**The Art of Preparing Smoked Salmon Canopies**

As I embark on this culinary journey, I find myself reminiscing about the countless hours spent mastering the art of preparing smoked salmon canopies. It's a technique that requires patience, finesse, and attention to detail. Let me guide you through the process, as I demonstrate how to create these delicate and flavorful pieces.

I've had the pleasure of working with fresh salmon for two days now, and it's truly fascinating to see how marinating it transforms its flavor profile. The marinade consists of a mixture of salt, sugar, spices, and fennel, which infuses the salmon with a subtle yet distinctive taste. To prepare the salmon, I carefully slice it into thin pieces, taking care not to cut too deeply or unevenly. This requires a sharp knife, specifically designed for slicing salmon – a "smoke salmon knife" is highly recommended for this task.

As I work on the canopies, I make sure to create an even texture, making them both visually appealing and paper-thin. This involves using a very thin knife and practicing the technique until it becomes second nature. Once sliced, the salmon is placed onto pumpernickel bread, carefully arranged in a ribbon-like pattern to create a sense of body and movement. The combination of flavors and textures is truly delightful – the dark, dense bread provides a perfect contrast to the delicate salmon.

Now, let's move on to the sauce, which serves as the crowning glory for these canopies. I've developed a mustard-based sauce that combines four different types of mustard, along with honey, sugar, vinegar, and olive oil. The result is a rich, creamy, and tangy sauce that perfectly complements the smoky flavor of the salmon. To prepare the sauce, I whisk together the various ingredients until they're well combined, then slowly pour in the olive oil while continuously whisking. The emulsification process may seem daunting at first, but with practice, it becomes a breeze.

As I apply the sauce to the canopies, I take care not to overdo it – just a delicate drizzle will suffice. This allows each component to shine individually, rather than overpowering one another. The result is a visually stunning platter that's sure to impress even the most discerning palates. To finish off the dish, I sprinkle a pinch of kosher salt and chopped fresh dill over the top – the subtle crunch and fragrance of the herbs add a delightful textural element to each bite.

The final touch is the addition of the canopies themselves. These are then placed on a platter, carefully arranged to create a visually appealing composition. By cutting the salmon diagonally, I've created a sense of movement and energy – it's almost as if they're dancing across the plate. The chopped fresh dill adds a pop of color and freshness to each piece, while the mustard sauce provides a tangy contrast to the rich flavors of the pumpernickel bread.

