http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/14/magazine/14food.html

May 14, 2006

Food

The Industry: The Great American Smoke Out

By MATT LEE and TED LEE

"If you've ever taken sides in a debate over which New York purveyor has the
best smoked salmon, you might be surprised to learn that Zabar's, Citarella,
Balducci's, Costco and Wegmans - in fact most grocers on the East and West
Coasts, in the Midwest and even a few in Puerto Rico - buy their fish in
large part from the same smokehouse: Acme Smoked Fish.

The company's 80,000-square-foot warehouse spans one side of Gem Street, a
stretch of corrugated-steel and cement-block buildings in Greenpoint,
Brooklyn, where Acme has been curing, smoking, slicing and packing fish for
more than 50 years. And while the nearby riverfront was recently rezoned to
make way for luxury condos and also suffered a major fire, the company
managed to preserve its heavy-industry status, ensuring that on any given
weekday morning you'll find a convoy of refrigerated trucks delivering fish
from Norway, Chile, Alaska and the Great Lakes while a gang of sea gulls
circles overhead.

One recent morning, Buzz Billik, Acme's director of business development,
entered the cavernous room where forklifts ferry the salmon - roughly 50,000
pounds a day - and stack it on pallets. Billik has been in the industry for
nearly three decades, long enough to have witnessed the swing from the
near-exclusive use of wild salmon in the 80's to farmed salmon in the 90's
to the current resurgence of wild salmon in the wake of negative publicity
about farmed fish (though 99 percent of Acme's fish remains farmed). But a
similarly drastic change in the business - and the one most immediately
discernible by consumers - is in the actual smoking of the fish. Salmon is
smoked by loading wood chips (preferably apple and cherry) into a generator,
which streams smoke into two rooms filled to the gills with racks of fish.

"These days, we're smoking salmon with a milder profile than ever before -
just above the legal minimum smoke and salt application," Billik said.

He credits the sophisticated clientele of a few New York retailers with
leading the shift away from an Eastern European style that emulates lox (an
extremely salty salmon cured for three months, designed to be paired with
cream cheese) toward a more Western style intended to stand alone as an
appetizer, served with just a squeeze of lemon.

The new style means that, more than ever, careful handling is paramount to
guarantee that the supple texture and gentle flavor of the fish that left
the smoker is what ends up on your plate. Vacuum-sealed packages of smoked
salmon can last three weeks (45 days for varieties that are treated with
nitrites) refrigerated at an optimal 38 degrees or below; once the packaging
has been opened, Billik recommends consuming the salmon within three to four
days. Any unused portion must be returned to the refrigerator in a sealed
plastic container to preserve the bright color and glistening appearance.

Which brings us back to the question, Which purveyor has the best smoked
salmon? It's the one that takes the greatest care of the fish.

"We sell plenty of salmon to retailers who don't really have the experience
to do it justice," Billik said. "There are about 10 or 12 quality outlets
I'd be happy to shop in every day. Even though it's the same salmon, these
12 merchants are going to handle and present the product differently."

They price the salmon differently too. A pound of farm-raised Atlantic
salmon from Norway smoked on Gem Street and sliced to order costs $30 at
Zabar's on the Upper West Side and $35 just six blocks away at Barney
Greengrass - a statistic that may say more about the role of marketing in
the food industry than taste."

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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/14/ma.../14food-1.html

May 14, 2006

The Arsenal

By AMANDA HESSER

"One selling point of smoked salmon is that you don't need to do much to it
in order to get it on the table. Fold it on top of toast and dab it with
sour cream and you have the lazy man's cocktail party. But take the salmon
one or two steps further and you break out of the cliché. Salmon's buttery
fat and smoke serve as useful flavoring elements. You can chop it up and
fold it into a seafood salad to infuse it with a little wood smoke, use it
as a counterweight in pasta blended with tangy Greek yogurt or whip it up in
the food processor with fennel and cream cheese for a light spread.

---------------------------


Scandinavian Seafood Salad


6 fingerling or 2 Yukon Gold potatoes
2 cups (about 10 ounces) cooked and peeled small shrimp, cut into small
pieces
1 ½ cups (about 10 ounces) chopped smoked salmon
1 ½ cups (about 10 ounces) crab meat
4 hard-boiled eggs, finely chopped
2 shallots, finely chopped
2 anchovy fillets, chopped
1 tablespoon chopped cilantro
1 tablespoon sliced chives
½ cup freshly squeezed lime juice (about 4-5 limes)
3 tablespoons mayonnaise
2 tablespoons sour cream
Kosher salt and ground pepper
2 small heads iceberg lettuce, separated into leaves.

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. In a small baking dish, roast the
potatoes for 30 to 40 minutes, until fork tender. Let cool completely and
then peel and cut into ½ -inch dice.

2. Combine the potatoes with the shrimp, salmon, crab meat, eggs, shallots,
anchovies, cilantro and chives in a large bowl. In a small bowl, whisk
together the lime juice, mayonnaise and sour cream; fold into the salad and
season to taste with salt and pepper.

3. Arrange the lettuce leaves on a platter and serve alongside the salad. To
eat, roll a lettuce leaf around a dollop of salad, like a spring roll.
Serves 6. Adapted from "Aquavit," by Marcus Samuelsson.

----------------


Smoked Salmon, Fromage Blanc and Caper Spread


6 ounces smoked salmon
1 hard-boiled egg
¾ cup fromage blanc
¾ cup softened cream cheese
Juice of ½ lemon
¼ teaspoon ground fennel seed
¼ teaspoon kosher salt
1 ½ tablespoons chopped capers
2 tablespoons finely chopped chives
1 baguette, thinly sliced and toasted.

In a food processor, purée the salmon to a paste. Add the egg and pulse. Add
the fromage blanc, cream cheese, lemon juice, fennel, salt and capers. Pulse
a few times until light, fluffy and well blended. Scrape into a serving
bowl, fold in 1 ½ tablespoons of the chives and chill. Sprinkle the
remaining chives over the dip and serve with baguette slices (or crackers).
Serves 6 to 8 as an appetizer.

--------------------


Pasta With Smoked Salmon and Yogurt


Salt
¾ pound casarecci, gemelli or gigli pasta
1 cup Greek yogurt (preferably Fage's Total)
½ pound smoked salmon, cut into bite-size pieces
1 clove garlic, smashed and chopped
Zest and juice of 1 Meyer lemon
2 cups packed arugula
1 ½ teaspoons chopped fresh dill
Coarsely ground black pepper.

1. Bring a large pot of salty water to a rolling boil. Add the pasta. While
it cooks, combine in a large serving bowl the yogurt, salmon, garlic, lemon
zest and juice, arugula and dill. Just before the pasta is finished cooking,
scoop out ½ cup pasta water and reserve.

2. Drain the pasta and slide it into the bowl. Using two spoons, toss the
pasta and sauce as you would a salad. If the sauce is too thick, add a
little of the reserved pasta water. Season to taste with salt and grind a
generous amount of pepper on top. Serves 4."

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