THE PREPARATION OF GRAVLAX

So we went to meet the chef Alex Arbaut of our friends of La Poissonnerie La Mer to know how to make the gravlax.

"When we get the fish, it goes through the fishmongers who remove the scales, the bones and the nets and it comes back to me. I'm going to dry it with a paper, then I brush it with thyme or maple syrup and it makes it possible to stick the dill, which has been finely chopped, on the salmon. Then we take a plastic to stick the dill to the salmon, then add the salt mixture. The latter includes coarse salt, 100 grams of the mixture of 5 ground peppers and of sugar. After that, we put it in the refrigerator for a period of 24 hours to get the salt mixture and the taste of the dill into the fish.

Then we will rinse. The rinsing is very fast, because we want to keep the dill on the salmon. This is the most delicate time, you must remove the salt while keeping the dill. Then I put the fish on a plastic rack, a metal grill would rust. We dry the fish, for 24 to 48 hours. The drier is, the better it will be, especially to slice it, because the flesh becomes firmer. It should not be forgotten that salt will get the water out of the flesh of the fish which will strengthen it. And then we slice, the best technique is to make thin slices and make movements as if we played the violin. It's the same technique for either gravlax, smoked salmon or smoked trout, which is very popular with our customers at La Mer. For me, trout is the Cadillac smoked fish, because the fatter the fish, the better. And it's ready to serve. "