We had forgotten how nice the people of Cheshire are! We really enjoyed our two days at the show again this year, met lots of people interested in learning to smoke food (a high proportion of whom have their own pigs and are looking forward to home smoked bacon!)
We only had one Tennessee smoker for sale, as sadly our contact no longer imports them… but one grateful customer carried it off!
Carried away with home smoking!
We had a happy reminder of our Sri Lankan holiday this week when we spent an afternoon creating a wonderful Sri Lankan curry! We had brought various spices and ingredients back with us – including Maldive Fish which, before I saw it written down I thought was mouldy fish. Jo had also returned home with a huge wooden pestle and mortar for pummeling ingredients into submission, small pans like mini woks for cooking plain hoppers andsome earthenware cooking pots.
Maldive Fish and spices being ground down to make Seeni Sambol
Maldive Fish is a product made from tuna dried, smoked and chopped the end result has the texture of biltong and an intense fishy flavour which can – and is – be added to any curry or chutney!
Sooo... top left plain hopper, top right string hopper, bottom right dal, bottom middle yam & aubergine curry, left chicken curry, middle seeni sambol and pol sambol.
Fantastic!
A couple more pictures….
Plain hoppers - bowl shaped pancakes made from fermented rice batter
Wattalapam - a sweet pudding, set coconut custard, only wonderful like a Bounty bar! - Cheating a little, this was a packet mix we bought in Nuwara Eliya.
A reminder to anyone thinking of going to Sri Lanka that our guide for the trip was wonderful…
We will be in the food hall at the Cheshire show (just off junction 19 of the M6) this week – do come and see us and we can talk food!
Last weekend’s smoking course brought wonderful weather on the Saturday – great for fishing! For the first time more fish were caught fly fishing than on maggots or worms – and all the fish were much bigger than they usually are. Bit of a struggle fitting them all on the smokers on Sunday, but we did! All into B’s cafe at the fishery to talk about the one that got away, afterwards. They’ve got a new farm shop there too, now.
Sunday was more traditionally Cumbrian, although in fairness we have, over the years been extraordinarily lucky with weather for our smoking days. Lots of pics on the gallery, as ever!
We cold smoked a huge side of rainbow trout all day Saturday, then dried it out overnight in Jo’s amazing converted fridge… it was (and still is) delicious!
Cold Smoke Generator from ProQ
As promised I am finally trying to catch up… the gallery is up to date apart from this week end’s course, and at last, here is the smoke producer we have been reviewing. It costs about £30 and is available from the inventor at Mac’s BBQ or from For Food Smokers .
It does exactly what it says – the only tiresome thing is that we didn’t invent it! It is only about 8 inches square, with a “maze” track of mesh, which when filled with wood dust smoulders for hours and hours… Plenty of smoke for a small BBQ or indeed biscuit tin or any other container you may want to smoke your food in! If you want more and will settle for three hours or so smoke, then you can light it in two places. We found that if we were only smoking in the top drawer of Freddy 3 (the filing cabinet smoker) then we could put the ProQ Cold Smoke Generator in the drawer below (or in the same drawer if space allowed) and it would smoke for a good 8 hours, with no risk of the heat melting the cheeses or cooking the salmon.
George & Ronke making a meal out of sausage making!
When we had an enquiry from Nigeria about a smoking course we were delighted that news of our business had travelled so far, but unconvinced that anyone would travel from so far to see Smoky Jo here at Shap!
We underestimated the dedication of Ronke and the enthusiasm of her husband Tokunbo – who continued to test our expertise by email even while we shared the finer points of slowly creating perfect smoked food with Ronke! They are both lovely people and we look forward to hearing from them when their chicken business expands to a smokery and fine catering company!
In addition to doing a whole lot of smoking, we made sausages and some ribs – these we followed an American recipe for and were far too salty for our palate – but Ronke loved them. We also took her to visit our friends at Bessy Beck Smokery, and gave her a quick tour by Ullswater and Windermere.
Thanks for being such a great student and easy guest at a difficult time, Ronke. And thank you for making Smoky Jo’s an international company!
We are regularly asked about cooking temperatures because ideally smoking food should be a S L O W process… When we ran the Old Smokehouse when it was still at Brougham Hall we recieved a complaint that one of our smoked chickens was raw… Our Environmental Health Officer talked us through our process and assured us it was not raw and would have been perfectly safe to eat. She toldus that when supermarkets first started doing hot roast chickens EHOs were inundated with complaints about “raw” chickens but actually this was because they were cooked for a long time at a low temperature and red juices remained – especially near the bones. As you may have noticed supermarket chickens are now very well cooked indeed…!
Anyway these are times and core temperatures required to cook meat to kill E coli 0157, Salmonella and Listeria:
60 C 45 minutes, or
65 C 10 minutes, or
70 C 2 minutes, or
75 C 30 seconds, or
80 C 6 seconds.
We’re distinctly aware of getting behind with our blog and our gallery… but it’s not forgotten! By way of a review, here’s one of the nicest thank-yous we’ve ever had, to keep things going…
“Thanks for agreat time over the weekend, as I said to Wendy this morning life as we know it can pass us by in a haze,yet every now and again it is punctated by an event that weaves its self into the very fabric of our being. Our time with you will stay with us a lot longer than the smoke. Thanks again 
”
Nigel and Wendy
Thank you to you both, messages like this make our day!
We’ve also recently been inspected (just routine!) by the Environmental Health department from Eden District council. No problems (phew!) and another really pleasant officer of the council – when we ran the Old Smokehouse we always found it easier to work with rather than against the experts… and that’s always easier when common sense is applied – thanks EDC!
The last course saw folk arriving from all around the country, in all manner of transportation… Yolanta arrived from London on a later-than-intended train, Paul on a much admired-motorbike and Alec and his wife parked their camper van in our field with views of the sun setting over Blencathra…
They were also the first people to use our new smoke generator – an item that has just come on the market… we’ll be writing more about it soon. Suffice to say it does keep dry dust smouldering for hours and hours and hours…!
Lots of pictures from this course are in our gallery
Our next course was for a wonderful woman who came over specially from Nigeria!
If we didn’t enjoy Smoky Jo’s, we’d stop… but we have just had a terrific weekend with six strangers, now all friends, bound together by good food, good humour and the knowledge that a small trout will NOT go down the plug hole but will in fact taste wonderful smoked!
We’ve never had people come with a Tommy Cooper set of props for their gags, either… smoking course, indeed…
You couldn't smoke a kipper in that!
Lots more SENSIBLE smoking pictures from the weekend are in our gallery .