Ghetto Lox

So, I was flipping through Olive, a British food magazine that I really enjoy (though my favorite is Fresh, also British, which makes me yearn to live in England and puts pretentious Briticisms such as "I’ll suss it out" in my daily vocabulary, regrettably making some people think I want to be Madonna who wants to be British. But I digress) and saw a recipe for home-cured salmon.

Hmm, I thought, salmon being one of my favorite things. It was very simple: take a couple pieces of salmon with the skin still on one side, rub some salt and sugar and black pepper all over both sides, arrange the pieces facing each other, skin side out, and wrap tightly in plastic, keeping in the fridge for 24 hours, turning once. It intrigued me, as there were no tools (other than a refrigerator) and no acid like you might use in ceviche to "cook" the meat.

I tried it. Only I forgot about my little culinary experiment and didn’t get to it until 48 hours later. It was not all pink-orange translucent and inviting like in the photo. It was... uhm... odd. It looked like, well, still raw salmon. In the mouth it was sort of like chewy salmon pudding that was reluctant to be parted from its skin. I’m pretty sure it was, for all intents and purposes, very much sashimi state, albeit not sashimi quality.

I ate half anyway and, being unable to waste food, wrapped the other half and threw it back in my fridge. In the back of my fridge, to be precise.

I found it last night, about two weeks after my first foray into home curing. I regret to say that a fortnight in my fridge did not improve it either in texture or taste but, on the other hand, it didn’t smell off yet and I, quite obviously, didn’t die from eating the second piece. Which of course I did. Hey, wild salmon at $7.69 a pound is not going into my trash unless it crawls there on its own.