My adventures in food....

Many of my friends and all of my family are aware of how keen a cook I am. My current journey through George Brown College on Saturdays is helping to elevate, not only my understanding of food; but also my abilities around techniques, style and recipes. At the same time my immersion in this topic has me pursuing charcuterie, new braising techniques and a whole bunch of other things. One of the things that I started to do a number of years ago was make my own gravalax.


I would say at this juncture I am able to create a superior product to what i can generally get in the store at a smidgin of the cost. Recently I have started to make a much better product however, by not only curing my lox for 2 to 3 days based on size; but by air drying it in my fridge for 8 to 20 hours to allow for the creation of pellicle and then cold smoking for a couple of hours at 50F. Yesterday I shared the end result of this approach with colleagues at work and it seemed to have been very well received. I am also experimenting with curing for a shorter period by using my food saver to vacuum seal and cure smaller pieces (half a side) that from all accounts should substantially shorten the cure. I also tried that with the smaller piece in the picture which delivered a firmer product with a much better colour.

There are only a couple of places that i believe provides a truly superior product and one of them is J Willy Krauch in Tangiers, Nova Scotia. Their approach is the more traditional Danish method of salting for one day and then smoking over 1 to 2 days. A truly amazing product. Great write up here. http://snipurl.com/t7wtg

Feel free to contact me if you would like my recipe.