Planked Salmon with Fennel Two Ways and Burnt Aubergine Puree

Cowie has a long and distinguished history of buying me awesome cooking gifts, not to mention having built Cassius as well. So when she gave me a collection of cedar planks for Christmas I got giddily excited.

Planking is an old fashioned culinary technique where you cook your meat or fish on a dampened plank of wood, such as cedar, over hot coals. The wet wood emits puffs of steam and smoke that gently encourage the flesh above to yield whilst providing a smoky backdrop. (For more in depth information about planking have a look at this site or buy this book.)

The easiest, and possibly best, thing to cook on a plank is a fillet of salmon. You land up with an indecently moist piece of warm smoky fish that will make you wonder why you’ve been eating boring old poached or grilled salmon for all those years.

We cooked this with a fennel salad which we cevichified from Mark Hix’s book and some burnt aubergine puree that we bastardised from Ottolonghi. And all in a Cornish field with a small BBQ.

Ingredients:

1 cedar plank
1 salmon fillet big enough for two with the skin on
Salt
Pepper
Lemon zest
2 aubergines
2 cloves of garlic
2 tablespoons of yoghurt
Olive oil
1 fennel bulb
Mint
Juice of 2 lemons

Method:

Soak your cedar plank in water for anywhere between 2 and 12 hours. This will stop it burning.

Slice the fennel as thinly as possible. We didn’t have a mandolin on the camp site, surprisingly, so just make sure you’ve got a very sharp knife and haven’t drunk your own body weight in gin and tonic by this stage. Season with salt and pepper and then douse in the juice of 2 lemons.

Light your BBQ. When the coals have stopped flaming throw on two aubgerines and pierce with your knife. Let them burn, Ottolenghi-style, for 20 minutes or until steam is spurting out of the aubergines and the flesh is soft. Remove and leave to cool. Then scoop out the flesh, mash, and mix in the yoghurt, more salt and pepper and a squeeze of lemon. You’ll be adding some smoked garlic later…

Descale the salmon and remove any pin bones. Then rinse in cold water. Pat dry. And then season like there’s no tomorrow. Add a few curls of lemon zest.

Place the plank on the coals and when it starts to smoke lay the salmon skin side up on the wood along with 2 cloves of garlic. Add the fennel to the grill and close the lid. Inspect after 10 minutes and turn the fennel. Judge the doneness of the salmon and continue cooking for as long as you like.

Remove from the heat and mash the smoky garlic into the aubergine. Dress the fennel ceviche with some olive oil, shredded mint leaves and check the seasoning. If you’ve got the inclination, remove the salmon skin and place on the grill to crisp up.

Serve the salmon from the plank with the two types of fennel and a saucy smacker of smokey aubergine puree.

The salmon was softer than an Andrex puppy’s downy ear and subtly smoked. Whilst the fennel was sharp and crunchy on the one hand and charred and sweet on the other.

After a scorching debut I think that planking may well be my new favourite cooking technique. We’ll have to push the boat out next time with some more adventurous recipes…

Further reading:

Epicurious on maple planked salmon
Accidental hedonist on Copper River planked salmon
Man Meat Fire
Cedar Grilling Company – they know a thing or two about planking
Cedar plank recipes from Tasty Timbers
Buy planks in the UK here
How to cut your own cedar grilling planks

WANTED: Washing Machine for Lateral Cooking Experiments

Normal cooking is boring. Hobs. Yawn. Ovens. Zzzzzzz. Microwaves. Grrrr. It’s much more fun using other bits of kit to cook with such as baths, irons, dishwashers and car engines.

We’ve had a lot of fun recently cooking in bizarre ways. Our experiments with cooking salmon in the bath tub and in the dishwasher have been roaring success. We now want to push the boundaries and try something that hasn’t been done before.

We want to cook pork belly in a washing machine. The flavourings and method are still in development. As it stands the pork itself will be surrounded by star anise, ginger, chilli, soy sauce and spring onion and then encased either in a cooking bag or a pillowcase like you would do with trainers.

