How to Make Smoked Salmon Hash Part 1/2

Well I have another appetizer or a first course or a brunch meal for you. It's called
Smoked Salmon Hash with mustard crème fresh and chive oil. This is a very easy and
exquisite presentation. I think you're really going to enjoy it. It's very, very simple. I've
got a variety of very savory ingredients.

First of all, we have our all star which is our salmon. We have fresh salmon here and also
we have a lox salmon but you can also use smoked salmon but I'm using lox right now.
We have some capers, some wonderful garlic, red onion, some chives or if you do not
have chives and you have green onions or scallions, you can use those, horseradish, really
wonderful addition to the flavor, fresh lemon juice. We’ve got some cream and some
potatoes. So, very basic but it's a wonderful, wonderful recipe.

First, I'm going to show you how to do the mustard crème fresh. What crème fresh is
really a french type of sour cream. It's very, very easy to make at home. I do it all the
time. What I did was I took a cup if whipping cream with about two tablespoons of
buttermilk. Mix those together just with a spoon and then place it to the side for about 24
hours in a sort of a room temperature like in your kitchen would be perfectly fine. You do
not even have to refrigerate this.

After 24 hours, it will actually thicken. The cultures in the buttermilk actually create this
wonderful sort of sour cream mixture and that’s what we have right here. This is my
crème fresh and to spice the crème fresh up more, I'm going to add some Dijon mustard.
And you can add as much or as little as you like. I like a lot of mustards, so I'm adding
about three tablespoons, almost a full tablespoon. So I’ll mix this up. Now I made this
recipe many, many times in many of my cooking classes and everybody just goes nuts
over it. As a matter of fact I made it for a millennium party that my husband and I did
when we were actually doing a sit-down dinner for five courses and this was the first
course. This was the appetizer and it was a show starter. I do not think I even had to serve
anything after that but of course I did. But I think this was just a beautiful presentation
and everybody was really impressed so, a lot of fun.

Okay so that’s done. I've already minced or chopped very finely the lox right here. Just
take your lox, slice them. Again, it can be a very course chop but you want to get it kind
of small because you want to make sure that the potatoes kind of keep their shape. We
don’t want to overpower the size of the potatoes. So I'm going to take my fresh salmon, a
beautiful salmon here. Being in the Pacific Northwest, we’re so lucky to have this readily
available. And I'm just going to cut it up and we’re going to do that kind of a nice dice.

Now again, do not worry about this. Again hash, in a way it's very rustic but we’re kind
of making it sort of elegant but just do not worry about it. Whatever size it turns out, it's
going to be fine. All the flavors, that’s really what we’re looking for. This is a
wonderfully sharp knife. That makes all the difference in the world. In fact, sometimes it
might be easier for you to actually put your salmon in the refrigerator or actually in the
freezer for probably about maybe 15, 20 minutes and it makes a lot easier to actually
mince. I think we’re good to go.

All right! Now another little trick I'm going to tell you because you’ll say “Oh my gosh,
all the salmon, what about my board. Do I really want to deal with salmon?” Yes, you
want to deal with salmon. What I do is a little helpful like a little kitchen tip is I put a
little small spray bottle with about a tablespoon of bleach and we put that in the bottle
with some water and I keep it under my sink, so anytime I'm washing my board, I spritz
my board especially if there is a heavy smell such as salmon or onions and it also cleans
my board really nicely. Let that sit for about a half hour and you’ll have a perfectly clean
board without that sort of smell from the salmon.

All right, now what we’re going to do is I'm going to come over to the stove and I'm
going to put the pan on because I want to make sure my pan gets really hot. We’re
actually going to sauté these potatoes. But before we do that, let me explain to you a little
bit about some tricks of this. Whenever I teach my classes, I always let people know how
you can entertain elegantly and easy. And one of the things I do especially with this dish
is I prepare all of my ingredients ahead of time. A lot of people become concerned of
how they can actually get their potatoes setup ahead of time without them discoloring. So
I have here something that I did last night. I peeled my potatoes and then I put them in
just a bowl of water and you can see how perfectly white they are, so you do not have to
worry about them discoloring.

If you just left them out, they would actually turn brown. Now the product would be
okay, it just does not look very appetizing. So that’s kind of an easy trick. You could also
dice up all of your potatoes and in fact I’m going to show you how to dice this potato.
When you dice it up, you can stick it back in the water and be done.

