Food for Father’s Day: Smoked Salmon Club Sandwhich Recipe

It isn’t easy to find new ways to make Father’s Day special for Dad every year, but this smoked salmon club is delicious, filling, and simple enough to make, yet complicated enough to be gourmet (click below for a better view).

This hearty, spicy dish will knock his socks off.

Greek Smoked Salmon Club

Ingredients:

12 oz. Greek yogurt, drained

4 oz. mayonnaise

1/8 cup of cucumber

1 tbsp fresh lemon juice

2 tsp dried dill (more if you use fresh dill)

1 tsp chipotle power or chilli powder (to taste)

Bibb lettuce, rinsed

Beefsteak tomatoes, rinsed and cut into thick slices.

16 oz. Alaska Smokehouse Smoked Salmon

9 slices of sourdough bread

1 tbsp chives, finely chopped.

6-8 cooked crispy cooked slices of Bacon (optional)

Procedure:

1. Grate the cucumber onto a paper towel. Fold the sides of the paper towel over the pile and wring it over the sink to remove excess moisture.

2. Combine the cucumber, chives, lemon juice, dill, mayonnaise, and yogurt. Season with the chipotle powder until the desired level of spicy is achieved.

3. Drain the fillets of salmon while toasting the sourdough. Gently break up the salmon with a fork so that it is in chunks.

4. On the first slice of sourdough, add the dressing, lettuce, tomato, salmon, (and top with bacon if necessary), then add a second piece of sourdough. Repeat for the upper layer, treating the second piece of sourdough like it was the first slice.

4. Fasten with a toothpick if necessary and serve with your favorite side: potato salad, coleslaw, french fries, Caesar salad, etc. Enjoy!

Serves 3-4.

www.alaskasmokehouse.com

Remembering Memorial day with World Wide Gourmet Foods

Memorial day weekend is a great opportunity to take a little extra time out of your daily grind and appreciate the company of your loved ones. What will you be doing this weekend? At World Wide Gourmet Foods, we think Seattle is a great place to live. Just to prove it, I polled some of our World Wide employees  for their past long weekend experiences to suggest to you the following:

1. Barbeque with your neighborhood. In Seattle, we don’t always see eye to eye, but we can all agree that we love good food. What better way to enjoy exactly where you are at than by cooking and eating with neighbors and family. Our smoked salts (such as our Alder Smoked salt) are excellent in rubs or marinades, and impart a smokey flavor without the fuss of wood chips.             (Alder Smoked Sea Salt $15.95)

2. Mingle with your community. Share an experience with your family, or at least go somewhere that is cheap, outdoors, and entertaining for all ages. The Northwest  Folklife Festival in downtown Seattle, and the Kitasp Harbor Festival in Port Orchard and Bremerton are both in full swing this weekend. These events can last all day though, so bring healthy snacks from home to avoid spending a lot on junk foods. We recommend our salmon jerky or all natural granola, both which come in resealable bags.                                                                                      (Teriyaki Salmon Jerky $16.95;  Banana Nut Granola $7.95)

3. Get away from it all. Sometimes you want a change of scenery, or maybe you just want to share some quiet time with someone special. One option is to travel to the Olympic Peninsula and camp ocean-side at Salt Creek Tongue Point. Our picnic baskets are crammed with smoked salmon, rich chocolate, crunchy sweet popcorn, and even some local wine to add some luxury back into your cheap, $12/night ocean view from the tent. No cooler space necessary.                    (Washington Wine Basket $75.99)

Save 20% on ALL salmon and salts

To make your holiday weekend even better, World Wide Gourmet Foods is having a Memorial Day Sale! Customers that order online will receive a 20% discount on all of our smoked salmon and artisan salts.

We hope that you have enjoyed our suggestions. Regardless of how you choose to spend your holiday, have a great weekend.

See www.alaskasmokehouse.com for all our food.

Glazed Pork Loin

A pork loin rubbed with a smoky apple flavored rub, and glazed with honey

Here is a photo I snapped of a pork loin I made last night with my smoky apple rub. Just added a little honey to it and used my cook’s torch to finish it off!

Here’s a copy of the recipe if you want to try it at home:

Smoky Honey Apple Pork Tenderloin with Parmesan Crusted Sweet Potatoes and Yukon Gold Potatoes

Our products are available here!   We’re currently offering a clearance sale on all of our Valentine’s & Easter items right now, so it is a great chance to get 50% off our holiday chocolates and cookies!

Mother’s Day

Contains all of our Lemon & Key Lime items

As Mother’s Day is right around the corner, I thought I would mention that we are having a 15% off sale on all of our gift baskets, wine gifts, and gift sets. We also offer free shipping on all orders over $30, which applies to most of our gift baskets and gift sets (with or without wine!). If you order today and select 2 Day shipping (for those of you who live in the following areas WA/OR/ID/N. CA/N. NV/W. MT/UT, standard shipping will get there in 2 days or less already!) your package will arrive on Friday at the latest.

