I make - blini with smoked salmon

Blini are small, leavened buckwheat pancakes which are traditionally served with sour cream, caviar or smoked salmon. The singular for blini is blin. Russian style blini use bread yeast as a leavening agent while a more convenient way is to use baking powder. I chose the traditional Russian style since it's my first time. You will have to wait for one hour and that's pretty much the only difference between two methods of making blinis. This recipe below gives me 40 blinis, cute enough to serve as elegant canapes.

Russian style blini

- 100 g plain flour
- 70 g buckwheat or wholewheat flour
- 1 teaspoon fast-action yeast
- 1 egg, separated
- 250 mL lukewarm milk
- 1 teaspoon caster sugar
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1 tablespoon of melted butter
- oil/butter to cook the blini

Mix two flour in one bowl. In another bowl, mix tepid milk, sugar and yeast. Mix the yeast mixture well and stir in one egg yolk with a folk. Gently incorporate the flour mixture into the liquid bowl until a smooth (and loose) batter is formed. Cover the bowl with a kitchen towel (or clingfilm) and leave it in a warm place to ferment for one hour. The batter will be thicken up after a while. Don't ferment the batter more than one hour as it is likely to develop yeasty smell in the blini.

Right before the end of one-hour fermentation, beat the egg white in a clean bowl until hard peaks are formed. Fold the stiff egg white into the blini batter and then the melted butter.

Heat a flat skillet on medium heat with two tablespoons of fat (I use vegetable oil and butter). When the skillet is heated through, drop one tablespoon of the batter to the skillet to make small round blini. I can fit 5-6 blini in a 24-cm round skillet. When you see bubbles appear on the center of the blini, this means heat has come through to the top. Flip them over with a rubber spatula/fish slice/offset spatula and cook for another 30-60 seconds. Remove the cooked blini to a sheet pan. Repeat the same process for the remaining batter.

Serve immediately with toppings of your choice (smoked salmon and cream fraiche is a classic). Blini can also be made in advance and freeze.

I make - Smoker-less Smoked Salmon

I would have never thought that it's possible to make my own smoked salmon at home. Yes, I did it and it's not complicated at all. My friend, Stephanie, showed me some pictures of her recent kitchen discovery, home smoked salmon without smoke. What? Now I am listening. Stephanie uses smoky tea leaves to make the smoked salmon. I googled around and found that smoked salt or liquid smoke (which I happened to have one bottle at home) can be used to create the same effect. I am intrigued.

The basic curing mix is salt and sugar but the ratio varies wildly based on what I can find. Some uses equal amount of each. Others have more sugar than salt or vice versa. Traditional gravlax (gravad lax) seems to be heavy on the sugar side (and without the smoky ingredient) but that just sounds too weird to me (sweet raw salmon, anyone?). I opted for Daniel Gritzer's method and adapted from there. He tested three salt:sugar ratios and commented that 2:1 by weight is his and tasters' favorite. That sounds all right to me. I also quantified the salt in relation to the salmon weight so that I can adapt the following recipe to any amount of salmon I may have in the future. For each piece of salmon, start with amount of salt which is 5% of the salmon weight. My salmon was 750g so I used 37.5g of salt (you can round up to 40g) and half the amount of the sugar (19g). This will give you a mild tasting salmon after two days. Play with the curing mix and curing time to suit your taste of salmon.

Easy smoked salmon
adapted from recipes by Daniel Gritzer and Raquel Pelzel

To prepare the salmon before curing:

Plenty of cool salted water

1 (750-1000g) skin-on, sushi-grade salmon fillet, pin bones removed

1/2 cup vodka (optional)

Soak the fish in the salted water for 10 minutes. Strain the water and rinse the salmon with vodka (if using). Pat the fish dry with paper towels.

To cure the salmon:
40 grams kosher salt (4-5% of salmon weight)
20 grams brown sugar (half of the salt amount)
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground white pepper or black pepper

2 large bunches dill (optional)

2 tbsps liquid smoke (alternatively you can use smoked salt or ground up smoky tea leaves such as Lapsang souchong)

Optional flavoring for the fish:

1 teaspoon caraway seeds, toasted and ground
1 teaspoon coriander seeds, toasted and ground

1 teaspoon onion powder

In a bowl, mix the salt, sugar and ground white/black pepper. If using other dry flavoring such as caraway, coriander or onion powder, add to the salt mix now.

On the worktop, overlapping several layers of cling film covering three times the size of the salmon. Sprinkle 1/3 of the salt mix on the cling film. Put half of the dill (if using) on top of the salt mix and the layer the salmon on top of the dill (skin down, flesh up). 

Sprinkle the liquid smoke on top of the salmon flesh. Use your finger to rub the liquid smoke into the salmon so that the liquid smoke is absorbed in. Scatter the rest of the salt mix on top of the salmon. Rub the mixture into the salmon flesh with fingers (cling filmed fingers work well). Finally cover the fish with the remaining dill.

Wrap the salmon up by gathering the cling film from all sides. Rest the salmon parcel in a container. Put some weight on top of the salmon parcel (I use cling film wrapped cans) and cover the whole container completely (I wrap the whole thing in layers of cling film). Refrigerate the salmon for 2-3 days. If you want and remember, turn the salmon parcel once or twice a day. I didn't and it still tastes great.

Note to self: I cured my first salmon for two days. It's pretty nice but I prefer the flesh a bit firmer and saltier. Next time will try 3:1 ratio for two days or the same 2:1 ratio with 3-day curing.

When the curing is finished, rinse the salmon under cold tap water to remove all the brine mixture. Pat the salmon dry and enjoy with rye bread or bagel with cream cheese.