I just smoked some boneless white bass filets (yeah I know, it's hard to keep 'em lit) from fish I caught at a local lake. White bass a.k.a. "sand bass" in TX, OK, are hard-fighting, fast-swimming fish that run in large schools. It's believed that they adapted from salt water to fresh water by gradually extending their range up the Mississippi and White Rivers to this area long ago, as they're an ocean species. The larger ones are oily and fishy-tasting when prepared like other fish, but they make GREAT smoked fish filets.
I soak the filets in salt brine overnight, let them air-dry to form a dry patina on the surface, then slow-smoke them over green apple twigs in our BBQ at 250 degrees for about 6 hours. They're mighty tasty.
Question: What "cuisines" include smoked fish - Eastern European, Jewish, Scandinavian, what? My Polish-American wife, originally from Brooklyn, loves the deli smoked whiting she grew up with (on the rare occasions we can find it here). We also love smoked salmon (lox), cream cheese, and bagels and of course that's Jewish, but lox is MUCH milder-tasting than these fish I'm smoking.
Besides being a hand-held salty snack (the way I enjoy these) , are there other ways smoked fish are eaten in other cultures? With some kind of cheese maybe, sour cream, crackers, - what? I've got a feeling I'm missing out on some good treats here. Thanks.
