Sitka spruce cured salmon
Local ingredients, delicious results.Feast Tofino’s media day and launch event is only days away and Long Beach Lodge Resort chef Ian Riddick’s special menu is almost ready: Sitka spruce cured salmon, citrus pearls, pickled cucumber, Karla’s pacific sprouts and spruce snow.
Sitka spruce cured salmon – the main dish – takes almost a week to prepare.
“The process is just like gravlax- spruce tips are acidic and when tender have a lemony, citrus taste. The cure is brown sugar, combined with our own Cox bay sea salt, fennel seed, spruce tips and a squeeze of lemon,” explains Ian. “I set the salmon to cure for four-to-six days.”
Gravlax is one of Scandinavia’s most distinctive dishes. Made of salmon that has been cured with a mixture of dill, sugar and salt, the cure draws out moisture from the salmon, giving the fish a firmer texture, giving it a magnificent, delicate flavour.
Ian enhances the quality, flavour and presentation by using local, Pacific Ocean-caught salmon – the best salmon on earth – and through the use of local – sometimes arms-length – ingredients.
“The spruce tips are from the front entrance to the lodge, 10 metres from the kitchen!”
For the spruce “snow” Ian introduces the science.
“We make spruce oil with grapeseed oil and spruce tips. To make it a solid we use tapioca maltodextrin which solidifies the oil. The effect is pure white, spruce flavoured powder.”
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