Salmon and Beetroot
Gravadlax with a Difference…
You can tell I’ve been writing new menus because here’s another! I love making my own gravadlax of salmon, it’s very satisfying and preserving food is one of my great interests. Recipes for cured salmon abound, we all have a different cure recipe with slight variations on a theme but the end result is usually much the same. I must say that I prefer gravadlax to smoked salmon, I find it more interesting and there are far too many bad examples of smoked salmon to change my mind.
The curing of food inevitably attracts its purists and rightly so. I like and respect people who take a concept in its most basic form, master its preperation and stick to that method and recipe. We need people like that, it gives us consistency in a comforting kind of way. When everything seems to be falling apart at the seams there is always an item of food you can turn to and you know it won’t let you down, that’s what good salmon curers do, they don’t let you down.
I, on the other hand do not fall into that particular bracket, I am something of a gravadlax renegade! I am easily bored and need to try new techniques and flavour combinations and gravadlax allows me to do that. I’ve cured this salmon with a mixture of sea salt and sugar. I use the fabulous coarse sea salt of the Guerande in France along with a generous helping of sel rose the pink salt from France which imparts such wonderful colour and flavour. The salt is flavoured with bay, lemon zest, coriander seeds, juniper berries, star anise, chervil and dill. I like flavours which compliment rather than raise too many questions and all of these go hand in glove with salmon.
A vibrant salt and herb mix is rubbed into the flesh of the salmon and pressed for one to two days until the salt has worked its way into the flesh and the curing process is complete. The salt is washed off, dried and then rubbed with a puree of cooked beetroot. The salmon is pressed overnight before being washed and dried again before being sprinkled liberally with chopped fresh dill and pressed again. The beetroot not only gives the salmon a unique yet delicate flavour but it also gives it a stunning purple/red tinge around the edge.
Miles,
This sounds really good. I can’t help wondering how many chefs take the trouble to do all that?
Your bugs bunny dish yesterday looks equally tempting.
You clearly serve some quality, different food and I can’t help thinking that a restaurant like yours will always do well, when we look at food trends in 2009. You deserve to anyway and good luck.
Elsie
January 18, 2009 @ 3:47 pm
It certainly sounds tasty, Miles. South Africans have a fondness for preserving foods, from sausage to fish to meat (locally it’s called biltong). Recipes vary greatly from place to place, although most afficionados wouldn’t divulge their recipes on pain of death.
Biltong is essentially strips of raw meat treated and dried, and the recipes usually incorporate vinegar, coarse salt, some sugar, coriander, and sometimes herbs as well. The word biltong is derived from the Dutch ‘bil’ which means hindquarters/rump, and ‘tong’, meaning strip, or tongue-like. The meats which are mostly used are beef, springbok, kudu and ostrich. Beef biltong is fairly common and somewhat affordable, whilst the rest usually costs an arm and a leg when bought over the counter.
January 18, 2009 @ 9:00 pm
Xenny,
Thanks for that, I’ve eaten biltong in South Africa and I loved it, the one I tried was seasoned with plenty of chilli and made for a great snack. Didn’t know about its origins though, thankyou.
Miles
January 18, 2009 @ 11:12 pm
Well, you renegade, you. I love salmon and now my simple salmon recipe looks so utterly bland in comparison.
Juniper berries? Did I ask you this before? Is that where gin comes from?
That’s a great photo, by the way. I’ll be right over to taste test it for you.
Melissa
January 19, 2009 @ 2:19 pm
Melissa,
Gin and juniper are indeed bedfellows and juniper is great with salmon-it’s a Scandanavian thing!
Miles
January 19, 2009 @ 4:37 pm
Wish I had seen this article earlier.
I happened across a whole salmon at the weekend for a stupid price, nice and fresh too!
I ended up cold smoking both fillets which turned out better than i expected. It could have done with a bit less time in the smoke though. Ended up smoking for 6 hours. I think 3 or 4 next time, and save one fillet for gravadlax.
S.
May 3, 2011 @ 10:06 am
Sam,
That sounds great! Personally I love gravadlax, you can really play around with flavour combinations..
Miles
May 3, 2011 @ 6:28 pm