Ouzo-Cured Salmon

One of my new blog buddies is Laurie of Tastes Like Home, Mediterranean Cooking in Alaska. She recently shared how she cures salmon and I was immediately drawn to this method of treating salmon.

The curing method has it's origins in Sweden and the end result is called Gravlax. I love fish, love salmon, love smoked salmon and Gravlax. It was a no-brainer for me to want to play around with this approach to salmon.

Gravlax literally means "buried salmon" and the name refers to the traditional method of preparation for this food: fresh salmon was heavy salted and buried in dry sand to ferment and cure. Most Gravlax recipes involve sandwiching two fillets together with the dill and salt mixture being in the middle. I cured just one fillet and the result still was excellent.

One of my sources of new recipe ideas is to peruse the menus of Greek restaurants and often they can be a good source of inspiration for a new dish.

I've seen that a few restaurants that are reinvigorating Greek cuisine have offerings of salmon cured in Ouzo. Laurie armed me with the knowledge on how to do this.

One of the goals of this blog is to show my readers how I think Greek food should look and taste, share this rich cuisine with all of you and show that Greek food is much more than just Souvlaki and Spanokopita.

Salmon is not a fish native to the Mediterranean waters but it is often found and sold in Greece, usually imported from Scandanavia.

Here, I'm taking a non-traditonal Greek ingredient, a foreign cooking method and applying Greek flavours to it.

Ouzo perfumes the aroma of the salmon, sea salt reunites with the flesh of the fish, dill heightens the flavour of the salmon.

Curing a salmon was remarkably easy. The key to this dish is using only the freshest of fish and trusting that your final result will turn out fine and that your going to slide a piece of salmon in your mouth and savour it's oily, rich flavour.

My guinea pigs for my Ouzo-cured salmon were my parents. You should know that Greeks don't take too well to their meat being rare, they have an aversion to sushi and question any meat that hasn't been licked by the flames of fire.

What was their reaction to my Ouzo-cured salmon? "When are you making it again"?

Ouzo-Cured Salmon
(ingredient listing per pound of salmon)

1 lb. fresh salmon fillet, pin-bones removed
2 Tbsp. coarse sea salt
2 Tbsp. sugar 2 tsp. cracked black pepper
1 tsp. Boukovo (red chile flakes)
1 tsp. grated orange zest
1 good shot of Ouzo
plastic cling-wrap
a heavy weight

1. If using a wild, freshly caught salmon, ensure that you have frozen the fish for alt least 7 days. Otherwise, most commercially sold salmon has been frozen at some point and you're safe from any existing parasites.
2. Although you've bought a fillet of salmon, inspect the salmon visually and with your fingers to see if any pin pones were missed by your fish monger. If you find any, you can used needle-nose pliers to remove them.
3. Place the salmon on a large piece of plastic wrap (about three to four times the length of the fillet) with the skin side down, pink flesh facing up.
4. Put the salt, sugar, and black pepper, zest, chili flakes into a bowl and mix until evenly distributed. Reserve.
5. Pour the shot of Ouzo over the fillet.
6. Spoon the mixture onto the exposed salmon flesh, making sure to cover as much of the exposed areas as possible.
7. Place the dill on top of the salmon. If the dill is too long to fit on top of the fillet, then snap off the stems or fold the dill over. If you have 2 fillets, place the second one flesh side down on top of the dill (making a sandwich of the fillets).
   
8. Wrap the salmon up well and taut with the plastic wrap and place in a vessel. The container is there to catch the juices that will seep out of the salmon during the curing process.
9. Place a heavy weight on top of the salmon ( I use a large can of plum tomatoes) and refrigerate for at least 24 hours, maximum 3 days (the longer, the better the flavour).
10. Unwrap the salmon, remove the dill and and rinse off the salt mixture and then pat dry with paper towels.
11. Use a sharp knife to thinly slice your salmon.
12. Serve it as an open-faced sandwich, as an appetizer or a first course.
    

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