Homemade Lox (Cured Salmon)

Good evening all! I hope this evening all finds you well. We've had a long day at our house, and a longer afternoon.

After buying an organic brand of vegetable beef stew for my son to try, I figured out that he's not quite ready for it yet (even though the package and the doctor both said 8 months and up is fine for beef). Not only was I thrown up on, but while trying to clean us both off, the little guy decided to pee on me as well.

So, sufficed to say, this night is going to be laid back in the kitchen. (Don't tell, but I'm even considering ordering in a pizza...)

But, before I pass out and am dead to the world, I thought I'd post this little gem for you all to ponder.

LOX! That's right, it's finally ready! After 72 hours in our fridge, our GORGEOUS flank of home-cured salmon was ready to come out and fill our bellies full of salty, dill-iciousness!

Now, if you too would like to cure your own salmon instead of dropping $13 for only 4oz. of "lox", then read on my friend!

Things you will need:

2 lbs. salmon with the skin ON (we always buy wild-caught!)

1/4 cup salt of your choice (regular table salt is fine, but I adore the pretty pink color of the Hawaiian salt)

1/4 cup sugar

fresh dill (we bought two of the fresh herb containers you can find in grocery stores)

fresh ground white or black pepper to taste (I stopped turning the pepper mill when I started sneezing...)

a container that your salmon will fit in

plastic wrap

something to weigh your fish down with (we used canned things we'd had in our pantry for quite a while, but wine bottles work fine, as do ceramic dishes filled with dry beans)

To start, check your salmon for bones. Place a layer of salt, sugar, dill, and pepper on your plastic wrap. Lay your salmon on top and cover with the rest of your seasonings. I gently massaged the salt into the fish and whispered sweet nothings to it, but who's to say if it helped?

Once your salmon is thoroughly seasoned, wrap it up super tight in plastic wrap and place it in your container, then stick your weights on top and ta-dah! Stick it in the fridge and 24 hours later, go back and drain the liquid out.

Drain the liquid in the container for 2-4 days (we did 3). You can start tasting your lox after 48 hours (because it'll be safe by that point).

When you've decided your lox has cured long enough, take it out and rinse all the seasonings off of it.

Slice it thin and you can store it in your freezer for about a month or so (or eat it all right away with lox-loving-friends!)

I ate mine with my homemade cream cheese and some plain bagels. Sprinkle a little sea salt and pepper over the top, or if you're one of those capers, tomatoes, and onion likers, go for that too! I hope you'll all go try this out, because in the long run, you save SO much money making your own. 2 lbs. of fish for about $18, or 4 oz. for about $12? Which will you choose?

That's it for now! So until next time, enjoy your loved ones, and your life with a Spoonful Of Sugar!

Homemade Cream Cheese

Hello and welcome! For the inaugural post on Spoonful of Sugar, I've decided to (try to) make cream cheese at home.

It all started when I was watching the Cooking Channel and saw that a chef in a New Orleans restaurant made his own lox. Now, before you say anything, let me explain a little bit about my secret obsession. In the restaurant business, there is a well known game that chefs play called The Last Meal. You go around the table (or bar as it is most times) and ask what you would eat for your last meal.

For my last meal there'd be quite a few courses, most of which would include sugar, but the head-liner would be a fresh, hand-crafted bagel with delicious cream cheese and lox. Lox is salmon, NOT SMOKED SALMON. I repeat: lox is NOT smoked salmon. In fact, lox is raw. Don't freak out, raw isn't always bad!

Anyway, back to New Orleans. This chef was curing his own salmon on sight, which was inspirational. The basic method is to get yourself a big ol' slab of fresh (wild-caught if possible) salmon. We chose a 2 lbs. slab of Keta Salmon from Whole Foods. Next step, slap that baby on a big roll of plastic wrap and begin to bury it in equal parts sugar (yes, sugar) and salt (we used Hawaiian Pink Sea Salt.) Next, grind some fresh cracked pepper on top, black or white, and then lay on some beautifully green, fresh dill sprigs. Wrap it all up in plastic wrap really tight, put it in a plastic or glass dish, weight it down with canned goods or wine bottles (because you know you've got a few bottles of Pinot Grigio in that fridge gal pal...) and wait.

Now, you know about the lox, but this is about cream cheese. And as a warning, you should know that in this blog, there will be many tangents.

So! There are many ways to make cream cheese, but we're going to focus on the simplest way, the one that I chose. You need 1 ingredient. Seriously! One ingredient. Ready? Yogurt. Now, I used "The Greek Gods" brand Greek yogurt from Whole Foods, which I probably won't do again because when tasted, it was a bit too tangy in my opinion.

To make Cream Cheese you will need the following:

1 container plain yogurt

1 bowl

1 dish-towel or cheese cloth (either will work, so don't worry about going out and hunting down cheese cloth.)

some twine, string, rubber band, duct tape, wire, etc., etc. (Basically, anything with which you can tie a knot.)

Now, find a space in your house that's relatively cool, and has something from which you can hang your cheese.

Unfold your dish towel and plop a bit of yogurt into the center. We're not talking the whole container, just enough for a test-batch. I used about 1/2 a cup or so.

Now, wrap the yogurt up in a ball shape and twist the towel to secure. Liquid WILL drain out. Don't worry, that's what's supposed to happen. This liquid is whey, which, if you're very daring, you may save to make ginger-ale and numerous other goodies.

Tie your little cheese bundle up and hang over your bowl to let the whey drip out.

Wait 7-10 hours. (Overnight is fine too.)

Now, when you wake up or your timer goes off you'll have fresh, homemade cream cheese to spread on anything you want. Hell, eat it with a spoon if that's your thing. We don't judge here.

I hope you all thoroughly enjoyed your cream cheese tutorial, and all of the ramblings that went with it. Think of them as your side salad, or for those of us who aren't very worried about carbs, your fries! :)

Next time, we'll start talking about that salmon again! It went in the fridge last night, so hopefully in a day or two, the Murphy household will be feastin' on fish!

That's it for now! So until next time, enjoy your loved ones, and your life with a Spoonful Of Sugar!