“You can whip that with mayo and lemon juice, chives, salt and pepper and horseradish, and I think the best thing in the world to have with that is a Saltine, with a dab of Tabasco, like oysters.” “For me, any fish that has a little natural oil and a little fat to it - mackerel, bluefish, mullet - works really well in these fish dips,” Lewis said. Now in Birmingham, Ala., Lewis enjoys a smoked mackerel version or a smoked mullet iteration from “The Cracker Kitchen” (Scribner, 2009), by Janis Owens. Hunter Lewis, executive editor at Southern Living magazine, remembers his grandmother in Asheville, N.C., serving smoked salmon or trout dips when he was growing up. “A lot of guys go three-quarters mayo and one-quarter fish, but I go half and half.” “I could go really cheap with something like tripletail, but there’s no taste whatsoever,” Siemsen said. He also prefers that it be cold-smoked over hardwoods for a dense texture. Wahoo or marlin, the key requirement is that the fish is a generous helping of a pelagic variety - with a diverse diet in open ocean rather than feeding along the sea floor or in farms. Siemsen divulged that it includes mayonnaise (“a good brand like Hellmann’s, so it’s not runny”), cold-smoked fish, onion powder, garlic powder, a pinch of seasoned salt and a drizzle of lemon juice. A guy in Illinois orders 25 pounds of it for a party every year.” “It’s probably a quarter of our business - we sell a ton of fish dip to restaurants and retail customers, and we ship it. He wouldn’t take the bait of fame or eternal gratitude when asked for his recipe. He concocted his smoked marlin recipe 15 years ago after trying several fish dips “that were like eating smoked mayonnaise.” Old Dixie co-owner Larry Siemsen, a native of Long Island, N.Y., who clammed his way through the Great South Bay to pay for college in the ‘70s, moved to Florida 37 years ago, opening Old Dixie with brother Kerry. To pinpoint the origins of smoked fish dips is a slippery business - Eastern Europe? Scandinavia? Deep South? Atlantic coast? - but what matters is that Old Dixie’s dip and its cousins swim in a well-stocked pond. To my increasing relief, it became apparent during my search that smoked fish dip’s family tree extends far, wide and deep, from the smoked whitefish dip at Zabar’s deli in New York City to the smoked shellfish Megadip from The Fish Guy in Chicago back down to the legendary Catfish Pate of the Crown Restaurant in Indianola, Miss., not to mention the ubiquitous lox spreads that are the first and only toe that some dip into these waters. With dismay, I found out Old Dixie is down to its last 700 or so pounds of Smoked Marlin Dip but is replacing the overfished marlin with wahoo in subsequent batches, promising equal goodness. That was enjoyable too, but the smoked marlin one, for me, was the best catch. Some guests preferred Smilin’ Bob’s smoked fish dip, made with amberjack and kingfish from the Florida Keys. Arriving by the tub, it’s devoured as automatically as hummus on crackers, crudite or chips.Īt a barbecue during a family trip, two couples brought local favorites, which sent me on a quest to replicate a recipe for my favorite dip: Smoked Marlin Dip from Old Dixie Seafood in Boca Raton, which I dolloped that night on white cheddar rice crackers and topped with pickled jalapeno slices, as advised. The typical stylings are mayonnaise or cream cheese, spritzed with fresh lemon and other seasonings. Smoked fish dip is the little black dress of dinner parties in South Florida - of such impeccable taste that it often shows up in several variations, however informal the setting.
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