We’ll then select a long hot washing cycle on a gentle spin and watch our pork go round and round in the drum of the machine, slowly becoming tenderised as it crashes around. Our hope is that it emerges as beautifully soft, deeply flavoured meat resembling pulled pork.

So if you work for Curry’s, Miele, Bosch, Zanussi or any other white goods company please can you send me a washing machine so I can cook some amazing pork!

And if you don’t then please help to spread the word to people who do. And if you’ve got any feedback on the cooking method, or any further ideas, please let me know. It’s got the potential to be a really fun project and I need your help.

(Image is from Flickr Creative Commons from G & A Sattler)

Fish-Washer Salmon

It’s almost as if God designed the dishwasher to cook salmon in. Our Bosch dish washer even comes with a “cooking” setting. Dishwashers are ideal for cooking in. They’ve got a “nice rack” (couldn’t resist) on the top to place food on and a fool proof way of setting a constant temperature. They are also so cavernous you could cook enough fish to feed the thousands.

So, given that dishwashers are almost perfectly designed for cooking in, why don’t we do it more often? Especially when it creates such a stir at a dinner party. So if you want to see what you’ve been missing out on read on…

We marinated our salmon in a mixture of soy, ginger, chilli, coriander and shallots before wrapping them in neat parcels of strong foil which have been brushed with oil. Just make sure they are watertight by turning them over a few times.

Set the dishwasher on its highest setting (around 60’c) and let it work its magic for a full cycle. There’s clearly no need for any dishwasher powder or power balls. When it beeps peek inside and remove your silvery parcels. They should feel firm when they once felt limp.

Tear open the wrapping paper and serve with noodles and stir fried vegetables.

The flesh flaked perfectly and was remarkably well cooked. The salmon was very juicy and tasted delicious. The only downside was that the skin was soggy. But if you wanted, or had time, you could crisp it up in a pan. However, I wouldn’t suggest using skinless fillets as the skin helps to hold the salmon together.

It’s a foolproof way of injecting some fun into a dinner party and is incredibly easy. You might want to play around with the marinade and possibly cooking with a whole salmon or possibly a trout. I’m keen to try this with sumac next, and then come the summertime, with cucumber with a lovely hollandaise sauce on the side.

I’m convinced that it must be possible to cook pork belly in the washing machine. But I haven’t plucked up the courage to give it a go yet. If you’ve got any more lateral approaches to cooking with things that aren’t intended for culinary use, let me know and I’ll try it out.

(Thanks to Helen for the name. I was going to call it “Bish, Bash, Bosch Salmon”, but Fish-Washer Salmon is a million times better.)

Where’s My Pork Chop – Freshly Ironed Cheese Toasty

London was at its most grizzly. The sky was as grey as Poirot’s matter and the rain cascaded like Eureka’s bath tub. But for me it felt balmy and almost Mediterranean as I waited for Food Urchin on the steps of St. Paul’s. In my rucksack was a box. And in that box was an iron, a jar of home-made crabapple and chilli jelly, some of my Mum’s 2008 vintage chutney and a lovingly made Montgommery cheddar sandwich.

Given that Food Urchin and I share a passion for the bizarre cooking methods you’ll find in a book by Stefan Gates called Gastronaut, it made perfect sense to push the culinary boundaries of “Where’s my Pork Chop”. My theme picked up where the Sandwichist left off and tied in nicely with the crab apple jelly I made the previous weekend.

As I handed my package across to Food Urchin I giggled at the thought of him opening the box at work and realising that he was going to have to use his new, multi-purpose, iron as a toasty maker.

As it happened the fun all took place at home. I’ll let Food Urchin’s hilarious write up and photos do the talking…

After the fun of cooking in the bathtub, dishwasher salmon, cooking pizzas in our clay oven, beer can chicken and this experiment with ironing sandwiches, I’m massively excited about what to do next.

If you’ve got any suggestions such as cooking on a car engine let me know and we’ll give it a go.

