Smoked fish

Exercise 1. Read and translate the text with the help of a dictionary.

TEXT 2

Exercise 12. Discuss with your groupmates the advantages of cold (hot) smoking.

Exercise 13. Translate from Russian into English:

a) Консервирование рыбы методом обезвоживания имеет громадное значение. В процессе обезвоживания происходят сложные биохимические изменения белковых веществ. Большое значение имеет консервирование рыбы горячей сушкой. Недавно стали применять сушку под вакуумом. Копченая рыба – питательный, вкусный продукт, готовый к употреблению без всякой кулинарной обработки.

b) Обезвоживание рыбы с предварительным просаливанием – один из древнейших способов ее консервирования. Этот способ прост и не требует сложного оборудования. Существуют два основных способа сушки: холодный и горячий. В первом случае рыбу сушат в естественных или искусственных условиях при температуре не выше 40 °С. При этом способе лучше сохраняются первоначальные свойства рыбы.

c) При горячем способе рыбу сушат при температуре до 200 °С и более. При этом в ней протекают физические и химические изменения, связан­ные с удалением влаги из материала, гидролизом белка и жира, сверты­ванием белка.

d) Во многих странах для консервирования мяса, рыбы, овощей и фрук­тов применяют сублимационную сушку. Сублимационная сушка позволяет получить продукцию, компоненты которой практически сохраняют свои первоначальные свойства.

e) Холодную сушку можно проводить как в естественных, так и в искус­ственных условиях. Наилучшие условия сушки – температура сушильного агента (воздуха) не выше 40 °С, скорость движения воздуха 0,4–0,6 м/с иотносительная влажность сушильного агента 40–60 %.

f) Рыба горячей сушки – это ценный белковый продукт, содержащий 15–38 %влаги. На горячую сушку направляют исключительно мелкую рыбу, содержащую не более 3 %жира, поскольку при высокой температуре жир подвергается порче в результате гидролиза и окислительных процессов. Технологическая схема приготовления рыбы горячей сушки включает прием сырья, мойку, посол, загрузку в печь, сушку, упаковку в тару.

g) Деликатесная продукция коптится исключительно на опилках бука и ольхи с добавлением можжевельника. Немецкая коптильная установка позволяет достичь высоких результатов по цвету и аромату копченого лосося.

Wind-drying is the most ancient and basic way of preserving fish. Add the discovery of fire, and early humans might have found that fish hung up over a fire dried more quickly, and that, if the fire was smoky, fish would acquire a different flavor and keep better.

As Sue Shephard (2000) points out, archaeologists have uncovered the remains of what was evidently a substantial fish-smoking "factory" in Poland, dating back to the seventh century. And it is clear that European use of the technique was greatly expanded, perhaps mainly in order to deal with gluts of herring, in the medieval period.

Smoke is highly complex, having a couple of hundred or more constituents. So what it does to fish is also complex, but can be summarized by saying that it deposits on the fish various phenols, aldehydes, tars, etc. and that the combined effect of some of these, which have bactericidal properties, is to make the fish keep noticeably better.

In modern times progress has been made in the construction of special ovens for smoking fish; in analyzing the constituents of smoke which are responsible for changes of flavor; in the choice of wood shavings or chips whose smoke produces the best results; and in elaborating the techniques of both hot and cold smoking.

Hot smoking was developed in northern Europe in medieval times. In this process the smoke temperature is very high and the fish is wholly or partly cooked by being smoked. Herring which were hot smoked on the northern coast of Germany were known as Bucklinge, which became "buckling" in English, but the process was also used for many other species of fish. The hot smoking of fish is also common in Africa. For example, a kind of shad is hot smoked in Ghana in primitive kilns made from oil drums. Hot smoked fish is succulent and tasty but in general does not travel or keep as well as cold smoked. Cold smoking, on the other hand, is not a cooking process; it consists simply in hanging fish in smoke (which may of course be slightly warm, but that is irrelevant), and the result keeps well.

As for the choice of combustible, the traditional preference in Britain was for oak, with ash as second choice and peat being used until recently in Scotland, especially for domestic in their kitchen. In Russia, the woods used have included alder, oak, poplar, and lime. Wood from coniferous trees has also been used, but imparts a resinous flavor. In modern times, the best known smoked fish is smoked salmon, now prepared in many countries and figuring on innumerable restaurant menus around the world. Many of the salmon which are smoked are farmed salmon, but the proportion of farmed to wild varies greatly. In North America more than half of the smoked salmon are farmed, most coming from British Columbia, but even so smoked wild salmon is much easier to obtain there than in Europe.

(By Bill Keystone)

Exercise 2. Answer the questions to the text:

1. What is the most ancient and basic way of preserving fish?

2. When and where was the first fish-smoking "factory" found?

3. What does usually smoke consist of?

4. What has progress been made in recently?

5. What is buckling?

6. Why is hot smoked fish so popular with consumers?

7. What is the choice of combustible? Why?

8. What is the best known smoked fish nowadays?

9. What salmon is more often smoked: farmed or wild?