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Planked Salmon with Potato Balls
Have salmon cut in steaks one and one-half or two inches thick. Two steaks average size can be placed on medium-sized plank. Oil plank thoroughly, place fish upon it, and broil under gas broiler, turning flame low after first few moments. Or it can be baked in oven of range. Serve on plank, surrounded by potato balls cut with French vegetable cutter. Heat one-fourth cup cream, add salt and pepper, three tablespoons finely chopped parsley. Shake potato balls in this until well covered with seasonings. Serve Hollandaise sauce with planked salmon.
A plank dinner is a serving vessel and a cooking surface at once, which is where most of the difficulty lies. The salmon itself needs only a few minutes of real heat; the plank needs preparation before it ever meets fish.
- Season the plank firstA raw hardwood plank (oak, hickory or maple, untreated and unfinished) should be rubbed with oil and heated in a 300F oven for an hour or two before its first use, and oiled again each time thereafter. An unseasoned board dries, cracks and can scorch under a broiler.
- Broiler distance"Turning flame low after first few moments" reads as searing the surface and then easing off the heat. Under a modern broiler it is easier to set the plank 5 to 6 inches from the element than to throttle the flame.
- Cook to temperature, not to the clockTwo-inch steaks reach medium at 125-130F at the thickest point, roughly 8 to 10 minutes under the broiler without turning. The recipe gives no doneness cue; salmon taken to the point where it flakes throughout will be dry by current taste.
- Potato ballsA "French vegetable cutter" is a parisienne scoop, sold now as a melon baller. Cut the balls from peeled raw potatoes and boil or steam them until just tender, 6 to 8 minutes, before they go into the cream. The recipe assumes you know they must be cooked.
- The cream coatingOne-fourth cup is 4 tablespoons of heavy cream, warmed only, not reduced. Toss the drained hot potato balls in it off the heat so the parsley stays green.
- Serving the plankSet the hot plank on a wooden trivet or a folded cloth at table; it will mark a finished surface. The wood also stays hot long enough to keep cooking the fish, so pull the salmon a few degrees early.
- YieldTwo average steaks serve two generously, or four if you cut them down. Figure about a cup of Hollandaise for four.