Home-Cured Gravlax

There's always seemed to me that there are two camps of food: those worth endeavoring to make at home, and those better left to the pros. Don't get me wrong, there are certainly times I've delved into from-scratch territory and slaved over items, excellent versions of which could've easily (and, admittedly, more efficiently) been procured. I mean, there's certainly no dearth of excellent ice cream that can be bought in stores, but there are times when only homemade will do, when knowing you've made something yourself makes it taste that much better because you know what went into it, both ingredient- and labor-wise. But, come on, am I really going to sit around and make croissants when I know for certain I can get excellent ones made mercifully by somebody else? (I would have said the same of bagels a few months ago, but that was before I moved back to Chicago, and, you know, desperate times...)  Anyway, sometimes it's just not worth the hassle of procuring ingredients and toiling away for hours for something, particularly when it's just two of you to feed.

I always kind of assumed that gravlax was one of those other-people-should-take-care-of-this sort of things. I mean, silky, cured, delicious salmon had to be the sort of thing that required a ton of expertise and special equipment and shit, right? I figured gravlax was something found in great appetizing shops and fancy brunch places and couldn't possibly be something worth the effort to make at home.  But you know, I was wrong. Really fucking wrong. Gravlax turns out to be incredibly simple to make at home; there's about ten minutes of prep time and raw fish handling and some awkward fumbling with a side of salmon and plastic wrap at the outset, then then about 15-20 seconds of work twice a day for two or three days afterwards. That's. It. All that's needed afterwards is a very sharp knife and some people that really like to eat delicious things.

I found this process on Saveur. I hesitate to call it a recipe since there's so much that can be tweaked and tailored, but it truly is fast and easy and yields results that belie the simplicity in its preparation. Just don't throw it in the fridge before you head out of town for a long weekend or anything, since you do have to flip it twice a day, but otherwise, as long as you've got salmon, salt, sugar, some herbs and some saran wrap (and a bit of empty fridge real estate), you can have gravlax at the ready in three days.  And then you can have a super rad dinner or brunch party like an adult and be like, here's some home-cured gravlax and not be fucking lying because you actually really did cure that shit yourself.  So go on, be a badass; get curing.

 

 

Home-Cured Gravlax

Adapted from Saveur (original recipe here)

 

2 tbsp. peppercorns (white is preferable but any will do)
1 tbsp. fennel seeds
4 tsp. caraway seeds
2⁄3 cup kosher salt
1⁄3 cup sugar
2-lb. center-cut, skin-on salmon filet
1 - 1.5 cups dill sprigs, plus 1/2 cup chopped dill
1⁄4 cup vodka (optional)

Grind together the seeds and pepper until coarsely ground. Mix them in a medium-sized bowl with the sugar and salt until well-combined. Prepare a baking sheet by lining it with plastic wrap. Sprinkle half of the salt and sugar mixture over the plastic wrap. Place the salmon on top of the salt and sugar mixture on the plastic wrap, skin side down. Cover the fish with the rest of the salt mixture and the dill sprigs. Sprinkle the vodka evenly on top.

Fold the ends of the plastic wrap around the salmon and wrap the salmon tightly with additional plastic wrap. Use your fingers to make sure the salt and sugar mixture is pretty evenly covering both sides of the fish. Place the whole plastic-wrapped mess in the fridge on the baking sheet and refrigerate for 48-72 hours, flipping the package and using your fingers to redistribute the brine that accumulates in the package as the salt continues to pull water from the salmon.  When fully cured, the gravlax should be firm to the touch at its thickest part.

When cured, remove from the fridge and unwrap the package. Discard the spices, dill and brine that has accumulated.  Rinse the filet (well, that shit's salty) under cold running water; pat dry with paper towels.  You can cover a large place with the half cup of chopped dill and press the flesh side of the fish into it so that it is coated evenly; I forgot to do this but the gravlax was awesome nonetheless.

Cutting the fish takes a bit of practice and the sharpest, narrow long-bladed knife you've got, slice the fish against the grain on the diagonal into super thin pieces. Serve however you'd like; we ate it mostly on bagels with some cream cheese and other traditional accompaniments, but it would also be excellent with potato pancakes or blinis and some sour cream, or some dark bread and mustard, or simply straight from knife to mouth. However you go about eating it, I'm pretty sure you'll be happy with your decision to cure some yourself.
 

Makes a lot

Something from Slightly More than Nothing

This is the second appearance that salmon is making in my posts. I apologize for the lack of diversity, but that's just pretty much all I've been eating lately. It's just that it's pretty novel to me. I am going to tell you this with the full understanding that I may lose your readership because I am insane. But believe me, I could not make this up.

I used to be allergic to all fish. Well, except canned tuna, I guess that processing did something to the fish that enabled me to eat it without the risk of turning into a puffed-up, swollen mess with a rapidly closing throat. Sound miserable? Well, it was. I wasn't allergic to shellfish, so that was a bit of a consolation. As I grew out of other allergies I began to gain some hope that fish would enter my life without causing me pain. And eventually, it did. I was able to eat almost all fish. Except salmon. I'm not really sure why this one fish decided that it hated me. And like many other broken-hearted, I couldn't give up - I just loved it so. Watching the rest of my family eat bagels and lox on weekend morning was tortuous. I yearned for that which I could not have.

