Smoked local, exotic foods

I REALLY like smoked foods — fish, poultry, different meats and was sure that home smoking couldn’t be that complicated. At its simplest, smoking was just done around the fire or over the wood stove, but I am not having huge success. My first attempt at smoked trout used a shameful amount of wood and charcoal for one little fish. So when my brother-in-law, a much more accomplished smoker, visited — I attempted to get some lessons.
We smoked four trout (bought fresh from Food Lovers). Much more sophisticated than my attempt with green rosemary and wet wood chips, he made a neat little tinfoil package with tea leaves, fresh fennel, dill seeds, star anise, salt and black pepper. Prime importance is to get the fire right – and this is my biggest failing. Bro-in-law very quickly got briquettes burning to the right consistency, heaped them up in the middle, placed tin foil package on top and arranged the trout neatly around the edges. Twenty minutes later we were looking at deliciously bronzed fish – with skin peeling neatly off and delicately flavoured with star anise and dill.
Gleaned from travellers’ tales conjuring up images of delicate Chinese watercolours, willow patterns, and tea houses set in the middle of serene lakes; I wanted tea-smoked duck.
Ready for the local Chinese experience I took myself off to Long Chen Plaza. No ducks — live or dead – although the Chinese dragons guarding the entrance looked suitably ferocious. Lions inside the plaza were decorated with fading pink bows but I could have wished for a more vibrant China town in terms of food and eating. There is a small Chinese section in the giant Ivato Horizon supermarket – and I came away with soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, noodles, various spices (US$1 for Szechuan pepper and star anise) and the most delicious salty preserved peaches (US$3,99). Otherwise full of fake flowers, picture frames, ornate vases and ornaments, crockery and wholesale food stuffs. Butchery was disappointingly un-Chinese so I settled on chicken for my smoking experiment.
Furniture parlour is awesome — with some amazingly ornate (and expensive) lounge suites – over US$6 000 for a three piece ivory and gold number, cheap garden furniture and a huge array of garden tools ranging from machetes to lawnmowers to a very tempting stretchy hosepipe (collapses into a coil). I was tempted by the garish baby chairs (oversize hands for around US$100) but brought home only a delightfully kitsch plastic table cloth for US$3,87. Probably US$3,85 — once I had emptied my purse of rands and bond coins. Lucky beans were deemed unacceptable.
But back to the smoking. I pulled out the Weber and made a smoking mixture of equal quantities of Tanganda tea, brown sugar and rice with some star anise and black pepper thrown in. Wrapped that up neatly in a foil package and pricked it all over to release the flavour. First step was to steam the chicken for 40 minutes with fennel, over water mixed with soy, cinnamon and star anise.
This worked well and rendered it tender and moist. I didn’t do so well with the fire. Once fire is hot —place foil package on briquettes with chicken on other side – close top of weber and leave to smoke for an hour. This was the theory. My fire went out too soon and I had to start all over again.
End result delivered an interestingly flavoured smoky chicken and a determination to keep trying. Accompanied by oriental mashed potatoes — flavoured with sesame, coriander, sezchuan pepper — and garden greens, tsunga and bok choi, the meal was a good mixture of local and exotic.
g.jeke@yahoo.com