Gluten-Free Gravlax with Sour Cream Mustard Sauce

Gravlax is a Scandinavian entree or appetizer made with raw salmon that has been cured in salt, sugar, dill, and in this recipe potato vodka. Gravlax is served on thinly-sliced bread with a dollop of mustard sauce.

I served 2-1/2 pounds of Gravlax to family and friends at my daughter's baby shower this past November. It was so delicious, I plan to make it again for the holidays. You may still have time to make it for your Christmas party later this week, but you do need 48 hours for the salmon to cure before serving. And you'll need a sharp knife!

Ingredients for the Salmon (per half pound):

1/2 pound fresh, boneless salmon fillet
2 tablespoons potato vodka
1 round teaspoon coarse salt
1 round teaspoon sugar
Fresh dill weed to cover

Ingredients for the Sour Cream Sauce:

1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 teaspoon prepared mustard
Pinch of salt
Minced dill weed (optional, to taste)

Directions:

1. If the salmon has skin, place it skin-side down in a glass or enamel baking pan.
2. Pour the vodka over the fleshy side, then sprinkle the salt and sugar evenly to coat.
3. Completely cover the salmon with sprigs of fresh dill weed.
4. Cover the salmon with a sheet of plastic wrap and place a heavy object on top to weigh it down while is cures in the brine. I set a smaller glass baking pan in side the larger glass pan and placed a water-filled tea kettle on top for weight.
5. Put the salmon in the refrigerator for 48 hours to cure in the brine.
6. Meanwhile, go ahead and make the sour cream mustard sauce. Mix together the sour cream, mustard, salt and minced dill (optional). Season to taste and chill.
7. After 48 hours has past, scrape all the dill and any remaining crust of sugar and salt off the top of the salmon fillet.
8. Place the salmon on a cutting board, and with a very sharp knife, make thin, diagonal slices the length of the fillet, making sure to slice clean through each segment.
   
9. Carefully transition the sliced fillet to a serving platter, and garnish with fresh dill weed, cover with plastic wrap, and chill until ready to serve or transport to your party. Don't forget to take the sauce and bread and appropriate serving utensils!
   
10. Set the Gravlax platter on the table along with the bowl of the Sour Cream Mustard Sauce (with small spoon) and a basket of thinly sliced bread or crackers.

Note: Increase ingredients according to how many pounds you wish to serve.
Enjoy!

Gluten-Free Salmon Cakes or Burgers

Salmon Cakes can either be grilled and served on a burger bun, on a bed of lettuce tossed with a light vinaigrette or like I did this evening, simply served with a dollop of tartar sauce, steamed brown rice and half an artichoke.

Ingredients:

3/4 to a 1 pound salmon fillet, boned and the skin removed
1/4 white or red onion, finely chopped
1-1/2 teaspoons capers, whole or chopped
1 egg, whisked
1 cup rice flour or fine gluten-free rice bread crumbs (panko bread crumbs for those without gluten-intolerance)
Season to taste with salt and pepper or Salt Substitute Homemade Herb Blend
Olive oil for cooking on the stove-top.

Directions:

1. Rinse and pat the salmon dry, then mince.
2. In a bowl, to the whisked egg, add the diced onion, capers, salmon and seasoning and mixed until thoroughly combined.
3. Add either the panko or gluten-free rice bread crumbs or rice flour and shape into patties and press.
4. Cook on a hot grill or in a pan with olive oil for 2-3 minutes each side, or bake in a 350-degree oven for 15-20 minutes.

Serves 2 (Yields 4 Salmon Cakes)

Baked Salmon, Not Your Mama's Brussels Sprout & Potato Gratin

Our holiday family dinner at Tutu and Papa Keith's was superb! The setting is so intimate and festive - toasty warm and cozy inside. Their house is a beautiful hand-scribed log home... our table centerpiece set with evergreen boughs, red cardinals and candles.

We prepared our family's favorite oven-baked salmon rubbed with freshly squeezed lemon juice, sprinkled with sea salt, smothered in sour cream, topped with thinly-sliced rings of onion and baked for 40-minutes at 350-degrees.

For side dishes, Tutu came up with two new recipes this year. Both were absolutely delicious. I'm getting hungry to the point of drooling, just thinking about them.

Unfortunately, there was so much going on while I was helping to serve up dinner that I forgot to take photos of our dishes, except for this one - our daughter Skye handing me a second helping of Potato Gratin. That's my mother Marjorie aka Tutu on the left and our grandson Max on the right.