Sometimes the best gift for mom is the gift of a tasty treat she doesn’t have to make!

www.alaskasmokehouse.com

The Joys of a Blow Torch

All Natural Flavored Pure Cane Sugar

Yesterday, I made a pork tenderloin with a sweet/savory rub that utilized salt and flavored sugar from our Leila Bay Trading Company along with a little honey. Unlike roasting a whole pork loin, tenderloins are much smaller and require less cooking time, which means that the glaze has less time to caramelize on the exterior of the tenderloin. So, rather than crank the heat and dry out the roast to get that beautiful and oh so tasty crust, I cook it at 350 or 375 for about 45 minutes. Once that’s done, it is blow torch time ($30 from Bed, Bath & Beyond or Target). You take the same principles from making creme brulee, caramelizing sugar with high heat, and apply them to the exterior of the roast, making sure not to burn it black, but to simply remove the liquid from the glaze and harden the sugar. The trick is to go slowly, on the lowest setting of the blow torch, and apply even blasts of flame. The result is a perfectly sweet/savory crust on a roast that isn’t dry as a bone! Recipe follows below:

Smoky Honey Apple Pork Tenderloin with Parmesan Crusted Sweet Potatoes and Yukon Gold Potatoes

Wine for the Weekend

We’ve always loved wine here at World Wide Gourmet Foods. Drinking it, cooking with it, and pairing it with the foods we make and love to eat. Since getting our beer and wine gift delivery license last year, we’ve started including it in our gift baskets, too. Now that the weather finally seems like it is going to take a turn for the better, I thought I would bring up a delightful pairing for the weekend.

Pend d'Oreille Winery's Huckleberry Blush paired with a selection of Alaska Smokehouse Smoked Salmon and Seafood Spreads!

A wine we feature is Pend d’Oreille Winery’s Huckleberry Blush. This winery from Sandpoint, Idaho produces this delightful little blush that pairs perfectly with our tasty Alaska Smokehouse smoked salmon!  Contrary to what the name implies, this is a crisp, fruity and slightly dry blush rather than a syrupy sweet blend. It starts with 95% Riesling grapes from Pend d’Oreille’s vineyard, and blends in 5% Huckleberry wine to give it a salmon colored blush and fruity overtones. This wine pairs perfectly with our smoked salmon as it has plenty of body and acid to contrast with the bold and smokey flavor of the salmon.

A bit of advice, you don’t always have to adhere to the rule ‘white wine with white meat/fish, red wine with red meat’.  The bolder the dish, the more acid or body your wine should have.  If you have a delicately seasoned lamb chop, you wouldn’t pair it with a bold wine like a Merlot.  You’d pair it with a more delicate wine like a Pinot Noir or a Burgundy (or even a white wine!  My grandmother had a recipe for boneless leg of lamb that started with a crisp white wine marinade – more on that at a later date!). 

 At any rate, if you follow this logic, a boldly seasoned salmon dish (like our pepper garlic smoked salmon) can be paired with a delicate red wine like a Pinot Noir or Burgundy as the overall flavor profile of the dish has risen to that of the lightly seasoned lamb dish.

Experiment and have fun with it!

Smoked Salmon Sliders

Here’s a little recipe I came up with here in the office to use the leftover salmon we had out for a photo shoot.  It is a great spring/summer meal.

A boneless fillet of smoked sockeye salmon from Alaska Smokehouse

Smoked Salmon Cake Sliders with Lemon Dill Cole Slaw

By John Dwyer

For the Salmon Cakes:

1 lb of flaked Alaska Smokehouse Smoked Sockeye Salmon, skin removed

1 cup of cold mashed potatoes

1 medium shallot – minced

3-4 medium cloves of garlic – minced

1 tablespoon of mustard (Dijon or Spicy Brown)

1 tablespoon of Herbs de Provence

1 teaspoon of Himalayan Pink Finishing Salt

1 teaspoon of smoked paprika

1 teaspoon of Old Bay Seasoning

½ teaspoon of ground black pepper

Juice of 1 lemon

1 egg

1 tablespoon milk (the heavier, the better)

