Cooking Club:Bagels and Lox (Part 2)

BAGELS and LOX [ベーグルとスモークサモン」 Part Two

The fresher the fish the better!

There is a fishing area near Odawara called Forrest Springs which stocks various kinds of trout, including brooke(iwana), grayling(yamome), silver, and the prized Steelhead!!(Large Western Rainbow trout that are on their way to becoming salmon. Their pinkish meat is sweet and flakey and versitle when cooking) I traveled by train(an hour and a half outside of Tokyo) to lure fish for some steelhead. In only two hours I caught several species of trout including this this 2.5 footer pictured here on a spinning spoon and then quickly brought them back to my kitchen to start preparing for Gravis Lox.

Gravlax (pronounced "grov-lox") is from the Swedish name for this dish. Norwegians call it gravlaks and the Danish refer to it as Gravad laks. It 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.

When is bagel not a bagel? When it is NOT topped high with cream cheese and lox! Of course!Now that we had the fresh bagels all prepared I instructed the class on how to salt cure a salmon, or in this case, the steelheads that I had cleaned and deep-frozen the day before.(Freezing to -10F/23C wards off any unwanted parasites that are common in freshwater fish)

We prepared the rock salt, sugar, and fresh dillweed mixture and generously coated the fillets. After wrapping them we placed another plate on top to weigh down the fish to allow the juices to seep from the fish and make the fish fillets firmer.

After several hours the fillets were ready for slicing(I prepared a salmon beforehand) Slicing thin down to the tail was quite a task for many of the students. "Chunky-style" lox was a popular description.

But all the hard work in the kitchen was worth it as they enjoyed their home-made bagels and lox. Thank you all!

RECIPE:
Gravlax (Salt cured Salmon)

1 lb. (450 g) frozen salmon filet
thaw completely & remove bones
cover salmon
cover salmon
double wrap in plastic wrap
refrigerate at least 48 hours
rinse and dry
slice on bias
2 Tbs. (~30 g) kosher salt
mix
2 Tbs. (25 g) granulated sugar
2 tsp. (4.2 g) ground black pepper
20 sprigs fresh dill weed
Directions
Lay a LARGE sheet of plastic wrap over the dish.
Mix Rub ingredients in a small bowl-- if using fresh dill, chop it up and rub it on the fish first.
Lay fish, skin side down, on the lined dish, evenly spread rub over fish, with more in the thicker areas of the fillet.
Wrap plastic over the fish.
Place second dish on top, place weight on top of second dish.
Refrigerate for 48-72 hrs.
Check every 12 hrs or so to see if dish needs to be drained.
(some fish oil will seep out of the package).
Remove fish from package, scrape off remaining rub, cut into very thin slices across the bias, stopping at the skin.
Serve with bagels, horseradish cream dressing, capers, more dill, greens, vinagerette, honey mustard, bread rounds, etc.