Did you know that carrot sticks and celery mixed with 1 part apple cider vinegar/4 parts water and allowed to marinate for an hour, ar a great snack for a puppy? Especially when they are healing from eye surgery.

In medieval Scandinavia fish was preserved by being buried in salty sand on the shoreline. The salt would extract the moisture in the fish flesh, and allow the fish to be kept longer. The hole that was dug and filled with fish was a “grav” - you can see the etymological roots of our “grave” - and the fish itself (usually fatty salmon capable of standing up to a salty profile) lax. Gravlax. Buried salmon. Funny that a dish received as so celebratory and elegant should have such a sepulchral, earthy origin.

The process of making gravlax is not at all difficult except that it takes foresight and time. You don’t have to prepare it on a whole side of salmon or anything crazy like that; you can make a pound or two to use as an appetizer for a dinner party or as a brunch at home.  The steps are as follows:

• Get yourself a salmon filet
• Cover it with a dry cure of salt, sugar and spices
• Let the fish sit out until the salt and sugar disolve 
• Wrap and refrigerate
• Wait for 2 days for the moisture to be extracted from the flesh and for flavor to be imparted
• Rinse off the cure
• Slice as thin as possible on an angle, against the grain of the salmon flesh.

Cooking for Engineers, which has a delightful convention for displaying recipes, recommends freezing the fish prior to curing to kill and lurking parasites, but if you use fresh, high-quality salmon, it isn’t necessary. You are already preparing this at least 2 days out, for goodness sakes. 

The gravlax we made used 2 cups of salt, one cup of sugar, caraway seeds, aquavit, no dill. Mark Bittman collected recipes for both basic and more elaborate flavor profiles in a Minimalist piece on gravlax from a decade ago. Rather than the traditional mustard-and-dill sauce, we served the fish with what amounts to a tartar sauce prepared with crème fraîche instead of mayonnaise. Shallots, capers, cornichons and cream: I could eat it by the spoonful. 

The silky, dense, salty fish with its tart, creamy cloak of sauce was heavenly with René Geoffroy “Rosé de Saignée” Brut champagne, dry and redolent of orange peel. Incedentally, the champagne is called “saignée” because of the process by which it gets its pink color, wherein the grape skins are left to imbue the wine, literally “bleeding off” color as well as flavor.

Gravlax, the buried fish, is perfectly complimented by a bloody wine.