Making Lox or Gravax. September 2011

Some of our Flavored Extra Virgin Olive Oil. The one in the right was made with fresh local basil and lightly pressed pieces of garlic. The one in the left was made with sage. Add the herbs to the olive oil, lightly heat the pan until the first bubble. Turn it off and serve.

Finally we finished our evening with a piece of Ahi Medium Rare Tuna, mixed greens, sauteed green beans, hard boiled organic eggs, potatoes and local cherry tomatoes.

This last and main course was way to much food for me. I could have stopped on the Lox and Latkes plate, since besides it we had fresh baguette and flavored olive oil to go with dinner.

A day with Lox deserves a nice kitchen setting with a delicate entree: Fresh Chilled New England Oysters with a Gastrique Sauce.

These were the potato pancakes that we serves with our lox. The crunchy and light flavor blended perfectly with the strong salty fish flavor.

The final piece served on top of a Latke (Potatoe Pancake) with strips of sour cream, chopped red onions, chives and a green garnish. Simply amazing!

The sliced Lox, should be paper thin.

Slicing the Lox at the perfect time.

Salmon fillet immersed in cold water after curing for 3 days. The extra salt will drain off.

After 3 days we rinse the salmon under running water and bathe it under cold water to remove all the salt. Put it back in the cooler for another day so that the salt that is left in the skin spreads evenly through out the rest of the salmon raw meat and cures the rest.

Gravlax: means "buried salmon" in the old Scandinavian countries. Lox: means cured salmon in Yiddish. It came from the custom the Scandinavians had of burring their fish under the earth with salt so that it would stay preserved.

Folding the salmon in salt before wrapping it.

Next step is to cure the salmon with a proportion of 1 sugar to 2 salt and some fresh dill. We immersed the salmon fillet in this curing bath for 3 days in the cooler.

First step is slicing the fresh salmon into a thick fine fillet and removing the scales with a special utensil. Salmon is a round fish, so you can take two fillets from each one.