Cedar Salmon

Okay I have been holding out on you. I have been waiting to prepare Salmon for days. I have been grilling Salmon on a Cedar plank for several years, but Bobby (as usual) showed me a new and improved method. This is Cedar Plank - Grilled Salmon with Yellow Pepper Sauce (Boy Meets Grill page 90). If you have never used wood on the grill, you must try it. First start with a cedar plank (Bobby also calls them shingles) - you can buy these at a cooking store, but you would pay too much. I go to the lumber yard or a Home Depot type place and get untreated cedar and have them cut the plank into about six inch sections. Fill your sink with water and submerge the plank for about four hours. I hold the plank underwater by setting a big bottle of olive oil on it.


Now for the salmon. I went to Tag'z to get mine (see previous blog on Tag'z). When I told Mike I wanted salmon he went right to work because he already knows what I want. I want wild salmon, not farm raised. Wild salmon is the real deal - a fish that was caught by fishermen from the ocean. Farm raised salmon is not as healthy for you and often they add fake color to the fish. If you are going to go through the whole deal to smoke a salmon, you gotta have the best stuff. Once I had a salmon filet delivered overnight from Seattle. We ate that salmon in Tennessee less than 24 hours after it had been caught in the Pacific Ocean. It was expensive, but worth it for a special occasion. While cutting the salmon for me, Mike said he knows his product is the highest quality because, "I have been in this business a long time so I know who not to buy from. Some people out there give the business a bad name." This is why it pays to get to know a guy like Mike Taglio.


Once home with the salmon and after the cedar plank has been throughly soaked, it's time to light the fire.  Put the plank on the grill by itself and let it start to smoke and char. It will start to pop and it will fill your grill domain with that unmistakable cedar aroma. Flip the plank over and place the salmon, skin side down on the smoking wood. Now here is the tip I learned from Bobby and used for the first time here. I wrapped the plank and salmon combination in aluminum foil. This trapped the smoke coming off the plank around the salmon. At one point the smoke found an opening and came streaming out - it was like a mini-smoker right in the grill. You pre-soak the plank to prevent it from simply catching fire, but be ready because the ends will go ablaze from time to time - just blow it out and let the smoke keep coming. In my previous salmon plankings the salmon was a little more dried out. This time, with the foil, it was the most tender and smoke-flavorful salmon I ever ate.


The sauce was also a great complement. I first roasted two yellow bell peppers on the grill until charred all over. When completely blackened, I removed the peppers to a gallon size zip-lock bag and waited 15 minutes. The charred skin falls right off when you pull them out. I sliced them up and then took them back to the grill. In a pan a grilled some chopped onions and the roasted pepper slices. I let that simmer about 5 minutes and then poured in some white wine and continued simmering. After another five minutes I took the pan off the grill and poured the onion, pepper, wine mixture into a food processor and whipped it up into a sauce. One more step - I poured the sauce into a new pan, added cream and put it back on the grill to simmer. When the salmon was done, as you can see in the photo, I poured the Yellow Pepper sauce over the salmon and we were ready to go. Fantastic!


What to drink? We used Cline's White Truck blend of California wines in the Yellow Pepper sauce (remember Red Truck from a previous blog), so since the bottle was already open, we drank that wine with the salmon. It was also a great match - but don't get hung up on the white-wine-with-fish rule. Red wines are also great with salmon - its not a white fish anyway. Try a Pinot Noir and ask your sommelier for one with a "smoky" flavor. The smoke in the wine and the smoked salmon from off the cedar plank will be wonderful together. Pinot Noir is sometimes a little thin for our taste, so we also like Zinfindel with salmon. You can get a really good Zin for $10 or $12. A really good Pinot Noir will cost you $20. I would be suspicious of an $8 Pinot!


What was on? 2009 was on. Every year since 2004, my son Ziggy has given me the same Christmas present. He makes a CD of all the songs from the previous year that he likes and that he thinks set the trends that year. He actually started this because when I got my ipod, I loaded it up with only tunes and artists from the '70s. He thought I could use an upgrade. As the salmon smoked and the peppers simmered, we listened to what made 2009 memorable. Here are a few of the selections. If you are a person of a certain age and would like to impress your younger friends or relatives, just download a few of these tunes and the accidently on purpose let them see these on your playlist. You will be instantly, up-to-date, and cool.

Right Round by Flo Rida

Poker Face by Lady GaGa

Single Ladies by Beyonce

Heartless by Kanye West

Fireflies by Owl City

Tik Tok by Ke$ha

I Got a Feeling by the Black Eyed Peas

Some of this stuff is actually pretty good - not 1970's good, but still pretty good.


Paul