Tea-smoked Salmon Sandwich with Sweet Dijon Mustard

[ts]
This was one of those times when we had to "make it work."

The whole thing started out so promising. I was testing another recipe from Jaden's upcoming Steamy Kitchen cookbook: Tea-smoked Salmon. Her delicious-looking photograph of the finished product was enticement enough.

I was excited.

I prepared the smoking mixture of tea, sugar, (some salt?) and Szechuan peppercorns. I placed it on foil at the bottom of our steamer. I turned the heat on and waited for the smoke.



Smoke!

So I placed the two pieces of salmon to smoke. (Note: I should've put the salmon fillets on something, not directly on the steamer surface. Or, lightly oiled the surface. The fish stuck a bit.)

This time, I can blame the blurry/fuzzy picture on the smoke and not my shoddy photography skills.

[ts]
At the recommended end of cooking time, I checked the fish. And yes, even though Jaden wrote in the recipe that the fish will still look like its raw self, I was still afraid.

It went downhill from there.

Mistake #1: Not trusting the cooking time indicated in the recipe.

I set about smoking the fish for more time.

Mistake #2: Very erroneous heat control.

After I added 10 more minutes to the cooking time. I shut off the heat. I checked the fish. It seemed ready, I thought. However, I think it was JS who kept insisting that it wasn't cooked yet! (Yes, I blame her. Bwahahaha.)

So, after much hesitation, I decided that I would smoke the salmon some more. Since I turned the heat off, there was no more smoke. Instead of heating the smoking mixture first sans fish and waiting for smoke, I placed the whole fish-steamer-smoking-mixture configuration back on the heat and turned it to high.

Anyway, to make this very long-winded story short, the high heat cooked the salmon in a very unattractive way and burned the smoking mixture. You did not want to be in our kitchen that day.

The outside of the salmon was a brownish-grey and there were little dots of white (its coagulated fat, I guess). Not very appetizing.

Scraping off the brownish-grey film on exterior, I tasted the flesh and found that it was still OK to eat, albeit a tad too smoky in flavor.

So, we decided to salvage as much salmon as possible and make a smoked salmon sandwich spread. We added mayo, cornichons, green onions, lemon juice and Dijon mustard. We also made a sweet Dijon sauce to go with it.

The sweetness of the sauce and the tanginess of the cornichons and lemon juice mellowed the smoky flavor of the salmon. We had some of JS's Swedish Limpa Bread on hand and decided to make ourselves some sandwiches.

(This could work as a dip too, I would think.)



[ts]
So... did we "make it work?"

________________
Posts featuring recipes tested from Jaden's Steamy Kitchen cookbook:
Tea-smoked Salmon Sandwich with Sweet Dijon Mustard
Shrimp Chips with Five-Spice Beef
Kimchi Fried Rice, an addiction
Crispy Tofu with Sweet Chili Soy Sauce
Sweet Soy Pork with Potato Chips

Swedish Limpa Bread

[js]
You might be thinking why another bread post.

Um.

It seems like I have all these bread shots from before the move.

Maybe all these posts are to console myself for not having been baking bread in the past couple of months.

Maybe all these posts are to encourage me to try again.

See, it wasn't just the move that threw me off my bread-baking routine. I had been discouraged of late with my breads because it seems like they're not rising as much as I would like. The past two Deli-Style Ryes I baked are nowhere the "glory" of the first fluke loaf.

Still trying to figure out why I can't get the flukiness back.

In any case, without further ado, this is another bread I tried from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day a while back. I don't know why I picked this bread.

Maybe I thought it was exotic and different, which it certainly is.

[ts]
Note: JS asked me to pick a bread from the book, and this was what I chose! How quickly she forgets.



[js]
The bread was infused with the fragrance of cardamom, which is a most welcoming fragrance. The recipe called for anise seeds but we did not have those on hand. I substituted fennel instead. I'm not too crazy about fennel seeds so I halved the seeds required.

The recipe also called for doing something for the top of the bread but I must have been too lazy to do it. I sprinkled brown sugar on top instead.

It was good bread and we had it with some Cream of Fennel soup.

We also had it with something that will be revealed shortly. [See Tea-smoked Salmon Sandwich with Sweet Dijon Mustard.]





Breads we've done from the book:
Artisan Deli-Style Rye Bread
Brioche
Swedish Limpa Bread
European Peasant Loaf
Olive Oil Bread with Onions and Olives

Other breads we've made before:
No-Knead Bread, Two Kinds
Sesame Seed Buns
Foccacia
Potato Cornmeal Foccacia
Whole Wheat Challah

Herbes de Provence Sablé (and a lightbox)

[ts]
We used it!

We received these herbes de Provence from Dhanggit a while back. To fully showcase its flavor, we decided to use them in some sablé cookies.



[ts]
I used the Lavender Sable recipe from French Food at Home. However, something must've been lost in translation as my cookies melted into one giant cookie in the oven.



[ts]
I wonder what went wrong. I don't know if it's me or the recipe!

In any case, I simply cut them into rectangles after cooling a bit and we enjoyed them just the same.

And if you're wondering, "Why the gratuitous cookie shots?"

I was testing out our recent "lightbox" purchase.



[ts]
This is a laundry hamper from IKEA. It works all right. We still haven't mastered working with it, having issues with lighting and such. But, in a pinch, in our current no-sunlight-by-3pm world, this does just fine.




[eatingclub] vancouver French food:
Trout Grenobloise
Provençal Onion Tart
Pork Chops with Grainy Dijon and Capers
Prawns with Tarragon and Orange
Herbes de Provence Sablé
Roast Pork Belly with Puy Lentils
Duck and Orange Crêpes with Orange-White Wine Sauce



We're submitting this post to Weekend Herb Blogging, a world-wide food blogging event (created by Kalyn's Kitchen, now maintained by Haalo of Cook (almost) Anything at Least Once) with the goal of helping each other learn about cooking with herbs and plant ingredients.

If you'd like to participate, see who's hosting next week. WHB is hosted this week by Scott of The Real Epicurean.