insects and people. In effect one man named, or more accurately renamed, one third of the globe.
As if this wasn’t enough, he was the first ships captain to beat the maritime scourge, scurvy. Before Cooks first voyage any ship at sea for more than six weeks would routinely lose a third of its crew to scurvy, in Cooks nearly three years off the map he didn’t lose one. Through his own diligence and dedication to the health and wellbeing of his crew he became the ultimate global hunter gatherer. At every opportunity he had to restock his supplies of food and water often with things never before seen by Europeans.
Historically Sunday would have been the working family’s only day off and probably the only meat day as well. Everyone was expected to attend church in the morning and so the slap up meal was both the best meal of the week and a reward for being so virtuous. In fact during the Middle Ages in England the Lord of the Manor would provide a roast Ox for his serfs, thus starting the tradition of the Sunday roast.
In the days before ovens in every home, the poorer families would have used the local bakery, popping their joints of meat in the big bread oven that was still cooling down from the early morning baking. They would pick up their perfectly roasted meat on their way home from church.
Roast Leg of Lamb
Serves 6 – 8
1 Leg of NZ Lamb
4 large cloves garlic, peeled and sliced into 3
75g tinned anchovies
1 bunch rosemary
75g softened butter
Juice of 1 lemon
Method
Stud the surface of the lamb with garlic, rosemary and half the anchovies. Beat the butter, lemon juice and remaining anchovy and spread over the skin. Place on a preheated hot barbeque for 5 minutes to sear, then turn down heat and cook with lid down for a further 50 minutes until core temperature reaches 62˚C (for medium rare.) Rest and serve
Panfried Snapper and Quinoa Salad with Roast Kumara
Serves 4
4 Snapper Fillets
1 red capsicum, chopped roughly
1 yellow capsicum, chopped roughly
1 red onion, sliced
2 Kumara rough chopped
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 cloves garlic
1 cup quinoa (pronounced ‘keenwa’)
Salt & pepper
1 cup spinach, chopped roughly
Vinaigrette dressing (see below)
Method
Roast chopped vegetables (except spinach), garlic and olive oil in a pre-heated oven at 180°C for 30 to 40 mins until golden brown. Meanwhile, wash quinoa with cold water in a sieve and squeeze dry in a clean tea towel. Place quinoa in a pan, place over a medium heat and fry until lightly toasted. Cover with boiling water or stock and simmer gently until all the liquid has been absorbed. Remove vegetables from oven and add to quinoa with spinach and seasoning. Add dressing and mix well. Place in a bowl with panfried Snapper on top and serve.
Vinaigrette
Makes 400ml
½ tablespoon smooth Dijon mustard
50ml red wine vinegar
50ml balsamic vinegar
100ml hazelnut oil
100ml avocado oil
100ml olive oil
½ teaspoon salt
6 turns white pepper
1 clove garlic, peeled and crushed
Method
Place all the ingredients into a blender and blitz for 60 seconds. Strain through a fine sieve.
Berry Tansy
I love the sense of history and tradition that goes with food – the small village of Egton Bridge, near where I grew up in North Yorkshire, still holds an annual Gooseberry Show which dates back to 1800! Tansies are a type of sweet omelette, originally named after the herb, tansy, which was used in this dish in the 15th century.
Serves 4
25g unsalted butter
200g berries,
Freshly grated zest of 1 orange
3 tbsp sugar
25g breadcrumbs
3 eggs, separated
40ml cream
¼ tsp freshly grated nutmeg
2 tbsp apricot liqueur
- Melt the butter in a frying pan and when foaming add the berries and orange zest. Cook gently over a low heat until the fruit begins to soften (about 2 minutes) then add the sugar, mixing well, and cook until the sugar melts and the mixture becomes syrupy.
- Add just enough breadcrumbs to soak up the syrup and stir.
- Meanwhile add the egg whites to a clean bowl and whisk into soft peaks.
- In a separate bowl beat together the egg yolks, cream, nutmeg and liqueur. Slowly add the egg yolk mixture into the gooseberry mixture, stirring slowly.
- Fold-in the egg whites and continue cooking on very low heat until the mixture sets.
- If necessary, place the tansy under a low grill or use a blow torch to set the top.
- Dust with icing sugar, decorate with a few sprigs of mint and serve.
Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!
So I guess that you all enjoyed a great St Patricks Day, unless you’re an Irish rugby fan of course, and the Guinness is slowly leaching out of your blood supply. All we need now is for this weird weather to stop and a wonderful Indian summer to develop so that we can celebrate the upcoming Jazz festival in Bay of Plenty style, after all Earth, Wind and Fire is the headlining act and not a prophecy.
That said now is a great time to start polishing up those wonderful autumn and winter comfort puddings. This one works just as well with pecans but for me walnuts are perfect. The tart can also be served with whipped cream, mascarpone, yoghurt or crème fraiche, but for a little extra effort, the sabayon just lifts this whole dish up to another level.