Recipe for Potato Gratin

Ingredients:

2-1/2 pounds Yukon Gold potatoes
1 garlic clove, halved
1-1/2 cups heavy cream
1 cup whole milk
1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
Course salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
3 ounces Gruyere cheese, grated (1 cup)

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 375-degrees.
2. Peel potatoes and place in a bowl of water to prevent browning.
3. Rub inside of a 9x12 inch oval baking dish with the cut sides of the garlic.
4. Heat the cream, milk, nutmeg and 1-1/2 teaspoons of salt in a medium saucepan over medium heat, until bubbles form along the edge.
5. Season with pepper and remove from the heat.
6. Slice the potatoes 1/8-inch thick using a slicing-mandoline and transfer to a large bowl.
7. Pour the warm cream mixture over top.
8. Mix well, using your hands to separate and coat the potato slices.
9. Transfer the mixture to the baking dish.
   
10. Gently push the potatoes down and pour the remaining cream mixture in the bowl over top.
11. Evenly sprinkle the Gruyere cheese over the top.
12. Place baking dish in the oven with a cookie sheet of foil on the rack below to catch drippings.
    
13. Bake until the potatoes are tender and the top is bubbling and brown, about 1 hour and 15-minutes.

Serves 6 (we doubled the recipe).


Recipe for Not Your Mama's Brussels Sprouts

Ingredients:

1-3/4 pounds Brussels sprouts (outer leaves removed)
2 tablespoons butter
3 tablespoons olive oil
12 medium shallots, thinly sliced ( 2 cups)
6 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
4 tablespoons pine nuts, toasted and divided
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

Directions:

1. Using a food processor and working in batches, thinly slice the Brussels sprouts.
2. Melt the butter and olive oil in a large pot on medium heat.
3. Add shallots and saute until almost translucent for about 3 minutes.
4. Add garlic and stir for 1 minute.
5. Add Brussels sprouts, increasing the heat to medium-high and saute until tender, about 8 minutes.
6. Stir in 3 tablespoons of the toasted pine nuts and lemon juice.
7. Season with salt and pepper.
8. Transfer to a serving bowl and sprinkle with the remaining pine nuts.

Serves 8 (we doubled the recipe).

Rice and Lentils with Wild Salmon Over Vegetables

Thank you to my friend Elli for this fabulous Iraqi recipe Kichri - Rice and Lentils Dish. I prepared it this evening to serve with Zenobia's Wild Rice Over Vegetables entree from Raman Prasad's cookbook Recipes for the Specific Carbohydrate Diet, on page 132. 

 Here is Elli's recipe and the background to this aromatic, savory dish: 

Kichri - Rice and Lentils Dish

"This is a simple and quick dish that is very tasty and nutritious. Plus some history of the middle east as a bonus.

Iraqi cuisine is a fine cuisine. What we now call Iraq (name invented by the British when they created the country, as they did for the whole Middle East), was once a major trade route and the cultural center of the Islamic Empire during the Golden Age. This cuisine has mellow flavors that blend together -- certain flavors that you will not fine anywhere else.

When the concept of fine dining -- which includes using silverware and glassware, eating three course meals, and maintaining certain table manners -- was invented in the Islamic capital, Europeans were eating bread, salt and roasted pigs with their hands, and would have to sell their house for an ounce of cloves. Being on a central trade route from India to the west meant that a wealth of spices was available to Iraqis and were commonly used in the country for centuries. There are minor resemblances to Indian cuisine, but you will not get the bombardment of spices in Iraqi cuisine, it is about finesse.

I did some modifications to the original recipe by the advice of my sister, chef Hadas Levendiger. This makes it even quicker to make, at a minor price in flavor." Elli A.

Active Time: 20 minutes
Total Time: 1/2 an hour to 1 hour

Ingredients

• 1 cup rice
• 1/2 cup red lentils
• 1 chopped onion
• 5-7 spoons oil
• 4 ounces tomato paste
• 2-3 cups of boiling water
• 10 crushed garlic cloves
• 1 teaspoon turmeric
• 1 tablespoon ground cumin
• Salt and pepper

Directions

1. Wash rice and lentils
2. Soak in water for at least 1.5 hours.
3. In a pot, fry the onions until they are golden in color.
4. Add crushed garlic and fry little bit more. Be careful not to burn the garlic; it burns very quickly.
5. Add rice, lentils, and tomato paste to 2 ½ cups of boiling water. The water has to be boiling before you add them.
6. Mix spices
7. Bring to a boil again and cook on low heat for 20 minutes.

