Happy New Year

We ushered ours in with rum smoked salmon courtesy of Steven Raichlen's How To Grill. It's turned out to be one of our most used cookbooks. And the salmon is pretty simple. You let it soak in a cup of dark rum for 15 minutes. Then, you rinse it and pack it in cure of 1 cup brown sugar, a half cup coarse salt, and 1 tbsp black pepper for 4 hours. Rinse and smoke. The smoking is the trickiest part of you don't do it often and are retrofitting your regular-old grill to smoke. But practicing is fun when there's food to eat at the end. Serve with bagels, cream cheese, red onion, capers and chopped egg.