New Year, New Look, New Cooking Techniques

Happy New Year!

May it be a happy and blessed one for all of you. 

And Happy "Bloggaversary" to us - A Couple in the Kitchen turns 4 today!

In the spirit of new-ness, we gave the blog a makeover. We think it's cleaner and sharper, generally more stream-lined and just has a more modern look. Let us know what you think.

With "makeovers" in mind, for our first dish of 2012, we made over a classic dish we learned in 2011 from Ewa at Delishhh. We made her gravlax (cured salmon) for Chris's birthday last year, and it came out so great that Chris has been asking for it ever since. So we bought a gorgeous piece of sockeye salmon a couple of days ago and cured it in time for New Year's breakfast. That's not the makeover part. The makeover part is what we did with the Hovmästarsås, or, mustard sauce. Chris has been itching to try some molecular gastronomy techniques and so he bought himself some supplies, the names of which Amy can barely pronounce, but that's not the point, is it... The point was to spherify the mustard sauce to look like an egg yolk. And it worked! Pretty cool, eh?

Here's how we did it. And yes, you can try this at home. Have fun!

Make the mustard sauce using calcium lactate

Make the sodium alginate bath

Drop mustard sauce into sodium alginate bath,

 then rinse in cold water and serve

Cured Salmon aka Gravlax

Ingredients:

1 pound raw salmon

4 tablespoons kosher salt

4 tablespoons granulated sugar

1 1/2 tablespoons ground white pepper

1 large bunch fresh dill

Cut the salmon piece in half. Mix the salt, pepper and sugar in a bowl. Rub the salmon all over with the salt mixture, using all of it. Put one of the salmon pieces skin down in a deep dish and top it with the chopped dill.  Place the other piece of salmon, skin side up on top of the first one. Wrap the salmon pieces in plastic wrap and place it back into the dish. Place a brick on top of the salmon, and put it in the refrigerator for 3 days, turning it twice a day. After 3 days take out the salmon and remove the dill and spices with your fingers. Slice the gravlax thinly and serve with mustard sauce and rye toast.

Spherified Hovmästarsås (Mustard Sauce)

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons white wine vinegar
6 tablespoons granulated sugar
Pinch of kosher salt
5 tablespoons yellow mustard
5 tablespoons dijon mustard

6 tablespoons olive oil

1/2 teaspoon calcium lactate

2 cups water

1 gram sodium alginate

3 cups plain water for rinsing

Pour the vinegar in a small bowl, mix with sugar and salt and stir until somewhat dissolved.  Add both mustards and the oil and whisk until well mixed. Stir in the calcium lactate; this will react with the sodium alginate bath and make spherification possible. To make the sodium alginate bath, blend the sodium alginate into the 2 cups of water. Let both the mustard sauce and the sodium alginate bath sit in the refrigerator for 15-20 minutes. When ready to serve, drop the mustard sauce into the sodium alginate bath by spoonfuls; let sit for three minutes then remove with a slotted spoon into a bowlful of plain water for rinsing. Remove from water and you have your sphere to serve as you like! 

Birthday Gravlax: Secret Recipe Club

Amy writes:

It's Chris's birthday and he and a bunch of buddies have headed to Northern Vermont for a guys' weekend. Not being a guy myself, I'm not exactly sure what goes on at these weekends, but I imagine fire, meat, whiskey and cigars at the very least. I doubt I'm off base.

Meanwhile, here in CT, I'm doing some fall nesting, part of which is preparing for this month's Secret Recipe Club. We were assigned Delishhh, a food blog by Ewa who was born in Sweden. Delishhh is filled with recipes from all over the globe, but since I've never made anything Swedish (not even a meatball...), I headed right to her Swedish Food section. It was then I realized that I was facing a perfect convergence of events - while Chris is away, I can spend the weekend preparing Delishhh's recipe for one of his favorite foods (gravlax), and when he comes home, he can detox from his meat-and-fire-filled weekend with some flavorfully cured raw salmon.

Gravlax is one of Sweden's most famous dishes. Being new to Swedish cuisine, I decided to stay with Ewa's tried and true recipe, even preparing the "Hovmästarsås," or mustard sauce, accompaniment. I purchased a beautiful piece of salmon fillet and rubbed it with a salt, sugar, and white pepper mixture as instructed.

I added chopped dill, wrapped the fish tightly in plastic wrap, and placed it in a zip-type bag inside the refrigerator to cure for the weekend, turning the salmon three times each day.

When it was ready, I served it over grilled rye bread with the mustard sauce drizzled over it. Chris was both surprised and thrilled at the result, pronouncing it indeed "Delishhh," and saying he could eat it every day. Even better, he has it all to himself, as nothing about gravlax is, as my friend Joanne would say, "Amy-approved" - neither salmon (raw or cooked), nor dill, nor mustard sauce. Happy Birthday, Chris! And thank you, Ewa!