Week T-8: Sea salt, Sancerre

What, you may wonder, is gravlax? It's an appetizer consisting of thin sashimi-like slices of salmon cured in salt, sugar, and dill. (This according to Wikipedia - which, according to Michael Scott, is the best thing ever. Anyone in the world can write anything they want about any subject. So you know you are getting the best possible information.)

During the Middle Ages, gravlax was made by fishermen by salting the salmon and lightly fermenting it by burying it in the sand above the high-tide line. The word gravlax comes from the Scandinavian words grav, which means literally "grave" or "hole in the ground" (in Swedish, Norwegian and Danish), and lax (or laks), which means "salmon". Today fermentation is no longer used in the production process, nor is sand. Instead the salmon is "buried" in a dry marinade of sea salt, sugar, and dill, and cured for a few days. It's served on brown bread with a dill and mustard sauce, and is very beautiful to serve.

It's a super-easy recipe though time-consuming - you have to turn the salmon every 24 hours for three days. Actually, the hardest part of this process is remembering to turn the salmon - I sent myself blackberry reminders. I can't imagine how they remembered in the Middle Ages.

It was served at game night, with the Sancerre, which went rather well together. The gravlax and the wine, that is - one's ability to think of clever Taboo clues clearly declines with Sancerre consumption. Oy.