Yes you read that right. I am going to show you how to smoke your own cheesecake… if the first question you asked yourself is what has Chef Donnie been smoking, you aren’t alone and the answer isn’t quite what you think…

I was fortunate enough to get a catalogue from Poly Science delivered to the house a month ago. I was browsing the latest and greatest toys for culinary kids at heart… immersion circulators, anti-griddles and even distillers. Then I saw something that I just had to have… the Smoking Gun.

This contraption looks more like something you would pick up from Puff or Cottonmouth than from a cookware store. It has a chamber or “bowl” where you put the item to be used for smoking, attached and below that is a motorized vaccuum that sucks air through the bowl (keeping the flame alive and creating more smoke) that sucks it through a long rubber hose.

The reason this was a must for me was the cold smoking applications. As many of you have seen on Iron Chef or many cooking shows, chef’s love to smoke things. The problem is that conventional smokers use an application of heat, and therefore limits what can be smoked. You wouldn’t be able to smoke liquids or other items that would melt when contacted with heat. Problem solved.

The inaugural “bowl” was sparked for a five course mini-dinner at a wine pairing event for Marc Anthony Wines in White Rock. The final wine was a 10-year old Tawny Fladgate Port. The initial thoughts for the perfect pair would be a cheese course. However, this was my first public event in White Rock and I wanted to impress, so I made a savoury rosemary cheesecake and pulled out the smoking gun. I used a mix of fresh and dry rosemary and actually smoked the whole cheesecake once it was set.

Take a look.

The Smoking Gun with the “bowl” loaded with the mix of fresh and dry rosemary.

The rubber hose under the cover of the cling wrap.

No that’s not bad photography, the cloudiness is the smoke under the cling wrap.

Notice a little smoke escaping before the cling wrap is sealed.

The finished smoked cheesecake.