Gravlax Club Sandwich Recipes

Steps:

• 1. For the roast: Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Place the carrots, celery, and onion in the bottom of a roasting pan. (Nadine uses the vegetables instead of a rack.) Add enough water to just cover the vegetables.
• 2. Cut four X's in the sides or top of the meat and push in the garlic pieces. Rub the entire roast with olive oil and then dredge it in steak seasoning.
• 3. Heat a large skillet over medium-high heat and sear all sides of the meat. Set the meat on top of the vegetables, cover the pan with foil, and roast until a meat thermometer inserted in the meat registers 130 degrees F for medium-rare, about 2 hours. Transfer the roast to a cutting board and let it rest for 30 minutes.
• 4. To make the gravy : Strain the roasting-pan juices; discard the vegetables. Melt the butter in a skillet over medium-high heat. Whisk in the flour. Stir in the roasting pan juices and the demiglace, and simmer until thickened.
• 5. Slice the roast beef very thin. Put the slices in the gravy. (Nadine likes to smother the beef in the gravy.) Plate up the sandwiches with the meat between two slices of white bread and ladle more of the gravy on top. Serve with mashed red potatoes.

Steps:

• Cure the salmon: Lay salmon skin-side down, flesh-side up in a glass or stainless-steel baking dish. (A large lasagna dish works well.) In a small bowl, toss together the salt, sugar and pepper until blended. Sprinkle the mixture over the salmon evenly, with abandon, until fully covered, as if under a blanket of snow. Use all of it.
• Spread all the chopped dill on top of the cure-covered salmon to make a thick, grassy carpet.
• Lay plastic wrap or parchment paper over the salmon to cover and press down, then place a heavy weight - such as a 2-gallon zip-top bag filled with water - on top, to weigh heavily on the curing fish. Refrigerate just like this, without disturbing, for 5 days, turning the salmon over midway through the cure - on Day 3 - then covering and weighting it again.
• To serve, mix together the softened butter, dill, shallot and mustard until well blended.
• Remove salmon from the cure, which has now become liquid, brushing off the dill with a paper towel, then set fillet on a cutting board.
• With a long, thin, beveled slicing knife tilted toward the horizon, slice salmon thinly, stopping short of cutting through the skin. Generally, you begin slicing a few inches from the tail end and you slice in the direction of the tail, moving your knife back, slice by slice, toward the fatter, wider belly portion of the fillet. The last slices are always hard to get. Once you have shingled the fillet, run your knife between skin and flesh, releasing all the slices, then transfer them to parchment until ready to serve.
• Spread the compound butter on bread, then drape sliced gravlax on top, and eat as open-faced sandwiches.

Steps:

• Pat the salmon dry with kitchen paper and run your hands over the flesh to see if there are any stray small bones - if there are, use a pair of tweezers to pull them out. Set the salmon fillets aside.
• Tip the salt, sugar, peppercorns, lemon zest, juniper and dill into a food processor and blitz until you have a bright green, wet salt mixture or 'cure'. Unravel some cling film but keep it attached to the roll. Lay the first fillet of salmon skin-side down and then pack the cure over the flesh. Drizzle with gin, if using and top with the 2nd fillet, flesh-side down. Roll the sandwiched fillets tightly in cling film to create a package.
• Place the fish in a shallow baking dish or shallow-sided tray and lay another tray on top. Weigh the tray down with a couple of tins or bottles and place in the fridge for at least 48 hrs or up to 4 days, turning the fish over every 12 hours or so. The longer you leave it, the more cured it will become.
• To make the sauce, tip all the sauce ingredients into a blender. Blitz until you have a thickened dressing.
• To serve, unwrap the fish and brush off the marinade with kitchen paper. Rinse it if you like. You can slice the fish classically into long thin slices, leaving the skin behind, or remove the skin it and slice it straight down. Serve the sliced fish on a large platter or individual plates with pumpernickel bread, dill and mustard sauce.