Smoked Lemon Sole

I don't have a photo for this right now because I didn't plan on documenting it, but it was so amazingly good that I figured I may as well share. The combination of the wood smoke flavours combined with the texture of the Lemon Sole was a triumph. We've smoked Lemon Sole before but with a combination of Alder and Cherry, that's nice but not a patch of what we produced last night.

The key here is to use a trio of Bourbon Soaked Oak, Hickory and Pecan wood chips in equal measures, one and a half tablespoons combined in total. This is a great combination that we've successfully used on Chicken and Pork previously.

You may think but isn't Lemon Sole a bit delicate for such strong flavours? It isn't, it worked really, really well. I find the natural flavour of this fish quite bland, but I love the texture, using this wood chip combination on it took it to a whole new level.

As I'm always going on about, smoking food is the easiest and best way of cooking to get great flavours. If my memory serves me correctly we've used our smoker for the past four days in a row (at least), we'll be using it again tonight for Pork Belly Strips. I wouldn't call our smoker a gadget I'd say it's pretty much a kitchen essential for us!

Smoking the Lemon Sole couldn't have been any easier.

• Put the sole skin side down on kitchen paper to dry
• Place fish side down onto a chopping board and rub olive oil into the skin to prevent sticking in the smoker
• Put the sole skin side down in the smoker and smoke for 12 minutes

It's that easy. If you're looking for a stovetop smoking guide you can find my step by step one with lots of photos here.

This was a really lovely meal that had deep smokey flavours combined with the delicate texture of the fish and it worked perfectly! A good pinch of salt brings out the smokiness even more.

Next time we have it which is sure to be soon I'll make sure that it gets photographed.

So much for the tennis, there's still Raf though.