Grownup Food Adventures

Do you remember the first time you, as an adult, tasted really good chocolate? Do you remember how it made you stop in your tracks, momentarily lost in the complexity of this sweet you'd heretofore taken for granted?

Early adulthood, if you're lucky, is full of moments like that. You emerge from the mindless voracity of the teenage years into adulthood, and the hormonally fueled demands for absurd quantities of random foodstuffs fades. You start to be a bit more selective about what you eat and how you cook it.

For me, one of the greatest examples of this was the humble taco. My growing up had been split between numerous vastly different locales, ending with high school in East Texas. Most of the tacos I'd eaten came from Taco Bell, and while they're perfectly yummy in their own right, they bear as much resemblance to authentic Mexican food as a platypus does to a polar bear.

One morning in 1989, I was riding my motorcycle back from an overnight shift working security at an oil tools plant. I was ravenous, and as I putted along the aromas from a taco truck wafted their way inside my helmet.

Almost without thinking, I pulled up to the truck, set up in the parking lot of a defunct car dealership. I spoke just enough Spanish to order four tacos, but not enough to specify what kind. I got, I found out later, two barbacoa and two pork pastór, each with a dollop of insanely spicy pico de gallo and a handful of cilantro.

I tore into one of the barbacoa tacos sitting astride my bike, and did not move an inch until all four were gone and several more were purchased and tucked away for later consumption. The explosion of spices, the starbursts of flavors and variety of textures were almost more than my still-forming mind could embrace.

In that moment, my loves for both street food and authentic ethnic cuisines were born. I could have been to a dozen Tex-Mex joints within a two-mile drive, and even the most upscale of them couldn't match the flavor of those 79-cent taco truck delicacies.

Think back for a moment. Surely you've got a moment like that somewhere in your past? Take a few minutes and tell me about it and I'll put some of the best in a future column.

But How Do You Keep It Lit?

This week's column was inspired by a product I tested midweek. I received a box from Sullivan Harbor Farm containing a selection of their smoked salmon products.

I'd had smoked salmon over the years, usually as part of a brunch buffet. It always had a fairly nondescript texture and a smoke flavor that was pleasant, but not tremendously distinctive. It was a take-or-leave sort of food. I wouldn't refuse it, but there were plenty of other things I'd eat first.

My first bite of the Sullivan Harbor cold-smoked salmon changed that. It had a pleasantly chewy texture that didn't just vanish on the tongue. There was a hint of sweetness and a smokiness that stopped right at the point of perfection. It looked a lot like the stuff I'd eaten on the buffet, but the similarity ended there.

The real awakening, though, came when I tried the hot-smoked fillet. The aromas of hickory and cherry wood came right out, and I couldn't wait to get a fork into it. I found myself trying to take very small bites, prolonging the experience. I hadn't eaten like that since the first time I ate proper New York cheesecake.

Then came the double-smoked salmon appetizers, one with Cajun spice and one with a maple-pepper blend. These would qualify as showing off, were the company selling them not so unpretentious. To make something like these and pay as much attention to the quality of the spices as to the meat itself is the hallmark of a first-rate operation.

All the items I tested are available for order, along with tons of other goodies.

The secret as far as the salmon goes is in the curing, also called dry-brining. When you smoke salmon, you don't just clean the fish and slap it in the smoke. You have to cure it first using a mixture of salt, sugar and (sometimes) herbs and/or spices. Most commercial operations dissolve all that in water for a wet brine, which is faster but also affects the texture of the finished product.

Dry brining is slower and requires more attention, but the benefits are tangible. You get a firmer, more flavorful finished product.

So, enough of my yammering. Go get some!

Got a question? Comment? Story to share? Drop me a line, anytime!