Where there’s smoke, there’s dinner. Smoky sausages are enormously satisfying, pink hams and bacon add real character to soups, stews and fry-ups, and glistening smoked rainbow trout, smoked haddock, herrings, sprats, mackerel and smoked haddock, including the famous Finnan Haddie, all make delicious suppers, are a hair’s breadth away from a delicious meal.

Smoking food started as a practical means of preservation, the food hanging over the tribal fire or the smoke-hole in the chimney.

Now, when there are so many other ways of preserving our foods, we still love smoked food for its flavour alone.

The two common forms of smoking are also an indication of whether the food is cooked.

Cold-smoking, employed for salmon and haddock, is kept at about 24C/75F, and essentially leaves the food uncooked, its natural flavour heightened, and its oils coaxed to the surface. Cold-smoking is, for me, why smoked salmon really delivers its promise as one of the great luxury foods of the world: soft, silken folds of lightly scented fish with a light sheen of natural oil; rich, luscious, mouth-filling, needing nothing more than lemon juice and hot toast, yeasty little blinis or creamy scrambled eggs.

Hot-smoking at about 80C/175F is used for most other fish (including salmon) and meat, effectively cooking it at the same time. A quick surf of the web reveals that beef, duck breast, ostrich, sturgeon, cod’s roe, butter, sea salt, cheddar and Caerphilly have all taken up smoking, and are variously available from such sources as www.formanandfield.com, www.smokedeel.co.uk, www.graigfarm.co.uk and www.bleikers.co.uk.

For those who wish to smoke their own, a small book called Home Smoking and Curing, by Keith Erlandson, has, reassuringly, never been out of print since 1977 (Ebury Press, £9.99).
www.jilldupleix.com

Ingredients
Feeds 4. Takes 30 mins.

An easy summer lunch or dinner, with the help of a coarsely textured, smoky Polish farmers’ sausage (eg, wiejska), available from most supermarket deli cabinets.

700g potatoes
500g smoked Polish sausage
100g lamb’s lettuce or green leaves

FOR THE DRESSING:

2 shallots
2tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
1tbsp white wine vinegar
1tsp Dijon mustard
Sea salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1tbsp finely snipped chives

Peel the potatoes, cut into large chunks and simmer for 20 minutes until tender.

Peel and finely slice the shallots. Combine the shallots, olive oil, vinegar, mustard, salt, pepper and chives, whisking well, and set aside.

Add the whole piece of sausage to the just-cooked potatoes and remove from the heat. Leave for five minutes, which will take the refrigerator chill off the sausage, and give a subtle smokiness to the potatoes.

Remove the sausage, and thickly slice, peeling off the skin if necessary. Drain the potatoes, consider cutting them into bite-sized chunks, and toss them in the dressing while still warm. Add the sausage and toss lightly. Scatter the leaves over each plate, and pile the potatoes and sausage into the centre. Drizzle with any remaining dressing and serve with a pot of your favourite mustard.

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