Tonight in Jonny World we shift our focus away from the Asian region and face north towards Scandinavia -- the land of alcohol and gravlax!
A little known fact: I used to live in Denmark back in the early 1990s. I can't say Danish food is my favorite food in the entire world, but I did develop a taste for a number of Scandinavian foods. One them was smoerrebroed , or open faced sandwiches. Another is salmon cured with sea salt, pepper, sugar, brandy, and dill. For dinner I thought I'd try combing both of these personal favorites and create gravlax smoerrebroed .
Actually I found that making gravlax was quite easy. I cut a salmon steak in two and rubbed it with a combination of 1 tsp sea salt, 1 tsp caster sugar, 1 tsp crushed black peppercorns, 1 tsp brandy, and a liberal amount of fresh dill.
I then let the salmon cure for 12 hours, basted and flipped the salmon, and repeated this cycle every 12 hours until 48 hours were up. The salmon was then thinly sliced and placed on dark rugbroed.
Once the salmon was fully cured, I then prepared the dijon mustard sauce by combining 4 tsp Dijon mustard, 1 tsp mustard powder, 1 tsp sugar, and 2 tsp white wine vinegar. To this mixture was slowly added (while stirring) 6 tsp of vegetable oil and 3-4 tsp chopped, fresh dill. And in my mind, the sauce totally made the dish.