[Note: I added a 1/2 cup more boiling water for more moisture near the end of the cooking time; stir occasionally as it slow-cooks without a lid.]

Water and Cooking Time

This largely depends on the type of rice you use. It varies between 2-3 cups of water and 20-45 minutes of cooking time. Plain white rice is the quickest and needs the least amount of water.

Original Recipe

Same as above, but do NOT add garlic, turmeric and cumin to the pot. When the dish is ready, fry the garlic and spices in a frying pan, and then mix it in.

This is an extra step that emphasizes the flavor of the spices. Cooking them in water does have flavor degradation.

Serves 6 

Wild Salmon Over Vegetables

I made some changes to the ingredients in the original recipe*. Here's my version, using what I had on hand:

Ingredients 

 

3/4 pound wild salmon fillet, with skin left on (option to remove it)

garlic salt, dill weed and lemon peel to taste

1 tablespoon olive oil

Bragg's organic Ginger & Sesame Salad Dressing

1 medium zucchini, thinly sliced

1-1/2 tomatoes, thinly sliced

1/2 red bell pepper, thinly sliced

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 350-degrees.
2. Lightly oil glass baking dish with olive oil.
3. Layer the thinly-sliced vegetables on the bottom.
4. Lightly pre-cook the vegetables in the microwave for 2 minutes. 
   
5. Lay the salmon across the top of the layered vegetables.
6. Rub the seasoning on the topside of the salmon.
7. Drizzle the ginger and sesame seed salad dressing over all.
8. Bake uncovered for 20-minutes.

I was pleased at how well this dish turned out; not at all fishy. The seasoning and dressing gave both the fish and the vegetables a fresh, delicate flavor. For those that don't have much time to spend in the kitchen, this is a very simple way to prepare salmon and cut down the time it takes to cook a meal.

Serves 2

* Zenobia's ingredients to serve 7 to 8:

1-1/2 pounds wild salmon skinned
salt and pepper to taste
1 tablespoon sesame oil
3/4 teaspoon olive oil
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 large onion, finely chopped
3 to 4 portobello mushroom caps, finely chopped

Learning to Cook, Learning to Eat

After spending quite a bit of time in the kitchen on Saturday, Sunday night I wanted to make a dinner for two that was fairly quick and easy. It turned out quite well. Our menu was Glazed Salmon with Ginger from page 131 of Raman Prasad's Recipes for the Specific Carbohydrate Diet served with Pineapple Fried Rice from page 140 of Donna Klein's The Gluten-Free Vegetarian Kitchen. I'm enjoying cooking my way through two cookbooks to learn new techniques and cook outside the box of our usual fare, though I have a library of cookbooks that languish from neglect. In a way, I feel as though I'm learning to cook all over again, taking extra care to fully read each recipe and study the nuances of measurement and taste. I've enjoyed cooking over the years, but now I want to cultivate the "art of cooking".

 The closest full-service grocer is 13 miles from our rural home in Lorane, Oregon. If we want anything beyond the bare essentials, we have a distance to travel. To forgo the inconvenience of driving such a distance for a few items, we opted to forage from our pantry and refrigerator all that we could find of the ingredients for our meal and anything that would suffice as substitutes for what we didn’t have on hand. For the pineapple rice, I substituted almond oil for peanut oil, a can of crushed pineapple for fresh cut chunks and ground ginger in lieu of fresh chopped. For the marinated salmon, I substituted ground ginger for fresh and wheat-free soy sauce for the SCD Asian Sauce from page 173 of Prasad's cookbook.

Both recipes were very moist and flavor-rich. However, I think the next time I cook the pineapple rice I will reduce the turmeric from 2-1/2 teaspoons to 2 teaspoons. Although the recipe called for cooking and basting the salmon for 7-10 minutes at 325-degrees, I extended the cooking time to 13-minutes. Perfect! Next time I cook this salmon recipe, rather than toasting white sesames, I will garnish the top with black sesame seeds.

On the other end of the cooking and eating spectrum is Sephira, our 13-month old granddaughter.

Sephira's Mama and Dada are teaching her how to use a bowl and spoon without her food ending up on the floor, herself and others. Sephira has learned 40 signs, which include signs for food such as cereal, milk,  cookie and drink, as well as signing bib, eat, more, wash.... At such a very young age, Sephira has cultivated an appetite for most everything her parent's prepare for her, including very spicy foods and jalapeno peppers. Not only does Sephira enjoy eating a wide variety of foods, but also hands-on playing with food textures and her social interaction with family and guests at meals... that is until she's reached her limit of involvement, signing she wants down - all done!