Bathtub salmon courtesy of Tiki Chris.

Update from Cassius

Cassius is going from strength to strength. The summer rain and sun has widened his cracks, but he doesn’t care. We’ve tried to add coats of protective clay but he isn’t interested. He just shrugs them off and demands to be used. If we cook in the Aga he starts sulking like a moody teenager. Our efforts in Cassius to date have been great. But we are constantly trying to improve our technique.

So in preparation for a party in Somerset, I bought a cast iron rectangular skillet to act as a DIY pizza stone. So far we’ve been using upturned baking trays, but in light of the fact that we have ruined 3 of Cowie’s parents’ pans, I thought it would be worth the small investment.

The other area we’ve been keen to improve on is the dough. We’ve been following a Jamie Oliver recipe that demands semolina flour, but have always cheated and used plain flour. The bases have been tasty but lacking the authentic bubbles that you get at places like Franco Manca. So we visited At the Chapel in Bruton who have a pizza oven and to our delight they gave us not only a bag of their semolina but also a small pot of their sourdough starter! To say that I was excited would be the understatement of the century. (More on “Simon the Sourdough Starter” another time)

The combination of using dough made with semolina and the cast iron “pizza stone” resulted in our best pizzas yet. The skillet got so hot in the embers that it had the pizza base dancing and bursting. The pizzas cooked in around 3 minutes flat and tasted of Napoli!

A simple parma ham and mushroom pizza kicked Christened the new skillet…

The “La Reine”, excusing the lack of olives, put Pizza Express’s version to shame.

A plain, tomato and mozzarella pizza was simply brilliant. Some torn basil and a twist of black pepper had us shouting with greedy delight.

And a fully loaded beast with mushrooms, sun dried tomatoes and chilli that we’ve named “Arnie”.

Our Eggy Pizza was a triumph as well. The yolk oozed across the plate and acted as a fantastic dipping sauce.

Cassius is loving life. He’s just getting better and better. The combination of semolina and skillet has made a huge difference to the bases. They’ve become much lighter and are developing the bubbles we’ve been hankering after. For our next trick we’re going to make our bases using “Simon the Sourdough Starter” that we’re lovingly nurturing… If you’ve got any suggestions for awesome toppings let us know.

Cowie’s Pizza Oven

Being the amazing girlfriend that she is, Cowie took it upon herself to build a pizza oven from scratch over Easter whilst I was back at home with my family. Not only is this an incredibly brilliant thing to do… it is also enormously selfless as the wheat in pizza dough doesn’t really agree with Cowie’s stomach. So it was quite literally a labour of love.

I’ve been desperate to have a clay pizza oven ever since we saw one at River Cottage. I bought the book , by the amazingly well named Kiko Denzer, that they recommended and became engrossed in the incredibly passionate world of DIY clay oven sites such as “instrucatables” and “clayoven”. I love the idea of crispy based pizza. Of charred, smoky crust.And of puffy dough.Of that Neanderthal smell of primal food. I guess it has brought out the latent Ray Mears in me.

If you want full instructions please visit this brilliant, brilliant site. But here’s a quick overview of how we bodged our oven together.Or rather how Cowie went about creating the best pizza oven anyone has ever made for me!

1.Persuade parents, landlords, other-halves etc. that they simply cannot carry on living without a pizza oven. Don’t underestimate how important stakeholder buy in is.
2.Build a base for your oven. This should get to a height at which you’d like to cook at.
3.Use a concrete slab as the floor to the oven. Or fireproof bricks.
4.On top of you base, build a dome of wet sand. Make sure the dome is the right size. You want space around the outside to form the clay oven. The sand is essentially mapping out the negative space that will become the inside of the oven.
5.Coat the outside of the wet sand with wet newspaper.
6.Dig up some clay and moisten. Mix with sand and build a layer of clay that covers the newspaper. Ensure this is around 2 inches to 3 inches thick. Make it as strong as possible.
7.Leave a hole at the front that is 63% of the height of the oven itself. Apparently this is the perfect ratio to allow the oven to breathe.
8.Once the dome is formed and secure, pull out the sand.
9.Light a small fire and allow the oven to dry.
10.Add a second skin of clay to fill in the cracks that will have formed.
11.Light another fire to continue the drying out process.
12.Add a third layer of clay as a cosmetic layer. Make it as smooth and attractive as possible.
13.Light a proper fire and get baking!

