Gravlax or gravadlax, skin on skin off, beetroot or no beetroot, 24 or 48 hours, rinse, don't ri

"It's the basic method that counts, as in all cooking."

Richard Ehrlich, The Guardian

Well we've been to the market. I've bought the salmon and the dill. I've been to the supermarket and bought the salt. I also bought some beetroot in the market just in case.

Because now I need to cure it. Well maybe tomorrow. Maybe today. As soon as I have decided what method to use, because in spite of the quote at the top there actually doesn't seem to be a 'basic' method, unless you count marinating your salmon in some salt and dill as the method. Other than that the variations are endless.

Even the name is not the same here and in England. Here we seem to call it gravlax, and over there they call it gravadlax, although even there some people seem to call it gravlax. It's a scandinavian combined word from lax which means salmon and gravad which means grave. It was originally salted, put in a hole in the beach and covered over with sand. So I'm guessing that over time gravad lax evolved to gravlax and now some purists have reverted to gravadlax.

In Scandinavia they also smoke salmon of course - as do we - and very delicious it is but not so easy to do yourself. Or there is lox which is also a cured version but this time it is cured in a brine rather than in dry salt. Mind you when you cure it in dry salt, by the end of the process the curing ingredients have liquified to a certain extent.

"With its seashell-pink hue and delicate texture, gravlax looks a lot like cold-smoked salmon and tastes like that brunch stalwart’s milder cousin: sweeter, cleaner, and of course, smoke-free." Wall Street Journal

Mind you I was a bit deterred by a couple of articles I saw recommending that you freeze your salmon first to kill off parasites! Surely we have no parasites here. They did say rather reassuringly that if it was labelled sashimi grade it was all OK. I know some of the stuff in the market was labelled this way, but can't remember now whether mine was. Anyway I'm not going to worry about it. I haven't caught my own wild salmon after all.

I absolutely agree that it is dead easy to do, the difficult bit is deciding which of the many variants to choose.

First you have to remove the bones - pin boning it's called for some reason and they say to do it with tweezers, but I have to say I almost always end up using my fingers. This is, in fact, the worst part of the whole process. Maybe I haven't got the right equipment but I'm not going to buy something that specialised for something I do just once a year, so it's just my bathroom tweezers I'm afraid. But it's hard to get a grip and then the bones break whilst I'm pulling them out. Which is why I often resort to fingers.

Then most recipes tell you to keep the skin on, but I have yet to find a reason for this. I tried. Surely if you remove the skin the flavours have more chance to get into the fish. Anyway I take it off, and I see that a few recipes tell you to do it too. Not the majority though. And whilst we're still on skin, the British particularly seem to make a sort of sandwich. They cut their beautiful big piece of salmon in half, dollop the marinade on the non-skin side of each and then slap them together before binding them closely with glad wrap. I'm not going to do that.

As to the ingredients of the marinade - or the cure as it is probably more correctly called. Well the possibilities here are endless - the only constants being salt and dill, though the kind of salt, and how much you use are pretty variable - anything from a tablespoon to 500g. I think the recipe I generally use - Stephanie Alexander's - uses a lot of salt. The other variables are sugar, alcohol (vodka or gin mostly but I have seen aquavit and whisky also suggested), coriander, caraway, juniper, pepper, lemon peel, orange peel, horseradish and last but not least - beetroot. Beetroot in fact seems to be the current trend, so I might give it a go this year. It certainly makes it look pretty.

beetroot gravlax

Nigel Slater's beetroot gravlax

But I bet there are arguments about how much.

Do you wrap it, or just put a bit of gladwrap or greaseproof paper on top and weight it down? Even there I saw one recipe that said you didn't need to weight it at all, just wrap it tightly.

Then in the past I have just cured it for 24 hours, but most recipes seem to say 48 and one said 72. Perhaps I'll compromise and go for 36!

And when it's all done do you rinse the cure off or just scrape it off - or dare I say just leave it on? No I don't think you leave it on, and I think I'm with the scrape it off people. That way you get a little tiny bit of it left on to give it flavour and you don't make it all wet and diluted.

Slice thinly at an angle and serve. Yum, yum, yum.

Gravlax (and prawns) is our traditional first course for our Christmas Eve dinner. It's a nod to the Australian love of seafood at Christmas.

Felicity Cloake, of course, has give a summary of some of the variations, but she didn't include the beetroot option.

As for what to serve it with - lavosh, rye bread, mustard sauce, horseradish sauce, tzatziki ...

"Gravlax achieved mega-cool status some time in the 1980s - and became passé in the 1990s, when sushi and tartare took over in the raw fish trendiness stakes. The Scandinavian version, aka gravadlax, should never have fallen from fashion. It takes neither time nor skill to prepare, and it's delicious." Richard Ehrlich The Guardian

It might not take time or skill but it needs the ability to make a decision or a series of decisions in fact! But it is definitely back in fashion, particularly if you add beetroot. Maybe I should do half with and half without ... Decisions, decisions.