What I like to do is makes it easy is that you want to make sure that your product is stable
or you're going to have a problem with this very sharp knife and you just slice through.
So now that stabilizes my potato. You can see it's not wobbling on me. Bring your knife
down and then just cut some nice slices. Now the suction with the knife against the potato
sometimes makes it difficult to pull up. There is a new knife that actually has sort of a
scallop, not a scalloped at the edge but actually sort of a ridge indentation sort of a depth
in the knife and that actually provides air so that the product does not stick such as garlic
or potatoes like this. That is going to be on my birthday list. I'm going to take a couple of
these and then just go down nicely. Those would be great French fries. Then I'm going to
just go all the way through and we’re in it. We’re going to call that good.

So there you go. Now you can stick these as I said back into the water and then boil them
off the next day or you can just utilize them right now, put them in hot water and boil. So
I'm going to put these aside and we’ll use these a little later. Then I'm going to turn my
pan on. This is a great skillet. One thing is these are not eggs so we do want this pan to
get very, very hot because we actually want these to get some sort of color of the
potatoes. We can only do that if we get a hot pan. Now I'm just going to use a vegetable
oil when we do start to saute these.

Now these potatoes were cooked last night and what I did was put them in hot boiling
water for about five minutes, three to five minutes. You have to test. You want to keep
the shape and form of the potato. If you overcook them, they’ll be fine but it will be more
of a sort of a textural difference. And I think they taste better when they actually kind of
keep their shape. Let’s check this pan now. Yeah, we still got some time.

Well, in the meantime, why do not I get started on the mixture and we’re going to add all
these ingredients together and you’ll see what I'm talking about in terms of the color and
the overall look. What we’re going to do is we’re just going to add the salmon and I'm
going to add my whipping cream. Okay, all right, I know this is not a low-fat dish but
splurge a little. It's salmon.

Now I'm going to add my capers. I'm going to leave probably a tablespoon out because
I'm going to use that as a garnish. I'm going to add my red onions. I love red onions. Who
does not love garlic? Now, I really think there is nobody in this world that does not love
garlic. A good portion of garlic and you can add that to taste. All right, we’re going to
give this a nice big mix.

I'm holding off from my favorite ingredients because I think this is what gives it the kick.
The cream, oh it's going to make those potatoes taste so good. You thought I forgot the
horseradish, I didn’t. I was saving it for last. It's a heaping tablespoon. Now you can add
more but I think that’s all I can handle. And boy there’s the smell—whoa! That smells
really good. Okay, I think we’re ready for the stove.

Can you see? I can see the smoke coming up, so that is perfect. I'm going to turn it down
just little bit and add my oil. Give it a swirl. Move it over here. This is the sound we want
to hear. Something’s cooking, it's potatoes. I think it's got to be potatoes, have to be
American probably first or second favorite food. I tend to be putting them in almost any
dish I possibly I can. They’re great fillers. Now I will turn my heat up because I do not
want to lose that great heat from the pan. Any time you add a product to the pan, it
immediately brings the heat temperature down. So we want to maintain that high heat so I
can get some nice caramelization on the potatoes.

I think one of the things I've noticed at home cooks do or do not do is they have a
problem of worrying about if they’re going to burn something. Of course we know what
burning is but a lot of times they do not even want to get any color on anything but we
want some color on this. So, the color actually adds flavor anytime you toast like toasting
bread. It adds a different type of flavor. It adds some texture in it and nuttiness to a lot of
the products. So, this is what I like to do is to make sure that I can caramelize or brown
fish or chicken or potatoes and get them good and caramelized.

Okay, we’re letting these cook nicely. I do not want to fiddle with them too much
because again, I want to get some of the color on the bottom. One thing I also notice is
that sometimes the Teflon pans even though they are stick-resistant, they also do not
allow some of that browning but I'm going to take my chances. It’ll be delicious either
way. I'm going to add a little pepper and this wonderful fleur de sel. I don’t have to add
too much because the salmon has already some salt in it and also the capers have a bit of
the brininess so we do not need to add too much. Let’s see, oh I think we’re getting some
color right now. That’s what we want. I don’t know if I mentioned but this is a great first
course meal but I've also used it as a brunch meal. All you have to do is pouch an egg and
set it on top and it's just delicious. The sunny yolk, when you break into it kind of just
oozes out over the hash, it's wonderful. Okay, yup, you can see we’re getting some color.
That’s exactly what we want.