The severity of the reaction lessened as I got older, so every once in a while I would coax myself into dealing with the incessant itchiness guaranteed to follow and binge on some salmon. I somehow (don't ask me how, I'm not really sure) figured out that I had the least extreme reaction to the fish when I ate it cooked and cold. Raw didn't work, smoked didn't work, and for some reason when it was hot it still made me itch. I pitched this theory to my parents expecting them to call me crazy, but my mother confirmed that my grandmother indeed had the same exact allergy. So maybe I'm not crazy. Or maybe the rest of my family is just as insane as I am. No matter, I was reassured.

Towards the end of this summer, the summer of gluttony and seafood about which I will likely post in greater detail a little bit down the line, I decided that I had enough. I was going to will my body to eat salmon if it killed me. I just kept eating it in its many forms, which culminated in a veritable gravlox binge at Aquavit, and eventually, I was able to eat it with no reaction at all. Yes, I know, I likely just grew out of it like the other allergies, it just took me longer, but I like to think that I was responsible for tricking my body this time. And so I have been reveling in my newfound salmon normalcy - I have joined the salmon eating population. And I've been eating it with such frequency that I will likely develop a new allergy, but I'll worry about that when that happens. In any event, I'm going to tell you about a pasta dish I made last week, featuring, what else? Salmon.

While in undergrad in Montreal, my friends and I would frequent L'Academie on St. Dennis. Its name was misleading - despite popular belief, it wasn't a culinary school kitchen at all, just a huge three-story restaurant with a guaranteed line snaking out the door on weekends. It had very reliable food, often quite good, and always at a fair price. And it was BYOB, making it that much more attractive to a poor college kid. There was a salmon and mushroom pasta that was on the menu there, and like all other salmon dishes, it taunted me. My friends would order it and I would stare and long for it. It was something so commonplace, yet something forbidden. That is probably why the one of the first things I did when I absolved my salmon allergy was attempt to recreate that dish. I used many shortcuts, mostly because it was easy and I had it all in my kitchen, and that's the secret. One of my roommates in college would make something like this sauce, she would regularly throw the contents of a couple of cans into a pan and eat it happily. I used a couple more ingredients that she used to, but It's a great last-minute, something-from-nothing dish made with things that are already lying around the house.

Pasta with Salmon and Mushrooms



Sorry for the sub-par photo, the light was not cooperating with me that night. There's no real recipe here, just a bunch of stuff I threw together, but I will attempt to capture it as accurately as possible.

I set some thin spaghetti in a pot of boiling water. While it was cooking I started to saute about 8 ounces of white mushrooms, which I purchased cleaned and sliced, in a pat of butter. Once the mushrooms were well on their way and rather soft, I added some garlic and a liberal sprinkling of dried thyme to the pan. I then emptied the cream of mushroom soup into the pan and added about a half of the empty can worth of water and allowed that to start heating. I would have added white wine instead of the water, but I didn't have any on hand.

Once this started looking saucy (ha) I added probably about half a cup of parmegianno cheese into the sauce to thicken it and give it a good saltiness, since I had used reduced sodium soup. With the parmegianno went another tablespoon of butter for richness. I opened up a can of Bumble Bee salmon (cooking salmon is obviously a good option, but it didn't fit into the theme of a quick-fix dinner too well, and the canned stuff actually tasted pretty good and didn't leave the apartment smelling like fish) and flaked it into the sauce. Once that was heated I adjusted the seasoning and added quite a bit of pepper and some more cheese. I mixed it up with the cooked pasta and it was a lovely dinner for two. And all I had to do was throw some stuff in the pan.

Outside of the grating of the cheese, there was really no effort required. I'll never know how close I came to the dish at L'Academie, and one of these days I'll go all out and cook the salmon and make my own sauce from scratch, but until that day, this will do.

A Simple Sandwich

Is all it takes to turn a day around. One second you're in a huff, totally overwhelmed by the happenings in your world. The next second you're reminded of the sandwich that never was, and you get a craving. You rush to the grocery store and buy the items necessary. You get nostalgic about something you can't fully remember because you've never actually enjoyed it. For me, this sandwich is one I spied on a menu at Les Deux Gamins in the Village this summer. I really did want to get it, but something in me told me not to. Since that day, I have envisioned this sandwich. Today was the day I finally decided to make it.



I couldn't quite remember what was on it exactly, but I knew what the building blocks were - a baguette, smoked salmon and hard boiled egg. I also remembered that there was mayonnaise on it, which was probably what led to my order of eggs over a goat cheese potato cake. I just don't really like mayonnaise. I decided to replace it with a dill-speckled creme fraiche. I'm sure the mayonnaise worked better, since it didn't have that slightly sour note lingering after each bite, but I enjoyed that sour note. It was a very simple sandwich in the end - I layered some smoked salmon, julienned cucumber, sliced tomato, onion and chopped hardboiled egg on the baguette. I chopped up some dill and mixed it into my creme fraiche and then slid that on to the top. It was perfect. And when I was finished I understood why I was so nostalgic for something that I had never tasted before. I didn't have to eat the sandwich to miss it. It was a testament to pure simplicity. Those are the tastes we cling to, the ones that are simple and familiar, the ones that you crave even though you've never tasted them before.