As I present this dish, I'm reminded of the importance of patience and practice in mastering any culinary technique. With time and experience, even the most daunting tasks become second nature – and the rewards are well worth the effort. Whether you're a seasoned chef or an amateur cook, I hope that this recipe has inspired you to give smoking salmon canopies a try. Who knows? You might just find yourself falling in love with the art of preparing these delicate, flavorful pieces as much as I have.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthe three things I love about salmon cured with dill and perau are first there's no cooking at all I mean none how great is that the second one is that not only can you make it ahead but in fact you have to make it ahead for the salmon to cure and the third I love that the dish is so sophisticated and yet so easy to make just imagine pumer nickel bread thin slice of salmon mustard dill sauce heaven salmon cured with dill and perau it's basically like grav loocks but with the volume turned up I'm going to serve it paper thin on pumpernickel bread with the mustard sauce it's delicious so I'm going to start with three pounds of salmon and it's a fillet I'm going to cut it in half it's beautiful salmon all the bones have been taken out but it's still on the skin so I'm going to take half of it and put it in a big dish just like that now I'm going to make a Salt and Spice and sugar cure to put on top so first I need 2 tablespoons of whole peppercorns I'm going to put it in this mortar and pestle and just grind it up one tblspoon of whole fennel seeds just think how good that is lots of flavor and just grind it up like this if you have a spice grinder you can use that too but you want it really coarse and if you do this instead of buying them already ground you really bring out the oils and the flavor in it if it's already ground it just it's not as fresh just keep grinding until all the pepper and the fennel is broken up so what I'm doing is I'm making a spice mixture and that's going to mix with the salmon and the juices in the salmon are going to mix with the salt and make a cure and it sits for 2 days and it kind of pickles the salmon it's just delicious okay that's the spice mixture now I need half a cup of salt I know it's a lot of salt that we're curing it and half a cup of sugar just going to mix that together so that's the Salt and Spice mixture so the next thing I'm going to do is I have lots of fresh dill and it's really important for this I'm going to take big bunch of fresh dill and just put it right on top of the salmon and that flavor that kind of like Dill flavor it's so unique so Scandinavian is going to get into the salmon okay next is the spice mixture just all of it right on top I know it seems like a lot of salt and a lot of sugar but that's how you cure salmon sounds like the cure for the common cold but it's salmon okay and then some perau which is very Anis flavor two tablespoons and that's going to help dissolve the salt and the sugar and get right into the salmon so next I'm going to take the other half of the salmon and put it right on top look how great that looks I love it and then I'm going to take a dish I want to weight it down I'm going to take a dish that's can sit right on top a little precarious but it sits right on top and then I'm going to wait it go to the pantry and get two cans preferably crushed tomatoes no it doesn't matter what kind of cans any kind of cans and just waight that on top and that's going to sit in the fridge for 2 days and every 12 hours I'm going to flip the whole salmon thing over and then it'll marinate the other side and then flip it back again okay let's see if I can get it into the fridge without dropping it whoa be right back happily I have one that I did two days ago so I'll show you how it looks two cans it's amazing how it's transformed by marinating it so these are the two pieces of salmon remember I flip them every 12 hours take one off put it right on the board the salt and the sugar and the spices and fennel all got into the salmon I'm just going to take the dough off and put it back in the marinade so it's flavored it but you don't want to slice the salmon with the dill and then I'm going to take any pieces of pepper and fennel left over off when I first bought my specialty food store bear for Contessa the first thing I had to learn was how to slice salmon and I was really nervous because it's not so easy but I'll show you you have very thin knife and it's very flexible and you just go right along the top you want to make sure it's really sharp first slices are just to get it started when I first learned the woman who taught me actually said Slice on one side and then the other side until you get really comfortable which is really good advice takes a little practice but you can get it you don't want it thicker in some places and thinner in others you want it sort of paper thin all the way through and this is actually called a smoke salmon knife so if you really want to treat yourself it's not a bad idea because you really can't do this with the chef's knife it would be impossible like been trying to do surgery with the screwdriver you just always need the right utensils for the right job so you really want to do it not just paper thin but also evenly and it takes some practice but you can do it see how thin this is It's really paper thin the good thing is if you make more than you need in one time you just put it back in the marinade and it'll stay for a couple of days it turns out after 20 years I still remember how to do this it's kind of like riding a bicycle once you've mastered it you never forget how to do it okay that's the salmon sliced but there's more now I'm going to turn the salmon with dill and perno into canopies so I'm going to take a piece of salmon and just put it on the pumpernickel bread and I kind of do it like in a ribbon so it has a little body to it as opposed to just putting it on flat pumpernickel bread is really dark and sort of just a delicious just Counterpoint to the salmon okay that's one this is going to make six canopies and two and a little bit you want to be sure to cover the whole bread and three little piece you can cut the pieces so that they fit perfectly this is why it's really important that it's paper thin so you can just do a little bit sort of like Ripple of it okay that's the salmon next is the sauce this a mustard sauce and it's actually got four different kinds of mustard in it it's very mustardy let me tell you how I made it I just added 2 tablespoons of Dijon mustard to a bowl along with a tablespoon of honey mustard a teaspoon of whole grain mustard and a half a teaspoon of ground mustard that's a lot of mustard next I added 1 and 1/2 tbsp of sugar 2 and 1/2 tbsp of good white wine vinegar whisked everything together then slowly I poured in 2 and 1/2 tbspoon of good olive oil that I combined with 1 and 1/2 tbspoon of grape seed oil whisking constantly until the sauce was emulsified then I mixed in 2 tbspoon of minced fresh dill and a half a teaspoon of kosher salt how easy is that and this is how I like to the sauce on the canopy just to drizzle it with a spoon just like that so you see the salmon and you see the sauce and you see the pumpernickle you don't want one to cover the other one up all the salmon and mustard and Pumpernickel and Dill I'm just going to cut them in half I just like to do it diagonally looks nice it's the only thing I like diagonally okay little chopped up dill just so you know there's Dill in it really