Easy DIY for your next brunch: cured salmon.
Gravlax means grave salmon. Not grave as in serious, grave as in hole. Once, the Scandinavian fisherman buried fresh salmon in sand, letting salt and time cure it. Much like Sweden's soured herring, Norway's rotten fish and Iceland's putrefied shark, the technique is better than the marketing.
These days there's no need to dig a salmon grave. At the deli, you can swap $50 for a pound. If you're feeling thrifty or adventurous (but not so thrifty and so adventurous as to buy a seat on Iceland's WOW Airlines), simply bury your salmon in salt and sugar. In two days, unwrap gravlax.
Gravlax offers a salty bite and buttery texture that's ideal for slicing paper thin and heaping onto bagel, black bread or potato cake. The technique extends salmon's brief fridge life from a day to a week. It also extends the harried minutes of breakfast to the luxurious hours of brunch. Now that's the cure.