1 cup Panko breadcrumbs

½ cup flour

1 egg, beaten with 2 tablespoons of milk set aside for final breading

Vegetable oil or light olive oil for frying

1 package of dinner rolls (at least eight) – I reccomend King’s Hawaiian

Wax Paper

Paper Towels

For the Cole Slaw

½ head of green cabbage, shredded

2 carrots, grated

½ head of red cabbage, shredded

1 ½ cups of mayonnaise

1 tablespoon cider vinegar

Juice of 1 lemon

½ teaspoon of sugar

½ teaspoon of Himalayan Pink Finishing Salt

2 teaspoons of dill

In a small skillet, sauté the minced garlic & shallot until translucent, then transfer to a small dish to cool.  Combine the dry seasonings together in a small dish.  In a large mixing bowl, combine the salmon, mashed potatoes, cooled garlic, cooled shallots, mustard lemon juice, egg, heavy cream, half of the dry seasoning, and half of the breadcrumbs to the mixing bowl.  Taking a hand mixer, slowly blend the ingredients together evenly for around 1 – 2 minutes or until the ingredients appear evenly dispersed throughout the mixture.  In three medium bowls, add the flour in one, egg beaten with milk in the next, and remaining breadcrumbs to the final bowl.  In that final bowl, add the remaining dry seasonings and mix thoroughly.  Set a plate at the end of the row lined with wax paper.  Take the salmon mixture and start to form patties that roughly match the width of your dinner rolls, about 1inch thick.  Once your mixture is formed into patties, take each one and coat it in flour, dip it in the egg wash, dredge in breadcrumbs and set on the wax paper lined plate.  Repeat until all the patties have been coated in breadcrumbs.  Set the plate into the fridge so that the breading can set for at least 30 minutes.

Now mix together your mayonnaise, vinegar, lemon juice, sugar, salt, and dill to form the dressing for the Cole Slaw.  Slowly add you dressing to the cabbage and carrots until you have a nice even coating.  Reserve some of the mixture as a condiment for the sliders as guests may want added dressing on the sandwiches.

Heat the oil in a large frying pan until it begins to smoke on medium high.  Set aside a plate with a couple of paper towels on it.  Add the salmon cakes one at a time, taking time so as not to reduce the temperature of the oil too much as you go.  Each cake should take about 2 -3 minutes per side.  Once each cake is done, transfer to the paper toweled plate to drain.  While they are drying, cut each of the rolls in half horizontally.  Now add a cake to each roll, top with the Cole Slaw and serve.  Depending on roll size, creates around 6-8 sliders.

Enjoy!

 

Mother’s Day

 The funny thing about this year is that Easter and Mother’s Day are so close together. It seemed like we just got done figuring out what to do for Easter dinner and now we need to come up with a great gift idea for Mom! As you can imagine, we’ve got a few tips and tricks to get your mother the best gift possible.

This basket contains all of our pink hued items!

Gift Baskets

You really can’t go wrong with one of our gift baskets.  With such a wide array of tasty treats, some healthy, some indulgent, there is bound to be something in that basket that your mother will love!  We also have variations on the gift basket that include wine or don’t have a basket at all like our gift sets!

Sweets

Since we have 2 lines of cookies/chocolates/candies, we have plenty of options if your mother has a sweet tooth!  As a bonus, you’ll know that we make our products by hand using only the finest belgian chocolate (Callebaut) as well as other ingredients of the highest caliber.

 

 

Make a Fancy Meal

We have a wide variety of recipes that incorporate some of our products.  Why not prepare one for your mother, who cooked so many meals for you? 

Bakery Mixes

If a full meal isn’t your speed, you could always surprise her with a plateful of Amaretto Brownies or Lemon Scones!  Sometimes the biggest treat is not having to cook!

We hope that these will help you find the perfect gift for your mother!  For me, I’m going to give my mom a Leila Bay Trading Company All Salts Gift Set.  Since she loves to cook, this seems like the perfect gift for her.  Our salts offer more flavor and less sodium than normal table salt.

Traverse Bay Confections

A quartet of tasty treats from Traverse Bay Confections!

Those of you who know Alaska Smokehouse or World Wide Gourmet Foods may not know that we recently (last year) acquired Traverse Bay Confections and Julieard Hand Decorated Cookies. Both companies were locally based here in Washington just south of Seattle. Traverse Bay specialized in gourmet chocolates, candies, and old-fashioned cookies. Julieard specialized in, you guessed it, hand decorated sugar cookies.

After the acquisition, it became apparent that having a second location located on the opposite end of Lake Washington was both inconvenient and inefficient, so we built a new bakery/confectionary from scratch here in our facility in Woodinville and moved all the remaining equipment and personnel up here. We are now operating a high quality (AIB Audit Certified ‘Superior’) bakery/confectionary here in Woodinville. Our offices are located right above the bakery and it can be quite distracting…especially when they are baking the French Apple Crisp Cookies! Or, when they are making the Banana Nut Granola…Or the Gingerbread Biscotti Bites… On second thought, it is pretty much distracting all the time!

Please visit www.alaskasmokehouse.com for our full line of Traverse Bay Confections.

Kosher Certified Products

With Passover right around the corner, I thought I would take the time to list all of our Kosher Certified items. As I’m sure most of you are aware, our Alaska Smokehouse Smoked Salmon (Plain, Pepper Garlic, Sockeye, and Canned) is certified Kosher. You might not be aware that our new bakery is certifed Kosher, too! That means our new granola, all of our cookies (including hand decorated), and all of our chocolates are certified Kosher!  Smokehouse Kosher Certificate     Bakery Kosher Certificate

 We also have a high end Kosher Flake Sea Salt in our Leila Bay Trading Company line available at www.alaskasmokehouse.com.  

Kosher Flake Salt