This past weekend we had a number of friends over for a chardonnay tasting and decided to make a number of small dishes to go with the various chardonnays(Western Australia, California, Oregon, and Burgundy). One of the dishes was a lobster mac and cheese based on La Crema’s recipe using Dungeness crab. … https://www.lacrema.com/dungeness-crab-mac-cheese/ . The day before I went through the process of boiling a couple of lobsters and harvested the meat for the mac and cheese dish. Surprisingly some of the lobster ended up in hot butter lobster rolls on the night before the chardonnay tasting. Soooo good. Still on the night of the tasting I made individual servings of the lobster mac & cheese in ramekins. Well to say I was disappointed is an understatement as the lobster did not pull it’s weight in flavor against the other ingredients. Kind of been stewing about it for a couple of days as it did nothing for the chardonnays. Yesterday we stopped by our local fish monger and picked up some halibut for misoyaki halibut that night but while shopping I suggested to my spouse we try peppered smoked salmon(0.4 lb) as the protein in the mac and cheese. Tonight after a tiring day of pruning grapevines I whipped the above La Crema recipe together with the peppered smoked salmon and with an increase in the nutmeg. Well what a difference in flavor. This recipe now rocks with the smoked salmon. It paired nicely with a chardonnay-auxerrois blend we made in 2017. So this is a great mac & cheese recipe with smoked salmon. Increase the nutmeg slightly as well. Cheers!
Sounds great, we had some leftover smoked salmon from a brunch at our house and thought is would be good with Mac and cheese, now I need to try it. As for lobster, for me it shines best slightly warm and with butter.
I got a great piece of smoked steelhead from a patient recently, which I loved, but I opened a lousy red wine with it that made for an awful pairing.
smoked fish is a really difficult pairing. not sure any red wine would have worked.
I think Champagne (or even lesser sparklers) works okay with cold smoked salmon, but agree it’s not the easiest thing to pair. I can’t think of any reds that would really work. IMO, hot smoked salmon is a bit easier, depending on how heavily smoked it is.
I assume that most of those posting here are talking about hot smoked salmon with mac & cheese, at least that is the route I would be inclined to go. I’ll have to give that a try soon. I too have been disappointed by how lobster or crab is lost in mac & cheese. High expectations that go unmet.
cheese coats the mouth and diminishes the experience of a wine or subtle crustacean.
Totally, I was just talking about pairing with smoked fish generally, not in mac and cheese. I still think bubbles might be the answer to cut through all of that. Something with lots of acid too.