December 30,
2014 New Recipe Grilled Teriyaki Marinated Salmon with Rice and Stir Fried String
Beans and Gravad Lax (Smoked Salmon)
Gravad Lax (Smoked
Salmon) Recipe:
Suzette bought a whole salmon two days ago at
Costco ($4.99/lb.) and we had a bunch of PPI fresh dill from Christmas, so at
around 4:15 today I cut a piece the length and almost the width of a pyrex
baking dish that I judged to not weigh more than 3 lbs. and made gravad lax:
I fileted
the piece of salmon into to two filets that fit each other and the size of the
marinating dish.
Then I mixed
the first three dry ingredients in a bowl (the following measurements are for a
3 lb. piece of salmon)
2/3 cup salt
½ cup sugar
1 teaspoon
ground black pepper
2 bunches
dill
(the recipe
calls for 2 bunches but I had only one bunch but also a piece of salmon of less
than 3 lbs., so 1 bunch had to do and did work in this instance.)
Then I lay a
bed of about 1/3 of the dill on the bottom of the baking dish and then ladled 1/4
of the dry mixture on the outside of one of the filets and lay that side down
on the bed of dill in the baking dish, being careful to let any mixture that
does not stick to the fish skin fall into the inside of the baking dish so it
will be captured with the rest of the mixture inside the baking dish.
Then I
ladled the dry mixture onto the exposed inside of that filet inside the baking
dish.
Then I
placed about ½ of the dill on the first filet.
Then I
ladled ¼ of the dry mixture on the inside side of the other filet and laid that
inside side on top of the first filet inside the baking dish, again making sure
that any excess mixture fell inside the baking dish.
Then I ladled
the rest of the dry mixture onto the exposed outside skin side of the second
filet that now lay inside the baking dish on top of the first filet.
Then I placed
the last 1/6 of the fresh dill on top of the fish and mixture inside the baking
dish.
Then I
covered the dish with saran wrap and placed a brick on top of the fish to weigh
down the fish filets.
The gravad process allows the oils in the fish to mix with the dry ingredients and
exchange places with some of the salt and sugar, so that the fresh salmon
becomes salt and sugar cured or as we in America inaccurately refer to it as “smoked”.
In order to
fully saturate the fish one needs to turn the fish periodically. I have experimented with curing periods of
from 12 to 48 hours. I find that the
simplest and best curing period is 24 hours with one flip at the end of the
first 12 hours.
So at 4:45 I
put the covered dish into the fridge to marinate/cure.
 |
| the finished combination of ingredients and weighed with the brick as it goes into the frdge |
 |
| the salmon after 12 hours before the flip (see how some of the dry mix has liquified) |
Teriyaki Salmon Recipe:
I also made
a teriyaki marinade for the back end of the salmon which I fileted after
finishing the gravad lax.
I placed the
fileted pieces of salmon into a gallon freezer bag and then made the marinade.
I placed in
a small sauce pan:
1 Tbsp. sugar
7 Tbsps. of
sake
7 Tbsps. of Aji
Mirin (Japanese Cooking wine from Talin)
7 Tbsps. of premium
dark soy (Talin)
I then
heated the marinade to almost boiling stirring it occasionally so that the
sugar went into solution. I then let the
marinade cool for a few minutes.
Then I
poured the marinade into the freezer bag holding the two salmon filets and put
it in the fridge to marinate (the longer the fish marinates the better. I often marinate teriyaki salmon 2 days, but
today it marinated only 2 hours)
Willy went
to the gym and so at around 6:30 Suzette and I decided to cook dinner.
We started
by cutting two (1” X 6”) cedar planks to fit the length of each salmon filet onto.
Then Suzette
soaked the planks in water to moisten them.
Then she
heated the propane BBQ grill outside and then placed the fish on the planks
onto the grill and grilled them until they were cooked, which today took about
25 minutes due to the extreme cold and wind (one way to know when the fish is
getting done is when the edges of the boards begin to burn.)
New
Recipe: Stir Fried String Beans
1 large clove
of garlic
1 dime sized
piece of fresh ginger
1 tsp. of
sesame oil
1 Tbsp. of
peanut oil
1 dash of chili
oil
½ tsp. of
salt
½ tsp. of
sugar
While Suzette
was grilling the salmon, I sliced the garlic and ginger into flat rounds and
placed them in a large skillet with all the other ingredients except the string
beans and heated them to release the garlic and ginger flavors.
 |
| residue of oil and ginger and garlic slices in skillet |
Then I
placed about 1 lb. of string beans (Costco 2 lbs. of haricot verts with their
stems snipped off for $4.99) into the skillet and tossed the string beans
occasionally to cover them with the oil and to cook them evenly.
The fish
took a little longer to cook because of the cold weather so I let the beans sit covered for a while and then reheated them when the salmon was cooked and we were ready
to eat.
We also
heated about 1 cup of PPI basmati rice in the microwave.
I heated a small ceramic pitcher of sake in a small sauce pan of hot water on the stove while we were
waiting for the salmon.
Finally, a
little after 7:00 we removed the salmon from the grill and heated the string
beans and rice and we were ready to eat.
Suzette laid a pile of rice on each plate and cut pieces of salmon and
laid them on the rice and then I laid a bunch of string bean spears on each
plate and fetched small tea cups for sake and placed the sauce pan of heated
water with the small pitcher of sake and cups on the table and we were ready to
eat a hot meal in the middle of this winter night. While the wind blew outside, I thought we
could have easily have been eating this same meal in northern Japan.
We watched the
first episode of the Marco Polo series on Netflix during and after dinner for
the complete oriental experience.
Bon Appétit
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