Smokehaus Recipe: Smoked Whitefish and Blue Cheese Pizza

I don't know what took us so long to put our smoked Lake Superior whitefish on pizza - we certainly have tried every other Smokehaus goody this way. The whitefish is a perfect match for the blue cheese, as they are both somehow subtle and pungent at the same time, and neither seems to battle the other for a primary flavor position. The egg, while admittedly a little too far on-trend, is a beautiful garnish and adds a neutral flavor and a glamorous texture to the pizza. And let's face it - there's never too many eggs, especially in Smokehaus-land. We've adapted this recipe from the Cashel Blue website.

Cashel Blue Cheese and Smoked Lake Superior Whitefish Pizza

Ingredients:

1 8-10’’ pizza dough

Olive oil for drizzling

1/3 cup fresh spinach

1/3 cup smoked whitefish, de-boned, skinned, and flaked

2 oz Cashel blue, crumbled

1 large egg

Salt and pepper

Pecorino Romano for garnish

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 425F.

Roll out your pizza dough and set it to rest for 15 minutes or so. If you have a pizza stone, be sure to preheat it. We just use an inverted baking sheet sprinkled with cornmeal, on which we also built the pizza. If using the pizza stone, build your pizza on a cornmeal-sprinkled peel.

Drizzle the dough with a little olive oil. Sprinkle with the spinach leaves, then the whitefish, and finally the Cashel blue. Create a small well in the center of these ingredients and crack your egg into it. Season the egg and the pizza with salt and pepper.

Place pizza in the oven and bake for 15-20 minutes. Garnish with shavings of Pecorino Romano. By the time you're done shaving the cheese onto the pizza, it should be set and cool enough to cut. Slice, eat, and rejoice.

Smokehaus Recipe: Corned Beef Supper with Roasted Vegetables

Unlike most grocery store corned beef, our corned beef is fully cooked and ready to go. This means that you can rip off a chunk or two before you set it on the stove to boil, and it also means that it will not release the usual amount of tallowy scuzz that a raw product is prone to do. However, because it is already cooked, you must simmer it long enough to become tender. This recipe will also work for any old corned beef brisket: just follow the raw meat's cooking guidelines.

As my mother (the finest corned beef supper-cooker in the world) advised me, the most important thing to remember is timing: the vegetables and meat need to be ready at roughly the same time.

Smokehaus Corned Beef Supper with Roasted Vegetables 

Boiled Elements: 

1 corned beef brisket – 3-4#

3 med onions

4 stalks of celery

1/4 cup of pickling spice

5-7 cloves of garlic

1 head of cabbage – we use green, but napa, bok choi, or baby bok will work

salt and pepper to taste

Roasted Elements: 

5 carrots

2 turnips

3# small white or red potatoes (roughly 1 1/2 inch diameter – but fingerlings will do)

7-10 cloves of garlic

2-4 Tablespoons of olive oil

Salt and pepper to taste

Course-chop onions and celery and peel the garlic cloves. These will contribute to the flavor of the boil, creating a sort of court bouillon effect which will season the meat, steam the cabbage, and eventually reduce into a sauce. Combine them along with the pickling spice in large stockpot and add brisket. Submerge in water, and put the whole shebang on a high-temp burner. At this point, you may add the salt, but I like to wait an hour or two and taste what the broth is doing; the meat will lend (or leach out) salt, but probably not enough. Once the mixture is boiling, reduce the heat so the broth is at a lazy bubble.

The meat will need to bathe in this boil until it is tender – about 3 hours. You may need to add more water during this process. For the last 20 minutes of cooking, quarter the cabbage, add it on top of the boil, and cover the pot.

When the meat has been lazy-bubbling for an hour and a half or so, start the vegetables.

Preheat the oven to 375F. Peel and course-chop the carrots and turnips. The goal is to get all the vegetables to cook at the same time, so just make sure they are consistent sizes. Scrub your potatoes and leave them whole. Crush the garlic with a flattened knife. In a large mixing bowl or in your baking dish, combine all the vegetables with enough olive oil to lightly coat them. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Dump this mixture on a lipped baking sheet or in a roasting pan and pop it in the oven. After 20 minutes of roasting, use a spatula to upset the vegetables – this will allow more complete caramelization. Use this agitation method throughout the the roasting process. The vegetables should take 45 minutes to an hour to roast – they should be soft and caramelized when done.

When the meat and cabbage is tender, remove them to a large serving platter and tent with foil. Strain the broth through a mesh strainer into a pitcher (we used a mason jar): adjust salt and pepper to taste – now you’ve got sauce! Discard the aromatics.
Serve the vegetables and meat together and adorn with your brothy sauce. Real good with lager and blueberry cobbler (but what isn’t?). If you have leftovers, you’re in luck: corned beef hash in the morning!

April's Sweet Potato Hash

Crispy, sweet, soft, and savory - if you treat a sweet potato right, you get results. And by "right," I mean adding Smokehaus bacon and fried sage. April came up with this recipe recently in what can only be considered a fit of genius. Try it on Thanksgiving, on Christmas, or on any given weekend with a couple of poached eggs. 

Aprils Sweet Potato Hash

3 medium-large sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into 1” cubes

2 Tbsp olive oil

1 Tbsp butter

1 medium yellow onion, small-diced

¼ lb bacon, cut into small cubes

1 bunch of fresh sage

Kosher salt, to taste

Fresh-ground black pepper, to taste

Directions:

Put a large pot of salted water on to boil. Once boiling, add the sweet potatoes and cook until just fork-tender, but not soft. Heat 1 Tbsp of the oil in a large, heavy skillet on medium. Add the sage and fry, gently flipping over, until it is crisp (this won’t take long – about 3-5 minutes). Remove the crispy sage to a plate and, while still warm, sprinkle with a little salt.

In the same skillet, add the bacon and onion and cook until the onion is soft, about 10 minutes. Remove mixture and drain off most of the bacon fat, but leave a teaspoon or so to flavor the potatoes. Add the butter, and once melted, add the sweet potatoes in an even layer.

Allow the sweet potatoes to brown on one side and then re-incorporate the onions and bacon. Cook all the ingredients until desired crispiness is reached with the potatoes. Salt and pepper to taste and garnish with the fried sage.

Duluth Maple Pumpkin Pie

We use Duluth maple syrup in this pumpkin pie recipe - it is harvested right up the hill by one of our salmon fisherman, Dave Rogotzke, and his wife and children. The addition of maple syrup gives the pie a mellow sweetness, and the fresh ginger and black pepper really make it sing.

Duluth Maple Pumpkin Pie

1 9” Flaky Pie crust

2 large eggs

15 ounces pumpkin puree

2 cups of heavy cream

½ cup of locally-made maple syrup

¾ tsp cinnamon

½ tsp grated fresh ginger

Pinch of ground nutmeg

Pinch of ground cloves

Pinch of fresh-ground black pepper

½ tsp kosher salt

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees, adjusting an oven rack to the lowest position. Whisk together all the ingredients with 1 cup of the cream. Pour the mixture into the crust and bake on the lowest oven rack, on a baking sheet, for 60-70 minutes or until the center is set. Remove from oven and let cool completely before serving – overnight is optimal. To serve, whip the remaining cup of cream (add sugar, if desired) and give the slices a dollop.