Grav-trout?

I've always fancied having a go at making Gravlax: Scandinavian cured salmon. So when I recently watched Jamie Oliver making some on his Swedish programme and realised I happened to have some surplus rainbow trout, a lightbulb went on. And I don't just mean the one inside the fridge.

As you may know Gravlax (Swedish) or Gravadlaks (Danish) is salmon cured in sugar, salt and dill. Lax / laks / lachs / lox is the salmon, and Grav literally means grave or tomb, referring to the custom of burying the fish during the curing process.

Having neither a grave nor a salmon on hand, I worked on the assumption that a fridge and rainbow trout would do just fine in my own version of Scandinavian preserved fish: Fridgetrøut.

I mixed 2 tbs coarse salt with 1 tbs golden caster sugar and a whole load of roughly chopped dill. I sprinkled this mixture on top of one trout fillet, sandwiched another fillet on top and wrapped the whole thing up tightly in clingfilm. Then put it into a baking dish to catch any spillage and weighed it down with a couple of heavy things that happened to be lying about. The trout is right at the bottom of this arrangement of kitchenware:



I took an occasional peek and turned the fish over once a day for three days. Then came the unwrapping:



I've read contrasting opinions on whether or not you should rinse the fish at this stage - considering the amount of salt used I thought it was probably a good idea. I dried the fish and sliced it up nice and thin.

Texturally it was still a bit soft and raw-fish like for me. This could be because trout is slightly more delicate than the big butch salmon that I'm used to. Or it could be because I didn't use enough salt and sugar during the curing stage. In which case it serves me right for just busking the ingredients rather than looking up a recipe, or using Jamie's from his recent show.

The situation was easily remedied though by drizzling the fish with a little lemon and letting it stand and firm up for a couple of minutes. I served it with some nice German Rye bread and the traditional Gravlax sauce: just mustard, sugar, pepper, vinegar, dill and oil - whisked up to form an emulsion. It was good.

I suggest that if you're tempted to make some Gravdlax or -trout you look up a proper (safe) recipe and don't just follow mine. Will report back if I get ill...