Walnuts seem to be quite expensive at the moment, which is such a shame as it’s not many years ago that walnuts were in most gardens in New Zealand and to be honest I have no idea where they all went. Sometimes we can learn from the generations that have gone before us and plant things that are both pretty and edible. Lets start a campaign against those spiky designer plants that actually serve no useful purpose and plant stuff that tastes great instead, just a thought.
Walnut Tart with Honey Sabayon
1 x 23cm sweet pastry case baked blind
85g softened unsalted butter
85g soft light brown sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla sugar
3 eggs
4 tablespoons thin honey
170g shelled pecans or walnuts
a pinch of salt
- Cream the butter and sugars together until light and fluffy.
- Beat the eggs in one at a time.
- Stir in the honey, walnuts and salt. Fill the pastry case and bake in a preheated oven at 220°C for 30 minutes.
- Serve warm with Honey Sabayon.
Honey Sabayon
4 egg yolks
200ml water
200g honey
200ml alcohol of choice
- Whisk all the ingredients in a shallow wide pan.
- Place over a very gently heat and continue to whisk until a foam starts to form.
- Continue cooking very gently, whisking all the time, for at least 15 minutes, until the sabayon is cooked, light and fluffy.
Wine Match
Here’s one out of the box, why not serve this with the brand new Orangecello from the award winning Distillerie Deinlein in Te Puna. I’ve loved this stuff ever since they were first experimenting with it and I managed to scrounge a taste.
As most of you know I spend most of my time doing cook schools and demonstrations with a bit of food writing and food tv thrown in. So after a busy few weeks with the Home Show and the last of the weddings of the season, I was looking forward to a quiet week catching up with some writing almost forgetting a little teaching job at Tahatai Coast School in Papamoa.
As a parent I truly believe that teaching our kids about food and cooking is a life skill that we all need. So it was my pleasure to pitch up in Papamoa to teach a group of great boys the simple joys of good food and cooking. We had such fun I thought I’d share one of the recipes that the boys and I made and let me tell you watching a group of kids taste fresh rocket for the first time is a joy.
Making fresh pasta is so easy and quick and, done properly, so tasty. If you have a pasta machine then dust it off and get making, or as the recipe suggests use a rolling pin. The real trick with this is to keep it simple and enjoy the flavours, but take note of the draining procedure as this will make all the difference. If you manage to preserve the starchy sauce catching coating on the pasta you’ll be able to banish forever the sadness of pasta swimming in a creamy soup and actually taste the pasta itself.
For the boys at Tahatai Coast school, thank you for inviting me into your classroom and I hope that at least some of you have cooked this at home by now.
Speedy Pasta with Garlic and rocket
Serves 2
200g pasta ‘00’ flour
2 eggs or 4 egg yolks
a couple of cloves of garlic, finely sliced
fresh rocket, the wild one at the farmers market or Good Food Trading is best
freshly grated parmesan
really good tasting olive oil
half a dozen fresh basil leaves, ripped at the last minute
Seasoning
Beetroot pasta: replace extra yolk with 50g puréed, cooked beetroot
Spinach pasta: replace extra yolk with 150g blanched, puréed spinach
Method
Sieve flour into a bowl. Add whole egg and combine mixture with finger tips. Turn out onto a floured work surface and knead into a dough. If possible, rest in refrigerator for at least half an hour.
Roll out onto floured board into a rectangle. Next, flour surface of pasta and, using both hands, roll rectangle into a ‘swiss roll’ shape. Use a sharp knife to cut into desired thickness, e.g. tagliarini (thin), tagliatelle (medium) or parpadelle (thick).
To cook pasta, use 1 litre of water for each portion pasta and 1 litre for the pan. The water should boil fast while the pasta is cooking. Allow about 150g fresh pasta per person. Add 1 tablespoon salt per 4 litres boiling water. (Olive oil is only really necessary with lasagne sheets to prevent sticking.) Fresh pasta cooks in 2-3 minutes; “al dente” pasta should feel firm but not have a hard, chalky centre. Lift into a colander with tongs or one of those natty pasta lifters. Do not pour the whole lot or rinse as you will lose the precious sauce-catching starch. Quickly add olive oil and garlic to the hot pan, tip the pasta back in with a good quality parmesan cheese, rocket leaves and a little ripped basil. Season to taste and serve.
For the adults why not try a Riesling to match up to the peppery rocket, Riesling can get a bad reputation but remains the winemakers favourite and done well like the Pegasus Bay they are fantastic.
This week I want to celebrate the Irish, partly because of St Patricks Day but mostly because they are my heroes. The Irish have a certain reputation internationally and at last years World Cup they lived up to it in every way, they were without doubt the most fun fans to be around, to be passionate and proud in victory as well as defeat, while never losing the joy in life is a lesson we can all learn.
