In New York, you are always meeting pizza mavens, hamburger mavens, sushi mavens … but wait a second. This being New York, where are the lox mavens? You never hear them discoursing on all the ins and outs of smoked salmon, and yet the dish is a lot more a part of New York’s DNA than sushi is. (Or is lox technically sushi?) The Amateur Gourmet today gives a crash course in lox via smoked-fish guru Mark Russ Federman, owner of Russ & Daughters. Federman gives tasting notes on eight different kinds of lox, including western wild salmon, gaspe (the classic “nova” lox), Scottish salmon, gravlox, kippered salmon, Irish salmon, pastrami lox (“Mark … marveled at its lack of popularity, at how it has remained in the novelty-lox ghetto”) and the classic belly lox (“This is exactly what ‘lox’ tasted like when my grandfather started selling it from a pushcart in 1914.”) Print this up and tape it to your refrigerator; these are words that will never wither or lose relevance.

The Science of Fressing [Amateur Gourmet]