Smoker fail

My last batch of smoked salmon was terrible. The worst. I never thought the day would come when smoked salmon would be so awful I'd rather throw it away than eat it. It did. One thing I've learned now, is how important it is to give the fish a really good long bath before putting it in the smoker. You cant just rinse off the brine, because the salt is still soaked right in there! And don't leave it in the smoker too long, either. There's nothing worse than really really inedibly dry salty fish.

The smoking process amplifies the saltiness, so its best to be cautious with the time at first. The thickness of the cut does make a difference to how long it should stay in. 1/2" thick means 2-3 hours in the smoker, no more. It should still be oily when it comes out. Also, I'd avoid cherry wood for fish, its too bitter tasting. Apple is great. Oh well, live and learn.

Anyway, my refined approach to smoking fish is a 24-48 hour brining with something that has a good balance of sweet and salty (for example, 50/50 maple syrup and soy sauce), enough to cover the fish completely in the container, with some good quality rock salt rubbed into the flesh before adding the brine mix to it. Quantities of each depend of course on how much fish you're actually preparing. Let the mix stand for 24 hours in a cool area (NOT cold), then bathe (and by bathe I mean soak!) for 2 hours minimum to extract the bulk of the salt. Then you dry the fish off, let it stand a few hours to develop a "pellicle" (a very weird sliminess that is totally important to the curing process) and then smoke for whatever seems sensible given the dryness and saltiness you want.

After smoking, I like to let it dry for a while in a cool (not cold!) area. Hard to do this in an apartment, unfortunately.

I've only ever used an electric smoker. I'd love to try a natural smoke fire to do this, but its an awful lot of work that I'm not ready to invest until the zombie apocalypse requires it.

Pan-fried Oatcakes, a personal favorite!

OK so its winter, and there's a certain need in winter to eat hearty meals, but who's got the time! Well, one of the easiest ways to get that need satisfied is with oatmeal. Now me, I've never been a big fan of porridge-style hot cereal, but being Scottish and all I love oats, so when I stumbled across the oatcake idea in a recipe book, well the idea just hit the spot so to speak.So, this is one of the staples you will find in my fridge almost all the time.

Now, many people are attached to the idea of sweetened oats as a breakfast dish, so when I mention adding cheese to the oats and pan-frying it, I get a lot of groans of contempt and/or disgust from these people. Until they try them! So here's the deal. There are virtually limitless ideas that you can mix in with the oats for variety, I've tried this out so many different ways that I could do a whole cookbook just on oatcakes. However, the best way, in my humble opinion, is the simplest, it turns out kind of like a simple risotto but its so much easier to make. So what I'll do here is give you the instructions to make the oatcakes, and then a few of the better suggestions on how to prepare them. The decision is entirely dependent on your mood, or if you are serving them with anything else.

So you start with your oats. As I mentioned earlier, you want to go for more of a risotto texture, rather than polenta, so its important to use an oat flake that keeps its shape after cooking and doesn't turn to mush. I have tried many different and exotic forms of oats, wild oats, organic oats, quick oats, steel-cut oats, blah blah blah. They invariably produced inferior results to the ordinary porridge oats, particularly in the texture department. Porridge oats are nice and chewy, large flake, and they retain their shape and consistency after being cooked. I usually just fill my small saucepan about 1/3 full with oats, fill it up with water so that all the oats are underwater with about 1" of water covering it (incidentally this is a pretty reliable trick with cooking rice too, you put in just enough water so that if you stick your finger in it the water will come up to the first crease in your finger at the point when you are just touching the oats/rice). As an estimate, I'd say this ratio is about 2 1/2 cups of oats and 3 1/2 cups of water, but that's not very precise, sorry. Next time I'll try measuring and let you know.

Put this on the stove, medium heat, to boil, and add about a half teaspoon of salt (the salt is important!). Once boiling, put on the lid, and turn off the heat. You have to keep an eye on this though, because you really really don't want to burn this. Not only will your recipe be ruined (even if its only a little bit at the bottom, the rest of the batch will take the burnt flavor), but your pot will be ruined too if you scorch the oats. You can scrub and scrub forever, and it will never, ever come off. I don't know why.

Anyway, once the oats have absorbed the water, remove from the heat and add your chosen ingredients.
If the oats are too dry (oat mixture should be sticky and quite moist), just add a bit more water to it, mix it around, and cover up again with the lid to steam it in, and then add the other ingredients.

Once you've added whatever add-ons you want |(see below for some suggestions), you mix the whole thing together to get a fairly even distribution of goods (like chocolate chip cookie dough), and spoon the mix into a baking dish. I usually use my 9" round glass pie-plate because I can cut them into wedges, but anything will do as long as its at least 1 1/2" deep. You want your oatcakes to be no more than 1" thick, 3/4" would be ideal, 1/2" would be too thin to get out of the pie-plate intact. If you have too much mix, you can just keep it in the fridge and heat it up again for breakfast or whatever.

So you have your oat mix in the baking dish, you take a piece of saran wrap and a flat spatula (or your hand, hand pressed is kinda fun), place it over the top, and press the warm mix into the pan evenly, so that it looks kind of like a cake before being baked. With the saran wrap on the top still, stick your baking dish into the fridge to set the oat mix into a loaf-sort of. This saran wrap isn't critical if you're going to pan fry it within a couple of hours, but if you plan to leave it in the fridge overnight, it will become crusty if its exposed to the air for that long.

Once set, cut the oatcake into manageable pieces. I cut my pie into 6 wedges. Heat up a frying pan with some light cooking oil - I'm in the habit of using rice bran oil, it has a good taste and cooks at high-temperature. Coconut oil is also fantastic, it gets a little bit of a movie-theater-popcorn aroma! Now again, you dont want to have the pan set on high, because you dont want to scorch your oats. Med-high is good (7 out of 10), no higher. Lift out your oatcakes from the pie plate, and place them in the hot pan. I can do 3 wedges at a time, but that totally depends on how big you cut the pieces and how big your pan is.

Just cook long enough to brown on both sides, turning occasionally, and then you're done! I do up the whole batch in the pan, and keep the cooked ones in a plastic container so I can just microwave one for like 40 seconds, and get on the road to the skytrain in the morning.  I rarely wake up with enough time to make myself a proper breakfast.

So, the added ingredients? My personal favorite, as long as its for a sit-down meal, is to just make plain oatcakes, with a drizzle of flaxseed oil or olive oil on the top, and a sprinkling of finely grated parmesan cheese, with a finely chopped herb such as basil, thyme or rosemary. Heavenly! I serve this with a side of plain yogurt sometimes, if I want something creamy, but its amazing just on its own.

If I'm really feeling debaucherous, I'll go to my favorite fish shop in Vancouver ("Finest at Sea" on Arbutus Street http://www.finestatsea.com/), and get some smoked teriyaki sablefish to have with the oatcakes - ridiculously, prohibitively expensive (I feel bad if I eat more that one piece at a time!), but this is truly amazing taste/texture combination!!! And plus I just feel so healthy and Scandinavian eating fish for breakfast!

In other versions I've added garlic and chives to the oats; mixed in some chipotle puree and sharp cheddar; mushrooms; red peppers; imitation crab and creamcheese; chorizo; and the list goes on. I've tried them with sour cream, pesto, horseradish, peanut sauce, tomato sauce, and curry sauce. All good. Trust me when I say this, these things are truly delicious, and so versatile.