Being good at throwing a party is one thing but what makes Ireland the land of heroes for me is their food, or more to the point what they are doing with it now. You see, like Greece and Portugal, Irelands economy is down the toilet and yet we don’t read a lot of poor me stories in the papers. Like most of Europe, Ireland fell for the false economic bubble of financial services and property in a big way, losing the farming skills in the process. Now they have the double whammy of being a failing agriculture based economy that believed in the false dawn.
Doesn’t sound good does it? Well there is a silver lining to this cloud as the Irish have decided to go back to what they know best and this is where the similarities to New Zealand become apparent. What we have is an island that is incredibly fertile with a long history of food production, but only a little over 4 million people on it.
The Irish government believe that the way out of their problems is with food exports, but with a depleted skilled workforce and a finite limit on the farming land it isn’t possible to increase production. Their answer is so simple, if we can’t produce more to make more then we must make more from what we produce. The emerald isle is playing the green card and staking its future on the niche market of high quality and its working, their exports are up and their image is greener than ever.
Now you see why the Irish are my heroes, to ignore industrial farming and stake your reputation and financial future on quality and tradition is a brave move, and one we can learn from before we lose yet more farming skills. Ireland is fast gaining the reputation of being the clean and green food choice for Europe; perhaps we should keep an eye on them.
The best Oysters in Europe are coming from the clean waters of Ireland and so I thought I’d share this recipe with you as part of the celebration.
Warm Oysters with Champ and Caviar
Oysters are bi-valves and unusual in not being symmetrical; one shell is flat, while the other is deep and bowl-like. It is useful both for storage and display. The oysters in this dish are raw, but they are lightly warmed by the heat from the sterilised shell and the sauce. The champ acts not only as a ‘berth’ for the oyster shells, but also provides a starchy contrast to the oysters and butter.
Serves 2
8 fresh Bluff oysters in their shells
2 tablespoons caviar
Champ
200g floury potatoes, e.g. Agria, peeled and chopped into large chunks
3 whole spring onions
1 tablespoon cream
25g butter
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Sauce
25ml white wine
1 finely chopped shallot
50g unsalted butter
1 tbsp chopped chives
1 tsp lemon juice
- Shuck the oysters, keeping the flesh in a bowl for later. Scrub the shells and boil them to clean thoroughly, reserving for later.
- Boil the potatoes in a pan until tender. Drain and mash, then beat in the cream, butter, spring onion and season with plenty of salt and pepper.
- For the sauce, reduce the wine with the chopped shallots by half. Remove from heat and whisk in the butter in small pieces until light and frothy. Add chopped chives, lemon juice and seasoning.
- To serve, place a spoonful of champ in the centre of the plate, push four of the hot, deep shells into the champ. Pop a raw oyster into each shell and pour over sauce. Spoon on caviar to garnish.
Wine match
I know I usually bang on about local produce, but in this case lets go the whole hog and have a Guinness for St Paddy’s Day
With Mothers Day around the corner, its time to start planning the spoiling of all the mothers in the Bay, after all statistics show that most of the cooking in the home is still done by the lady of the house. So show your gratitude and put in a little effort with something truly special.
Gravadlax is one of those dishes that looks really clever but is in fact incredible easy to do. Different cultures have all sorts of ways of preserving fish and this is the Scandinavian way, a pleasant change from the old smoker!
Most of the time we think that dry and wet curing of meats and fish is too hard to do for the home kitchen and tend to go and buy some over processed version, this is such a shame as a quick chat with our grandmothers will show that not so many years ago most Kiwi homes cured and preserved for the winter.
Now I know that trying to persuade you to home cure meats that take anything up to a year is probably a bit of a stretch, but this salmon only takes four to five days so the pay back is quite quick, and lets be honest what shows your appreciation better than a meal that takes that long to prepare.
Gravadlax
There are as many recipes for this as there are spellings for it throughout Scandinavia – this one happens to be from a Danish friend. It is a fantastic alternative to smoked salmon with a fresh and subtle flavour.
Serves 10
1 whole side fresh salmon
2 heaped tablespoons sea salt
2 rounded tablespoons granulated sugar
2 teaspoons crushed black pepper
2 tablespoons spirit alcohol ( I use vodka, but be creative)
2 rounded tablespoons fresh dill
- Mix together salt, sugar, pepper, alcohol and dill.
- Spread the mixture over the salmon.
- wrap with gladwrap and then tin foil.
- Weigh down with a couple of tins and refrigerate, turning daily, for up to 5 days. You’ll notice a liquid seep out of the fish, don’t worry that is just the water coming out and can be discarded each day.
- Serve as a canapé, starter or for the truly enlightened with scrambled eggs on Mothering Sunday.
Wine match
For me the perfect match is a really dry, ice cold Sauvignon Blanc. Try the one from Bird wines, the Birdman won’t let you down.
