Three-Day Lapsang Souchong Cured Salmon

Recipes

• Lapsang Souchong Cured King Salmon with Ginger Lime Cream Cheese

• Bagels

Lapsang Souchong 正山小种

Lapsang souchong is a black tea with a distinctive smokey flavour. Its smokiness comes from how its preparation — by smoke-drying it over a pinewood fire.

Steeped in hot water, the tea liquor is fiercely aromatic, slightly sweet and acidic almost like sour plum, and strongly smokey. It’s known as a bit of a connoisseur’s tea, though others have compared it to drinking a campfire.

The strong and intense flavour of lapsang souchong lends itself well to food — I’ve used it to deepen the flavour of stews, and to enhance chocolate flavours in brownies in place of espresso powder.

Curing Salmon

A mixture of salt and sugar draw out the moisture from the salmon — this inhibits the growth of bacteria, making it safe to eat without cooking. The ground up lapsang souchong tea leaves, chile powder and spices provide a fantastic kick of flavour beyond saltiness.

What’s really interesting about this cured salmon is how it sort of tastes like smoked salmon -- but really doesn't. It's smokey flavour is imparted by tea leaves and there is a really nice spicy/herbal kick to the slices of salmon.

Quick Bagels

This is no lox, but I really wanted to honour the salmon with some bagels. This was a fairly quick and easy recipe from the ever-reliable King Arthur Baking. That said, I am very interested in trying out a multi-day recipe that will impart a lot more complexity in flavour!

The grated lime and ginger in the cream cheese spread complement the spice, but the spread also mellows out the sharpness and saltiness of the salmon. All-in-all a fantastic three-day experiment.