Why do people love bacon? Many people's mouths water at the mere thought of it. The combination of salt, sweet, fat and smoke is the secret. But this combination isn't exclusive to pork belly. A lovely fish becomes absolutely delicious when prepared in the same way. Add a nice white wine and life is good.
When smoking, you must remember that fish doesn't easily absorb flavour after smoking. So before smoking, the fish must first be cured. And we do this in exactly the same way as 'gravad lax' is made. We remove the bones from the fish fillets and generously sprinkle them with salt and sugar. The proportions for this are 1 to 1. Make sure each fillet has a thick layer of this mixture. You can also add herbs to the salt mixture such as fennel seeds and juniper berries. For making gravad lax, you let the fish marinate for 2 to 3 days, turning the fish daily. You'll see that moisture is drawn from the fish and the flesh becomes firmer. But for smoking, we don't go that far. After about an hour in the brine, the fish can be rinsed and patted dry. Then place the fillets on racks that can go in the smoker with the skin on the bottom.
During smoking, we keep the temperature around 40 degrees. This way the fish doesn't cook too quickly and stays beautifully juicy. In our lovely smokehouse, we have a tray that we fill with charcoal. We let this burn for a bit so the box reaches temperature. Then we fill the box with the fish racks and throw a few pieces of applewood and some sawdust over the charcoal and almost completely cover the tray with a lid. This tempers the heat and switches to smoking and gentle cooking. We leave the fish in the smokehouse for about 6 hours like this. We check occasionally to see if everything's going well and add more sawdust or charcoal if needed. After about 6 hours, we take the fish out of the box, remove the skin from the fish and portion the fish to serve in the restaurant. The flavour is smoky, lightly salty and sweet. Umami. No one thinks of bacon when we serve the fish with confit salsify, pickled vegetables, fried samphire and a razor clam foam.