TDG: The Passionate Palate: Gravlax

[Fat Guy]

Put the kids to bed and get ready for a little story about gravlax . . .

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[Rabbi Ribeye]

This is greaaaaaat stuff! Maybe it ain't so bad being iced-in today, now that I have my gravlax to keep me warm. Ever prep the rub with Stoli Limonnaya? Nice nap to the velvet. Suffice to say that if sublimely cured salmon induces orgasmic delight, fress on, fress on!

[MichaelB]

I will admit to never having thought of gravad lax (one of the many correct spellings, I am told) in precisely those terms. NOw having so thought, I now know what I have been experiencing all these years.

There is always grvad lax available at our home during the holidays. The first "harvest" of December 2004 goes on the cure on Saturday.

I prefer mine a bit "rounder" tasting. So, my alcohol of choice in the cure is cognac. The bite others get from vodka, I get from using a bit more pepper than most others I have tasted.

[Mayhaw Man]

I was getting a little bored with whipped cream, fresh fruit, kazoos and party hats-I guess now I am inspired to go get a big old slab of preserved fish and see how that goes

[tryska]

nice work, gg!

[Cusina]

I think I need a shower...

Great writing, licentiously delicious.

(Fish, I can accept but Party hats and kazoos??? Now that's just plain weird. )

[Al_Dente]

Well done. I love gravlax-- I need to try making it myself one of these days.

After an article like that, perhaps I need to take out a personals ad:

SWM seeks single open-minded ½ Norwegian ½ Inuit Jewish female epicure with attractive and finely tuned Krause’s End Bulbs for long walks on the beach, nights by the fireplace, and greatly gratifying gravlax grooving.

[Gifted Gourmet]

Well done. I love gravlax-- I need to try making it myself one of these days.

After an article like that, perhaps I need to take out a personals ad:

SWM seeks single open-minded ½ Norwegian ½ Inuit Jewish female epicure with attractive and finely tuned Krause’s End Bulbs for long walks on the beach, nights by the fireplace, and greatly gratifying gravlax grooving. 

Now that's an awesome amount of alliteration indeed!

Why didn't I think of doing just such an ad in the "personals" columns?

Possibly because I might attract a school of sensually-starved scrod (NOT the past tense of anything, you realize!!)?

[FoodMan]

While reading this piece, I could not help but keep on smiling because the first thing that came to my mind was Seinfeld’s George Costanza eating Pastrami while having sex . He later on proclaimed it as the most sensual of the cured meats. I wonder what he thinks of Grvad Lax.

Elie

[Mayhaw Man]

I think I need a shower...

Great writing, licentiously delicious.

(Fish, I can accept but Party hats and kazoos??? Now that's just plain weird. )

I live in New Orleans. Most good times involve party hats and kazoos .

There is actually a Mardi Gras Marching group that has been around for years called The Kazoozie Floozies. They always appear at this tasteful little gathering of derelicts

[Cusina]

SWM seeks single open-minded ½ Norwegian ½ Inuit Jewish female epicure with attractive and finely tuned Krause’s End Bulbs for long walks on the beach, nights by the fireplace, and greatly gratifying gravlax grooving.

Al_Dente, you'll have schools of resplendent responders I'm sure. You'll have to screen for the ones with flippy, smoochable hair.

Mahaw Man, this was my favorite page on that web site. There is not a single sober person anywhere to be found.

I want a Social & Pleasure committee!

[Mayhaw Man]

There is not a single sober person anywhere to be found.

I want a Social & Pleasure committee!

I can assure you, as a many year marcher in this fine event, that you would have difficulty finding anyone sober in the whole Krewe, much less committee members.

