Tastes Like Food

Have you ever wanted to cold smoke some salmon, make your own sausage, or cure your own pancetta? This book covers some way old school techniques for adding flavors to meats, fish and veggies through salting, curing and smoking.

Be warned however, the recipes in this book are fatty and salty, but that’s how they’re supposed to be. If you’re looking for low fat, reduced salt food, don’t bother with this book. On its chapter on sausages it states, “If you must avoid fat for dietary reasons, avoid sausage; we don’t recommend trying to make or work with low-fat sausage – low fat sausage is an oxymoron to us.” Nor will you find any Rachel Ray 20-minute meals in here; be prepared for lengthy prep times, oftentimes on the order of days. However, if you’re looking to taste some amazing food, meat in particular, you’re in the right place.

I have tried the brined and smoked turkey recipe; it is fantastic. First I must say that brining should be mandatory for any poultry you cook; at the very least it imparts a juiciness otherwise impossible to achieve, at its best the meat will pick up all the subtle or complex flavors of the herbs and spices infused in the brine. Pork loin also greatly benefits from brining in a bay leaf and peppercorn solution.

I smoked the brined turkey breast for several hours using crab apple branches cut from the tree in my yard. The crispy, amber-black crust gave way to juicy, butter-textured meat. And the meat, the meat was sophisticatedly sweet and tarragon-flavored from the brine which melded with the rustic crab apple wood smoke. A few slices on some hearty bread with some homemade mayonnaise, and I had found heaven.