just a rough chop okay little bit of dill and onto the platter so that's salmon cured with dill and perau you make it ahead you serve it at room temperature and you don't even have to turn on the stove how great is that this recipe and more can be found at be for contested comthe three things I love about salmon cured with dill and perau are first there's no cooking at all I mean none how great is that the second one is that not only can you make it ahead but in fact you have to make it ahead for the salmon to cure and the third I love that the dish is so sophisticated and yet so easy to make just imagine pumer nickel bread thin slice of salmon mustard dill sauce heaven salmon cured with dill and perau it's basically like grav loocks but with the volume turned up I'm going to serve it paper thin on pumpernickel bread with the mustard sauce it's delicious so I'm going to start with three pounds of salmon and it's a fillet I'm going to cut it in half it's beautiful salmon all the bones have been taken out but it's still on the skin so I'm going to take half of it and put it in a big dish just like that now I'm going to make a Salt and Spice and sugar cure to put on top so first I need 2 tablespoons of whole peppercorns I'm going to put it in this mortar and pestle and just grind it up one tblspoon of whole fennel seeds just think how good that is lots of flavor and just grind it up like this if you have a spice grinder you can use that too but you want it really coarse and if you do this instead of buying them already ground you really bring out the oils and the flavor in it if it's already ground it just it's not as fresh just keep grinding until all the pepper and the fennel is broken up so what I'm doing is I'm making a spice mixture and that's going to mix with the salmon and the juices in the salmon are going to mix with the salt and make a cure and it sits for 2 days and it kind of pickles the salmon it's just delicious okay that's the spice mixture now I need half a cup of salt I know it's a lot of salt that we're curing it and half a cup of sugar just going to mix that together so that's the Salt and Spice mixture so the next thing I'm going to do is I have lots of fresh dill and it's really important for this I'm going to take big bunch of fresh dill and just put it right on top of the salmon and that flavor that kind of like Dill flavor it's so unique so Scandinavian is going to get into the salmon okay next is the spice mixture just all of it right on top I know it seems like a lot of salt and a lot of sugar but that's how you cure salmon sounds like the cure for the common cold but it's salmon okay and then some perau which is very Anis flavor two tablespoons and that's going to help dissolve the salt and the sugar and get right into the salmon so next I'm going to take the other half of the salmon and put it right on top look how great that looks I love it and then I'm going to take a dish I want to weight it down I'm going to take a dish that's can sit right on top a little precarious but it sits right on top and then I'm going to wait it go to the pantry and get two cans preferably crushed tomatoes no it doesn't matter what kind of cans any kind of cans and just waight that on top and that's going to sit in the fridge for 2 days and every 12 hours I'm going to flip the whole salmon thing over and then it'll marinate the other side and then flip it back again okay let's see if I can get it into the fridge without dropping it whoa be right back happily I have one that I did two days ago so I'll show you how it looks two cans it's amazing how it's transformed by marinating it so these are the two pieces of salmon remember I flip them every 12 hours take one off put it right on the board the salt and the sugar and the spices and fennel all got into the salmon I'm just going to take the dough off and put it back in the marinade so it's flavored it but you don't want to slice the salmon with the dill and then I'm going to take any pieces of pepper and fennel left over off when I first bought my specialty food store bear for Contessa the first thing I had to learn was how to slice salmon and I was really nervous because it's not so easy but I'll show you you have very thin knife and it's very flexible and you just go right along the top you want to make sure it's really sharp first slices are just to get it started when I first learned the woman who taught me actually said Slice on one side and then the other side until you get really comfortable which is really good advice takes a little practice but you can get it you don't want it thicker in some places and thinner in others you want it sort of paper thin all the way through and this is actually called a smoke salmon knife so if you really want to treat yourself it's not a bad idea because you really can't do this with the chef's knife it would be impossible like been trying to do surgery with the screwdriver you just always need the right utensils for the right job so you really want to do it not just paper thin but also evenly and it takes some practice but you can do it see how thin this is It's really paper thin the good thing is if you make more than you need in one time you just put it back in the marinade and it'll stay for a couple of days it turns out after 20 years I still remember how to do this it's kind of like riding a bicycle once you've mastered it you never forget how to do it okay that's the salmon sliced but there's more now I'm going to turn the salmon with dill and perno into canopies so I'm going to take a piece of salmon and just put it on the pumpernickel bread and I kind of do it like in a ribbon so it has a little body to it as opposed to just putting it on flat pumpernickel bread is really dark and sort of just a delicious just Counterpoint to the salmon okay that's one this is going to make six canopies and two and a little bit you want to be sure to cover the whole bread and three little piece you can cut the pieces so that they fit perfectly this is why it's really important that it's paper thin so you can just do a little bit sort of like Ripple of it okay that's the salmon next is the sauce this a mustard sauce and it's actually got four different kinds of mustard in it it's very mustardy let me tell you how I made it I just added 2 tablespoons of Dijon mustard to a bowl along with a tablespoon of honey mustard a teaspoon of whole grain mustard and a half a teaspoon of ground mustard that's a lot of mustard next I added 1 and 1/2 tbsp of sugar 2 and 1/2 tbsp of good white wine vinegar whisked everything together then slowly I poured in 2 and 1/2 tbspoon of good olive oil that I combined with 1 and 1/2 tbspoon of grape seed oil whisking constantly until the sauce was emulsified then I mixed in 2 tbspoon of minced fresh dill and a half a teaspoon of kosher salt how easy is that and this is how I like to the sauce on the canopy just to drizzle it with a spoon just like that so you see the salmon and you see the sauce and you see the pumpernickle you don't want one to cover the other one up all the salmon and mustard and Pumpernickel and Dill I'm just going to cut them in half I just like to do it diagonally looks nice it's the only thing I like diagonally okay little chopped up dill just so you know there's Dill in it really just a rough chop okay little bit of dill and onto the platter so that's salmon cured with dill and perau you make it ahead you serve it at room temperature and you don't even have to turn on the stove how great is that this recipe and more can be found at be for contested com\n"