Garden Tool Set: smoked garlic

Showing posts with label smoked garlic. Show all posts

Monday, August 10, 2015

The big smoke

This Sunday will be our third smoking workshop at the Secret Garden Club - it's always a popular topic, perhaps because it is so satisfying to create your own smoked food from scratch. It's also surprisingly easy, as we demonstrate, to set up your own smoker in the garden or on a patio.

One of the things that is most enjoyable about our Learn To Smoke sessions is experimenting with new flavours. We have our traditional favourites - on Sunday we'll be tea-smoking trout fillets and the side of salmon is already in the cold smoker - but it's always fun to try out some more unusual flavours.

This time, we're trying out smoked quail's eggs, using a method recommended to me, and also smoked semi-dried tomatoes - I'd love to call them sun-dried, but that would be fairly incredible at this time of year.

There'll be plenty more smoked foods to taste and talk about on Sunday and we still have a few places left at £60 which includes the workshop, demonstration and supper - book your ticket here if you'd like to come and join us.

Take up smoking - again!

Sunday’s Secret Garden Club afternoon sees us return to the subject of smoking. Adding smoke to food gives it a delicious flavour and aroma, redolent of barbecues and the great outdoors. It doesn’t need specialist equipment: if you barbecue, you can smoke.

We’ll look at three different ways to smoke food - from delicate tea-smoked fish, to a range of vegetables hot-smoked over wood chips, to cold smoking and how to rig up a cold smoker in your own back garden for a very small outlay.

MsMarmiteLover has promised to mix her acclaimed smoked lemon cocktails again to kick-start the afternoon, and we’ll finish with an afternoon tea inspired by our smoky ventures.

There will be plenty of time to chat and discuss the best way to set up a smoker and various techniques and foods to try.

Some of the food we’ll be smoking include:

Aubergines – hot-smoked for a distinctive char-grilled flavour;
Cheese – different varieties can be smoked with some very distinctive effects;
Garlic –smoked garlic can be used in place of ordinary cloves to add smoky notes;
Jalapeno chillies – smoked and dried chillies are known as chipotles and are used in Mexican cuisine;
Lemons – you haven’t lived until you’ve tried one of MsMarmiteLover’s smoked lemon cocktails;
Peppers – smoking brings out their sweetness;
Salmon – once you’ve tried your own home-cured, home-smoked salmon, you’ll never want shop-bought again;
Salt - gourmet seasoning;
Sweetcorn – marinaded and hot-smoked for a barbecue style dish;
Tofu – marinaded first for sweetness and to retain its softness, then hot-smoked ;
Tomatoes – tea-smoked to bring out their essential flavours;
Trout fillets – smoked over leaves of Lapsang Souchong tea for a delicate, elusive taste.

Join us on Sunday March 18th, starting at 2.00pm. Booking details are here.