Bill Allan, butcher. Gipps St, Wellington
This photo makes Bill Allan look like a fishmonger. In fact, he’s a butcher but he likes to experiment. He makes fabulous all-meat coarse-cut sausages, prepares his own bacon and at Christmas time he smokes hundreds of hams. His ham smoker doesn’t see much action at this time of year so he figured he’d try smoking salmon.
He prepares the salmon in his special ham brine (secret recipe – I tried twisting his arm but he wouldn’t tell me) and then he gently hot smokes it over manuka chips. I’m probably alone in this but I don’t really like manuka smoke – I find it too strong and tarry but Bill had been lighthanded with the smoke and his salmon was really delicious. The brine had made it very moist; it wasn’t dry like a lot of the hot smoked salmon I’ve tried, and it was only-just-cooked – in the way that all fish should be.
You can tell from the photo he’s pretty pleased with the result – I just hope he’s not thinking of closing the shop to go fishing.
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