Salmon Gravlax

Rest time: 36 to 48 hours

For the sauce: 10 minutes

For 4 to 6 people:

Two days before serving the gravlax, begin to
prepare it. It takes 36 to 48 hours for the salmon to “cook” in the
salt and sugar.

Ask your fishmonger to take a beautiful
piece in the back of the salmon, keeping the skin on, but taking care of the
take care to remove the edges. If he doesn’t (which really doesn’t happen)
never if you ask him), you will need a clip (a kind of
large tweezers) and remove them yourself. It is not difficult, we
feel them very well when touching the salmon. Especially since in the back of the salmon, it
there are not many of them.

Mix the coarse salt and sugar together. In a mortar,
crush your mixture of pink berries, green pepper, white pepper, black pepper
and coriander seeds. Today you can easily find
ready-to-use mixtures in mills. Sprinkle generously the mixture
coarse salt/sugar with your crushed seed mixture. Pour into a
flat. Place a few sprigs of dill on the flesh side of the salmon. Press a
with your hands so that the dill “sticks” to the flesh. Put the
salmon flesh side down on the salt/sugar bed. So you have the skin of the salmon
visible. Bring the salt/sugar mixture to the sides of the salmon so that the
all exposed flesh is covered. Place a stretch film over the skin of the
salmon. Now you need to put a flat object on the salmon to
“Press” against the salt/sugar. This can be another dish more
small, a small wooden board, a flat plate etc. For my part,
it is a small square wooden board the size of my salmon. Well
practical! On this chosen object, place cans or other
something that has some weight. This is only to ensure that the
salmon. Put the whole in the fridge for 36 to 48 hours.

Once this time has passed, remove the
weight, press, stretch film. Turn the salmon over. Normally this one has
made a kind of transparent juice quite thick. The flesh of the salmon, on the other hand
it has firmed up on the surface. Get rid of this
“brine” and run the salmon under cool water to remove any excess water.
remove all the salt and sugar stuck to it. Dry it well with paper towels
then place it on a clean plate. Crush a little of the
pepper and pink berries, and finely chop a little dill, which you can use to
cover the salmon. Film it again and leave it in a cool place for another 2 or 3 days.
hours before cutting it into thin slices with a very good knife. You
you can still add on your slices of gravlax if you wish, of
freshly chopped dill and pepper blend. Serve this gravlax
extremely tasty with toasted bread and special sauce.

For the sauce: mix the sugar, the
wine vinegar. When the sugar is dissolved, add the egg yolk. Mix
well, add the mustard and then drizzle in the oil, gently, while
whipping. The sauce is initially quite liquid, then becomes firmer as the
As more oil is added. Make sure that it fits well into the
the sauce before adding more. You can do this with a whisk
electric, a bit like mayonnaise.

Once all the oil has been incorporated, finely chop
dill and pour it into the sauce. Mix one last time and put it in the
Refrigerate for one hour before serving.

(texts and recipe by Bernard Laurance, photo: Amélie Roche, Flammarion 2015 all rights reserved).