[Hip Synth Music]
Situated on a tranquil island in the Stockholm archipelago,
Fjäderholmarna Krogis is a popular seafood restaurant accessible by a short boat ride from Stockholm.
Chefs Gert Klötzke and Morten Karlsson
collaborate on a dockside demonstration of several classic smörgåsbord dishes
including Gravad lax (or Gravlax) and pickled herring.
[Chef Marten Karlsson speaking] We are on the island of Fjäderholmarna in the beginning of the archipelago in Stockholm
at the restaurant Fjäderholmarna Krog.
My name is Morton. I'm the Head Chef here.
And we're going to make some quite classical Swedish food. Mainly fish.
We're going to start with the Gravlax.
Salmon that you cure with the salt and sugar,
dill and lemon and some crushed white pepper.
I'm going to serve it with a sweet mustard sauce and a sweet dark bread.
Here we have a salmon. The loin, we're going to use the loin today.
You can also use the whole side. I like to use the loins.
You can use the belly for other stuff.
We're going to cure it with the equal parts salt and sugar,
crushed white pepper, some fresh dill and lemon
cured for about 24 hours.
I already skinned it. It's all very nice and fresh.
We just put it in a tray and use a lot of salt and sugar.
The most important with this one is that it's equal parts. How much you put - it's not that important.
So you cover it. You rub it in.
[Chef Steve speaking] So, you do both sides. [Chef Marten Karlsson speaking] Both sides.
Put it in.
We take the zest of a lemon.
You don't want any acid in this one. You just want the taste of the lemon.
And yes, some dill.
That's enough.
And here, you don't have to finally chop it or anything. Just tear it down.
Then you leave it out for a couple of hours before we put it in fridge, so that the salt and the sugar start melting.
Then you just put it in the fridge and it's done in 24 hours.
[Chef Steve speaking] And then 12 hours if you vacuum packet or so on. [Chef Karlsson speaking] Yeah.
This is what it looks like after 24 hours.
You can see it's much firmer in the meat. It's almost slightly darker as well.
And now we're just going to cut it up and serve it with the sweet mustard sauce.
[Chef Steve speaking] So do you have to rinse it? Do you just kind of wipe it off? [Chef Karlsson speaking] Yeah, just wipe it off.
Take the sugar and the salt away.
[Chef Steve speaking] And doing the loin kind of get you really even pieces....
[Chef Karlsson speaking] Yeah, exactly. If you have the belly with it, it's going to be much harder in the belly part and almost slightly raw in the loin.
So that's that's why I like to do it this way.
Then we just plate it.
Like I said before, we're going to serve it with the sweet mustard sauce.
That's really classic.
Very nice with the with the sweet.
It's a lot of honey and sugar in that one.
At that point, you can also do different variations on the classic. You just have some fresh dill in it.
We do it with coffee sometimes. It's really, really nice.
[Chef Steve speaking] So, this this is sugar, honey mustard? [Chef Karlsson speaking] Yeah. And red wine vinegar is one, yeah.
And here we've got the Kavring: a classic Swedish bread. Also a bit sweet.
So. It's not much harder than that. [Chef Steve speaking] No, that's easy. Yeah, that looks wonderful.
So, Chef, is there a difference between the way you do gravlax and would you take this gravlax and smoke it?
Or is smoked salmon a little bit different for here?
[Chef Karlsson speaking] Yes, you can smoke it. |But often, if you smoke the salmon, you don't have sugar in it.
At least not so much sugar as you have like now.
It's all mainly salt.
[Chef Steve speaking] So not that 50/50? [Chef Karlsson speaking] No.
Maybe 10% sugar or 5% sugar
just to balance it a little bit, but you won't feel it.
But this one Gravlax - it is always classic. Sweet and salt and just cure. Yeah.
So that's that main difference.
[Chef Steve speaking] And then, do they serve it as anything besides an appetizer?
[Chef Karlsson speaking] Yeah, because we serve it like a main dish.
But then... You'd do the same with the salmon, but you'd eat it with warm potatoes
that's stewed with like a bechamel.
And the lots of fresh dill.
[Chef Steve speaking] Great, thank you.