Having a smoke

I have been experimenting with smoking.

Not with those terrible lung-busters, but rather with various types of food.

A regular pasta dish we enjoy is one using smoked chicken, leek, a little chilli and garlic.

For a change, I decided to try smoking the chicken myself, instead of buying the usual smoked chicken breast.

After a bit of research, and having procured a bag of hickory chips, I then proceeded to make a spice rub for the chicken.

I mixed together half a teaspoon each of ground black pepper, salt, smokey paprika, brown sugar, and added a sprinkle of cayenne pepper, and a teaspoon each of dried thyme and oregano.

I coated the two chicken breasts with the spice rub, set up my Cobb cooker with heat beads ready for cooking.

Importantly, I had soaked the hickory chips for three hours prior to starting to smoke the chicken. Apparently, this is an important step as soaking the chips for anything less than a couple of hours is a no-no.

And smoke it did – I was worried the neighbours would come running fearing a house fire!

After 10 minutes I turned the chicken and felt confident that a total cooking time of 20 minutes was sufficient, as I didn’t want to dry the meat out.

“Yay!” It was voted a success in a blind tasting by the master of the house when compared to the usual store-bought smoked chicken. I was keen to try other foods to smoke.

A weekend away in the camper found us at the Curdie River, Peterborough and on my early morning beach walk I was able to determine what the short, low nets were that we’d noticed the previous afternoon.

There were two nets anchored with star+posts in the shallows of the estuary, and I’d wondered if the little yellow tags swinging in the breeze may have indicated some special and very official watery research by local parks rangers or the like.

Were they monitoring water quality or seaweed species perhaps?

But a shout out over the strong winds to the young man gathering in the nets supplied the answer – he holds one of only 18 eel fishing licences in the district, and was bringing in his catch.

This reminded me of stories I’d read about the intriguing history of Indigenous people capturing eels with specially constructed rock weirs in the waterways around western Victoria.

Their expertise and knowledge in creating channels to direct the eels into, capturing them in the very beautiful and skilfully woven long conical nets or baskets has been well documented and makes for interesting reading.

The significant, scientifically tested research conducted by Heather Builth (Flinders University) shone a light on various aspects of how the local Gunditjmara people farmed eels and I’ll wager these people were indeed the first gourmet foodies in that they most likely traded the smoked eels across Victoria and South Australia.

Today licensed eel farmers like Ben Osbourne of Oss Eels have expanded their local markets into Asia where wild caught and smoked eels are desired for their superior quality over farmed eels.

Ben buys tiny eels called“elvers” from Tasmania, releases these in various locations and harvests them four years later.

Undoubtedly eels do suffer an image problem, but truly, smoked eel is a gourmet delight!

Many top chefs seek out these wild eels to feature on menus.

Here’s a simple way to try smoking as a method of cooking, one that utilises a cheap, old wok as you don’t necessarily have to buy specially designed smokers. Experiment first with a wok plus lid. It works a treat.

The tea-smoked fish can be eaten as is with an Asian-inspired salad, and you can smoke chicken breast with this same recipe.