When my oldest son was one, I had him in a backpack during the march through the quarter and some lawyer type (who apparently had dosed himself nicely with some funny papers ) started yelling at me to get out of the parade, as our insurance coverage did not cover it. He was adamant and we suddenly became the focus of his, apparently, unpleasant trip. We eventually stopped and let him get away from us, but it remains as one of my stranger Mardi Gras memories. I have some great photos of the event (taken of the angry lawyer, who also seemed to have some objections to being photographed )

Mrs. Mayhaw and I also march with the Krewe of St Ann on Mardi Gras day and if I can ever get to it a photograph from last years event will be used as my avatar(I need to reduce it to specs and seem to be having some trouble ). I masked as a colorful Hank Williams and my wife was a vision in Gold (kinda hard to explain, but very colorful

[Tom Maicon]

Now that masterpiece lends a more sensuous way of looking at, not just gravlax, but all foods.

The author, Melissa Goodman, also writes food articles and restaurant reviews for AtlantaCuisine.com -- Atlanta's newest and most prominent restaurant, food and wine website.

Melissa has two more restaurant reviews to be published at AtlantaCuisine.com in the month of December.

We're all proud of you GG!!

Tom Maicon

Edited December 5, 2003 by Tom Maicon (log)

[Gr8Waiter]

It is an especially good thing that I am was not lying in bed with my laptop as I read this article because then I would feel uneasy, possibly even have to change my sheets.

Is it only gravlax that this writer ponders as a food with a sensual correlation?

Why not the very primitive hotdog? Or the exquisite joy of letting oysters slip so

gracefully from their shells and slide down one's throat. Only a true lover of food

can know this experience. How only a lover can know about making love, and we are not talking just having sex, but the act of true lovemaking here.

When you take a slice of perfectly seared foie into your mouth, it is then that you comprehend precisely what we are talking about. This is an experience that the words of we mortals cannot even begin to adequately describe...it is the feeling of warmth and satisfaction of orgasmic proportion.

After all, this is why we eat the things we eat., isn't it? What would be the

thrill of a huge spoonful of Beluga if it didn't give us a "rush"? What is the thrill

of gulping down well aged ports, quaffing Penfolds Grange, as if there was no tomorrow? Why do we drink Chateau d' Yquem when we could make a mortgage payment with what we pay for just a bottle...because of the "rush". Possibly for the intense and unparallelled heights? It is all a "rush" and is just as much a "rush" for the foodie as great sex. Possibly even better?

[Fat Guy]

Welcome Tom & Gr8. Hope we'll see lots more of you here on eG. And lots more from Melissa too.

[Tom Maicon]

Welcome Tom & Gr8. Hope we'll see lots more of you here on eG. And lots more from Melissa too.

Thanks for the warm welcome Fat Guy!

[tryska]

nice to see y'all here, you two.

[Rabbi Ribeye]

The author, Melissa Goodman, also writes food articles and restaurant reviews for AtlantaCuisine.com -- Atlanta's newest and most prominent restaurant, food and wine website. 

Tommyboy . . .

I religiously read your site (uh . . . probably more religiously than I go to synagogue ) and it is all great.

But then there is the most Gifted among the gifted. Were I John McLaughlin (an auto-defrocked priest, I hear, ah, a kindred spirit), I would offer you this sage advice . . .

MORE Melissa Goodman, LESS Melissa Etheridge, Manchester, Joan Hart, Gilbert, Sue Anderson, George, and every porn queen who has chosen it as her alias.

Turn her loose on Atlanta cuisine, Tom. Atlanta ain't seen nothin' like her since Pano met Paul.

Edited January 3, 2004 by Rabbi Ribeye (log)

[fifi]

Holy crap! We have a new definition of food porn.

Great article. I don't know how I missed it.

*flap flap flap* (ladies of a certain age will know what that means )

[Gifted Gourmet]

Holy crap! We have a new definition of food porn.    

Great article. I don't know how I missed it.

*flap flap flap* (ladies of a certain age will know what that means )

So very pleased that you enjoyed this bit of sensual food porn! always hoped to see my gravlax centerfold in Playboy but they didn't "bite" at my suggestion ...