So far we’ve got to number 9. We got a bit overexcited and decided to cook in it straight away. To our joy it worked! (We’re going to finish the process next weekend.)

Cowie made some dough following a Jamie Oliver recipe and we threw together a collection of toppings. Given that we didn’t have any mozzarella we’re delighted with the results. The pizzas were gorgeously smoky, crispy and authentic. Step aside Zizzis!

We now can’t wait to evolve our technique. For instance I’m keen to make sourdough bases, buy a herd of buffalo and to harvest my own wheat. Also, if anyone knows where we can get a bakers’ paddle, please can you let us know.

Salmon Teryaki

Inspired by our delicious salmon teryaki at Roka and remembering my first encounter with dark, salty, sweet, soft salmon at Sosumi in Cape Town, I was eager to create the perfect version of it.

The beauty of it is that it is so soft, almost raw. Bright pink yet salty and deep with flesh that falls apart at the seams. Just like it should. You touch it with a chopstick and it yields.

I put my Heston hat on and decided to give the salmon a good burst of marinating. A combination of teryaki sauce, shallot, galang galang, chile, coriander, mirin and a drop of sesame oil worked its way into the firm fillets for about 3 hours before I popped them in their own little Baco sous vide bags.

When we’ve tried the boil in the bag method before we’ve had great results in terms of taste but have tended to slightly over do the cooking. To avoid this we used a far bigger pan and used the lowest flame. To keep the temperature down even more we added a handful of ice cubes to the warm/hot water so that it wouldn’t even think of overcooking whilst we had a bath.

I got a bit carried away with the whole water bath thing and went to check on my salmon with a towel wrapped around me. For a bit of a laugh I gave Cowie a shock by bringing one of the salmon parcels up to the bath with me and dropped it in the bath! Cowie was shocked! And even more so when I got my camera out!

But it makes an interesting point. The bath was at the ideal temperature to sous vide my salmon. It was probably at a better temperature than the pan on the stove!

When the flesh went from being firm to yielding a little when I poked it we whipped it out of the pan and opened up the pouches and drained them both into a bowl. The flesh was perfectly rare and they were deeply coloured and still, thankfully, in tact.

I took the fillets out of their juice and seared them skin side down on a griddle so the skin crisped up. There are few flavours I love more than crispy fish skin. Delicious.

In the meantime Cowie created a masterful stir fry featuring a variety of oriental mushrooms, seared pepper, sweetcorn and other oriental nibbles.

And it was stunning. Slow cooking, marinating and sous vide are the way forward. Especially when you get a bit of searing in there as well.

For our next trick we’ll be cooking venison on our car engine!

Cooking on a Car Engine

One of my big aims for 2008 is to master the essential masculine art of cooking on a car engine. I first encountered car engine cooking about 10 years ago when the coolest delivery man ever arrived with a delivery of books for Mum.

It was 10 in the evening so we offered him a drink and some food. He said yes to the drink and popped his bonnet open revealing a carefully wrapped tin foil package containing a lovingly made fish stew. It was his way of getting through the monotomy of driving for 11 hours a day. We were gobsmacked. And even more so when he then pulled a petrol powered skate board out of the back of his truck and went for a ride around our driveway. Surreal.

I recently rediscovered the art of car engeine cooking through Bob Bulmer’s book the Surreal Gourmet.

He suggested the best thing to do was to get hold of a copy of Manifold Destiny; the bible of car engine cooking. I got it for a dolar on Amaazon although the shipping cost me a fair bit more!

