Himalayan Salt Block for Salmon Gravlax
11/04/2016
Impress your Jewish grandma with gravlax, or just impress yourself. Actually, my Nana preferred the cold-smoked cousin, lox, but gravlax is an incredibly easy, positively delicious way to cure salmon. The name comes from any number of Nordic fish dishes inspired by the openly morbid technique of burying in the ground (grave) your salmon (lax) with some salt cure. I like this dish because it yields a particularly moist, delicate, and lightly salted gravlax, since the salinity of the Himalaya salt block does not migrate as readily into the fish flesh as a packed cure of loose salt. Also, because you don’t need plates and weights, and because the salt blocks can be reused over and over again, the method boasts a certain elegance and economy of tools.
Himalayan Salt Block Cooking
10/26/2016
A boulder of Himalayan rock salt emerges from darkness of a 16th century mineshaft in Pakistan and explodes into light, catching and refracting the sun in hues ranging spring water clear to hibiscus pink to venison red. Stonemasons in a neighboring town then hand cut the great rock into a variety of shapes, providing the foundation for extraordinary new ways to prepare and serve food. Himalayan salt blocks, plates, bricks, and platters can be used for sautéing, grilling, chilling, curing, cooking, baking, presenting, salting, bathing, building, and contemplating.