It never fails to turn me on when I read it over again ....

and I have a complete understanding of what you are referring to ... flap, flap, flap ...

[wesza]

When I enjoyed my special preperations this year for New Years Eve and New Years Day I realized that it was brought about due to this Posting early in December.

Being DOH I thought that this year i'd celebate Decadence Hands On with every item prepared for the occasion at home. Thru this posted topic I decided to share with eGullet.

Beverages: Dom Ruiniart Brut Champage from the anniversery edition of 1978

Yunnan Pai Goh Brick Tea

Appetizers: White King Salmon Gravlex with Brandy Cure

Red King Salmon Gravlex with Vodka Cure

Fresh Mendocino Coast "UNI' on Rice with Seaweed

Wild Mendocino Coast 6 inch Mussels [2 had pearls]

Entrees: Live 3 pound Maine Female Lobsters Steamed

Fresh Mendocino Morel Mushrooms with Veal Filet and Cream

Whole Pousin Chickens with Washington Black Truffles and Shallots

under the Skin Roasted.

Soup: Sharks Fin with Blue Crab Fat

Desserts: Valronha Chocolate Souffle with Frangelico and Chopped Hazelnuts

Apple Strudel with Rasins Morrelo Cherries and Schlag

Palachencha Pancakes with Apricot, Lingonberries and Cinnamon.

This was consumed over 2 days with visits from my Grandchildren and Family.

The Uni, Mussels and Morels were gathered by my son and sent by Air.

The Mendocino Coast supplys the premium Uni to Japan

The Mussels were taken from a location that had been used for Hundreds of years by the Indian Tribes where there are giant mounds of shells accumulated.

This celebration wouldn't have come about without the inspiration thru this topic. It seems that unstead of doing Gravlex rarely I now prepare it several times a month as it's healthy and not a expensive indulgence.

Irwin

[Rabbi Ribeye]

A leeeeeeetle gravlax gloat, so please indulge me . . .

In this Stars-and-Bars bubbadom we call Greenville, our next door neighbors, believe it or not, are an incredibly wonderful gay couple, whom Linda and I would easily call our best friends.

Again this year we were invited to ring out 2003 (or celebrate Jesus's bris, for the goyophobes among us) at their party. It was a really engaging mix of gay and straight folks, many of whom bear amazing survival tales of growing up gay in klanvilles like Easley, Pickens and Seneca. These are places -- and here I am not kidding -- where incest is more accepted (some would even say welcomed) than homosexuality.

But, I digress . . .

I prepared an elaborate tray of gravlax (cured with Stoli Limonnaya) for the evening -- garnished with cornichon, sweet pickled peppers, Vidalia onions, eggs (separate whites and yolks, a-duh), capers, fish eggs (I refuse to call the stuff "caviar," although it was pretty damned good, and it was the only kosher variety I could find!), two different olive tapanades, lavash and a variety of toasts (nary a bageleh!), cucumber-Vidalia-dill sauce, Dijon-bitter orange sauce, and freezer-fresh Stoli, neat.

Yeah, it's a boast. But, the reaaaaal boast is that the only other substantive food served was a big, on-the-bone ham. By the time the ball had dropped (shut off your sophomorically filthy minds!), the gravlax had disappeared and only one slice of ham was gone. One slice too many, I thought, until I discovered that some benevolent soul had fed it to Ching the Pug (the dog, dammit, not the drag queen).

Li-shanah tovah to everyone!

[Susan in FL]

I'm glad this was revived from a month ago because I missed it then.

.....YESSSSSS!!!

I love to make gravlax, and I love how you people view food. You view it like I do.

[Pan]

Thanks, Rabbi. I got a laugh out of that punch line.

[fifi]

This is one of my favorite threads. Sensual and food together. Can't get better than that.

Rabbi Ribeye... I can relate to your party. What a hoot.