Mustard-Roasted Salmon with Ligonberry Sauce / Sennepsristet Laks med Tyttebærsaus

A delicious Scandinavian lunch recipe found on bonappetit.com

Scandi-Style Salmon with Pickled Potato Salad / Scandi-Style Laks med Skarp Potetsalat

A delicious meal for two found on olivemagazine.com

A sophisticated meal for two, this quick and easy salmon fillet with sharp and creamy potato salad is exactly what you need to lift you out of that mid-week work slump.

Gravlax Made with Ginger / Ingefærgravet Laks

An exciting way to make gravlax found on godfisk.no

The best thing about making gravlax yourself is that it tastes much better than the one you buy. And you can add different flavors like in this recipe with ginger and mint.

Christmas Salmon / Julelaks

A salmon dish for the Christmas buffet found on kiwi.no

Salmon has a natural place at Christmas for many Norwegians. Either served traditionally with cucumber salad, sliced carrots, sour cream and boiled potatoes on Christmas Eve, or as an appetizer or part of the Christmas buffet like here.

Fried Salmon with Sandefjord Butter / Stekt Laks med Sandefjordsmør

En lakseoppskrift med Klassisk Sandefjordsmør
funnet på rema.no

Sandefjord butter is a traditional Norwegian sauce that tastes
great with different fish dishes and chicken. Here it is served with
juicy fried salmon fillets, boiled potatoes and broccoli.

Baked Salmon Slices with Lemon Butter / Ovnsbakte Lakseskiver Med Sitronsmør

A lunch recipe found on “Lettvint for Små Familier” (Easy for Small Families) utgitt av Hjemmets Kokebokklubb i 1981

Serve this delicate salmon with boiled potatoes  and boiled snow peas or cucumber salad. The very best salmon is “wild salmon” salmon that has lived naturally. But the farmed fish are almost as good and far less expensive.

Rainbow trout or other large trout can be cooked in the same way, or buy slices of large cod or other fish. Cooking fish in the oven in foil is convenient and saves on dishwashing. The fish take care of itself and you can concentrate on making the accessories.

The History of Gravlax

Gravlax is a Nordic dish consisting of raw salmon, cured in salt, sugar, and dill. Gravlax is usually served as an appetizer, sliced thinly and accompanied by hovmästarsås (literally maitre d’s sauce, also known in Sweden as gravlaxsås and in Denmark as rævesovs, literally fox sauce), a dill and mustard sauce, either on bread, or with boiled potatoes.

History

Gravlax literally means “buried salmon,” and that is how it was made in the hard old days. To store the abundance of summer for a long time without using much salt or other (at that time) expensive preservatives, the fish was wrapped in birch bark and buried in the ground, where a wet, cold environment and a lack of oxygen made it ferment but not rot. Made that way, it was more a culinary extreme sport than what we normally think of as “food”: Imagine an unpasteurized Camembert cheese in the form of a fish, made by desperate Vikings.

It is not safe to eat fish that has been buried in the ground, although the slightly acidic birch bark would bring down the pH and thus present a certain barrier against spoilage. When a 15th-century Norwegian or Swede ate gravlax, considerable risk was involved; weighed against the certain dangers of starvation, it was worth it.

It is reasonable to suppose that the dish simply grew up, evolved to its modern form and conquered the world. But back in its place of origin, something very close to the first gravlax still exists. Rakfisk is its nearest modern-day relative. It hails from the mountain regions and is most often made with trout
.

The word gravlax comes from the Scandinavian word gräva/grave (“to dig”; modern sense “to cure (fish)”) which goes back to the Proto-Germanic *grabą, *grabō (“hole in the ground; ditch, trench; grave”) and the Indo-European root *ghrebh- “to dig, to scratch, to scrape”, and lax/laks, “salmon”.

Gravlax is usually cured with sugar, salt and dill, but lemon juice, beetroot, aquvit or portwine can be added. The fish is often eaten on rye bread.

Today fermentation is no longer used in the production process. Instead the salmon is “buried” in a dry marinade of salt, sugar, and dill, and cured for a few days. As the salmon cures, by the action of osmosis, the moisture turns the dry cure into a highly concentrated brine, which can be used in Scandinavian cooking as part of a sauce. This same method of curing can be employed for any fatty fish, but salmon is the most commonly used.

We tend to think of food in terms of being either “raw” or “cooked.” As French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss pointed out, those antonyms are two of our guiding concepts to help us distinguish between edible and non-edible, wild and cultured. Rakfisk and gravlax cannot easily be categorized in such a way.

Salmon Burgers on Potato Patties / Grove Laksekarbonader på Potetlapper

A delicious salmon recipe found on rema.no

Green Peppers with Salmon Filling / Grønn Paprika med Laksefyll

A starter/lunch recipe found in “How To Eat Canned Salmon”
published by Alaska Packers’ Association in 1900

The Alaska Packers’ Association (APA) was a San Francisco based manufacturer of Alaska canned salmon founded in 1891 and sold in 1982. As the largest salmon packer in Alaska, the member canneries of APA were active in local affairs, and had considerable political influence. The Alaska Packers’ Association is best known for operating the “Star Fleet,” the last fleet of commercial sailing vessels on the West Coast of North America, as late as 1927.

Part of the fleet in Oakland Creek in March 1923

Grilled Salmon Slices / Grillstekte Lakseskiver

A summer dinner recipe found in “Sommermat”
(Summer Food) Published by Hjemmets Kokebokklubb in 1979

This tour of citrus flavoured Scandinavian summer dinners is
rounded off by an outdoor grill in Norway where not surprisingly
salmon is cooked – Ted

Salmon Curry / Laksekarri

A dinner recipe found in “How To Eat Canned Salmon”
publisert av Alaska Packers Association in 1900

A curry dish with a surprisingly copious use of curry powder the age of the book taken under consideration. In other words, a rather hot curry seen with Western eyes – Ted

Crisp Skinned Salmon with Fetta & Potato Mash / Sprøskinnet Laks med Feta og Potetmos

A lunch recipe found on “Winter Warmers Recipe Book”
a free E-book published by Lemnos

Make creamy mashed potato really special by adding fetta
for extra flavour and texture.

Salmon Steaks with Cucumber Sauce / Lakseskiver med Agurkesaus

A fish dinner recipe found in “The Flavor Maker’s Cookbook”
an E-book conversion of a printed book published
by Procter & Gamble in 1984

Salmon, arctic char, and halibut are great for steaks done on the grill. Steaks come from larger fish, and larger fish tend to be fattier, and fat equals flavor, of course. When buying, request slices that are at least 1″ thick.

Grilled Salmon with Horseradish Sauce / Grillet Laks med Pepperrotsaus

A lunch/dinner recipe found in “Sundt og Godt”
(Healthy and Delicious) published by Det Beste in 1988

Your tears may start to flow when you grate the horseradish,
but the taste is impeccable with grilled salmon.

Salmon Chowder / Laksesuppe

A dinner recipe found in “How To Eat Canned Salmon”
published by Alaska Packers Association in 1900

Fresh salmon is so cheap and plentyful in our shops here in Norway that eating canned ones seems strange to us. But a quick check showed that the net is crammed full of recipes for canned salmon so it obviously doesn’t seem that strange elsewhere. Besides, transporting fresh fish over larger distances back in 1900 was close to impossible so back then eating canned salmon probably seemed more sensible –Ted