It’s a vintage book. Full of endless detail about which 1970’s Mustang will cook baked potatoes quicker. The warnings are probably the most important bit. Don’t block any air intakes. Don’t imterfere with any of the car’s mechanics. And don’t cook anything too liquid. All pretty straightforward. It harked from a time when you opened up the bonnet and saw metal rather than plastic. I opened up the bonnet to my Polo and was confronted with a hermetically sealed engine tucked up inside a plastic straight jacket. Upon further inspection it emerged that there are several hot crannies where tasty food parcels can be nestled.

My curiosity earlier led me to a fantastic little website on the Instuctables portal . It seems everything I need to know is on here. So I’ll take it all in and and get ready to cook on Cowie’s Peugeot 206 engine. I’ll try to theme the meal around our destination.

I want to build an outdoor pizza oven

I need some help.

I’m determined to have a pizza party next summer in our garden and need to construct a fully functioning pizza oven in the spring. I’ve had a good look around the internet and can see there are a whole bunch of people building outdoor ovens for pizzas and general cooking purposes.

Can anyone offer me any advice about the pitfalls and things to watch out for. What design should I use? And are they easy to build?

I’ve found this video that seems to sum up what I want to do. I want to be able to stand there in my apron, put on my best Italian accent and wave around my massive baker’s spatula.

I found these photos on HeatKit which seems to be a Mecca for all things to do with building pizza ovens.

If there’s anyone out there who wants to help me build a pizza oven at my parent’s house near Bedford please get in touch. I really need some help!

Beer Can Chicken

I’ve read a whole bunch of articles on how to cook a chicken with a beer can wedged inside it. I first saw it in Fergus Henderson’s Observer supplement about how to make the most of summer. It’s just a shame that summer has almost entirely bypassed us this year.

I loved the idea of ramming a beer can up the ass of a chicken that we gave it a go whilst half way up a mountain in Wales. Harriet’s Grandparent’s gorgeous cottage in the Welsh mountains is a 20 minute walk directly up a hill. We arrived on a Friday night in pitch darkness carrying our heavy rucksacks full of supplies to keep us slaked and sated. In other words loads of booze and tonnes of food!

I’d been getting excited about doing the beer can chicken all weekend… Harriet was egging me on to cook it after we had gone for a walk on Sunday. So before we went on our hike Nick and I lit a fire in the dry stone wall to drive off the moisture that had accumulated. The beauty of the fire was that it warmed the stone up and fitted perfectly into the scenery. There’s something special about lighting a pre-barbecue fire. It’s a great warm up to a special event.

I found loads of instructions of how to cook Beer Can Chicken scattered around the internet from the Surreal Gourmet to the more informative About.com About’s is particularly good, if a little too detailed. All you need to do is…

Find a can of beer. Chop the top of with some scissors and pour away the liquid so the can is half full… fuller than this and the beer doesn’t have a chance to boil and steam… it just gets hot.

Rub salt and smoked paprika into the skin of the chicken. I separated the skin from the flesh and seasoned under the skin as well just for good measure… but I guess this is optional. I just like the wearing chicken gloves! Then, very carefully, ram the half full beer can inside the cavity of the chicken so the bird is balanced on the can. Have a look below.

If you knock it over like I did, then just pour some more beer in from the top. Not too much though… you want to get the beer boiling and not just warm.

Then pop wrap the base of the chicken in some tin foil to stop the legs catching fire and balance the base of the can carefully on the grill. Now arrange the coals in such a way that there is intense heat either side of the chicken and build a small mound of coals directly under the can so that the beer in the can is encouraged to boil. Now leave the chicken on the grill for around 2 and a half hours whilst the bird steams from the inside and smokes from the outside. Monitor the chicken every now and again to see if steam is puffing out of the neck. When the meat around the top of the bird is cooked your ready to carefully take the succulent bird off the grill and tear it apart.

With any luck the flesh should fall apart and taste deliciously of smoke and beer! It’s such a great party piece. I’m keen to develop the recipe and steam a chicken with red win and garlic…

Winners and Anna seemed to enjoy the show too!