One of my favourite dishes from the Scandinavian smorgasbord is gravlaks - variously called gravad lax or gravlax - not to be confused with some commercial varieties which is just dill flavoured smoked salmon.

Grave means to bury in English and originally, in the Middle Ages, Norwegian fishermen would bury the salmon - or laks - in the sand just above the high-tide mark, where it was left to ferment before it was eaten with dill known among the Norse for relieving gas.

But these days gravlaks is raw salmon which has been dry cured i salt, pepper, salt, sugar and dill in a lengthy process taking about four days.

However, one Christmas my mother came visiting from Norway she brought with her a recipe which she said was a quick way of preparing gravlaks, taking only 24 hours. The secret ingredient was bock ale or bitter ale.

Rather than dry cure the salmon, we marinated it in salt, pepper, sugar and dill and two cans of Victoria Bitter which produced a wonderfully melt-in-the mouth gravlaks with all the flavours blending perfectly into the best gravlaks I’ve ever tasted.

I have since experimented and found that using ocean trout and a wooded Australian chardonnay instead of beer gives the gravlaks an extra depth of flavour.

Because ocean trout is generally a smaller fish, I usually end up buying the biggest I can find from which I get two whole side fillets. This requires fiddly removing of bones with tweezers from the front part of the fish.

I welcome the arrival of fresh NZ King Salmon on the market where the tail - the best end of the fish - can easily produce two fillets of about 1kg:

1kg fillet of NZ King Salmon

55g salt

50g sugar

35g freshly ground white pepper

1 cup freshly cut dill or 1/2 cup dry dill

2 cans Victoria Bitter (or a wooded chardonnay)

Brandy

1/2 cup freshly cut dill

Mustard sauce for gravlaks

Blinis or Melba toast (for appetisers)

young salad leaves for garnish (for entree)

Scrambled egg for Gravlaks (for entree)

Dill for garnish

Preparation:

1. Scale the fillets then pierce the skin throughout with a needle to allow the marinade penetrate to the flesh. Mix the dry ingredients together; cover a shallow glass or ceramic dish with half the ingredients; place the salmon fillets on top, skin side down; cover with the rest of the mix; and pour the beer (or chardonnay) over until the fish is just covered. Cover the dish with plastic wrap and put in the fridge for 24 hours turning the fillet every six hours. Another option is to use a large leak-proof snaplock bag and turn the bag every six hours.

2. After 24 hours, remove the fish, rinse under running cold water until the spices and dill are removed and dry gently on a paper towel. Place fillets, skin side down, on a double sheet of aluminium foil big enough to wrap each fillet, moisten with brandy and cover with the freshly chopped dill. Wrap up the fillets and leave overnight in the fridge or freeze until needed. The gravlaks will keep up to a month in the freezer.

3. Just before serving slice the salmon thinly on the slant and serve with mustard sauce - either as an appetiser or as an entree with cold scrambled egg (see below).

Mustard Sauce for Gavlaks

2 tbsp  sweet mustard

1 egg yolk

33ml vinegar

1 tsp icing sugar

100ml light olive oil

2 tblsp light sour cream

1/5 tsp white pepper

½  cup of fresh dill

Preparation: Mix together mustard, egg yolk, icing sugar and vinegar. Blend in oil a little at the time to ensure the sauce does not separate. Add sour cream and dill and season to taste. The sauce is best when made a few days beforehand and kept in the fridge before serving.

Scrambled egg for Gavlaks

2 tblsp reduced fat butter

4 eggs

3 tblsp reduced fat cream, or milk

1 tblsp Champagne or sparkling wine

1/2 cup chopped dill

Freshly ground white pepper

Salt to taste

Preparation:

1. Place butter in a mircowave safe bowl and cover, melt on high for 10 seconds; break the eggs into the bowl and add the cream and Champagne. Adding Champagne or sparkling wine will make the scrambled eggs very light and fluffy. Return to microwave for one minute on high, stir, breaking up any cooked eggwhite around the edge, return for 30 seconds to the microwave and stir again and repeat if necessary for another 30 seconds.

2. If the eggs are still runny, return to the microwave for another 20 seconds. Add the dill and leave to cool and season when cold.

1. For an appetiser, place a slice or two of gravlaks on blinis or tiny pancakes, melba toasts or crispbread halves, drizzle mustard sauce over it and garnish with snipped dill scattered on top.

Alternatively, serve as an entree by placing salad leaves in the middle of each place, pile two tablespoons of cold scrambled eggs on top, drape four to six slices of gravlaks over the scrambled eggs, drizzle with mustard sauce and scatter snipped dill on top and serve.

New Zealand king salmon, the biggest of the salmon species and the richest in Omega-3 oil, will soon go on auction at the Sydney Fish Market

The Sydney Fish Market (SFM) is negotiating with suppliers to introduce New Zealand king salmon at its weekday auctions, providing stiff competition for locally grown Tasmanian salmon and ocean trout.

Graham Turk, SFM managing director, said Tasmanian suppliers did not go through the SFM but distributed their products directly to Australian distributors.

He said distributors in Sydney had expressed preference for buying king salmon through the SFM Dutch clock auction system.

SFM has been using the Dutch auction since 1989. Held from 5.30am every weekday, the Dutch auction is a silent auction which begins at the highest price and drops until a bid is made.

NZ King Salmon is already exported and sold in small quantities directly to distributors in Australia under the Regal Salmon brand which is supplied by The New Zealand King Salmon Company.

The sale of NZ king salmon through the Dutch auction at SFM, the second biggest fish market in the world after Tokyo, is likely to increase sales volume, bringing more king salmon products to the restaurants and homes of Sydney.

The NZ King Salmon Company processes about 7300t of salmon a year, making it one of the biggest global producers of farmed king salmon. About 66% of production is exported.

Also called Chinook or spring salmon, king salmon is a premium eating fish, native of the northern Pacific Ocean. The biggest of the Pacific salmon family, it can get up to 57kg.

It is a firm-fleshed fish with an attractive orage-red colour and can be served in a wide variety of cuts from fine fillets to steaks, portions or whole fish.

Known for its big size and flavorful flesh, the king salmon is the state fish of Alaska and a popular game fish.

King salmon was first introduced to NZ for game fishing as far back as the 1850s but it was not until fish bred from imported Californian eggs were released into the South Island rivers that they started to return from the sea to spawn in the late 1800s while king salmon farming did not start until 1983.

The commercial NZ King Salmon typically weighs between 3.5kg and 4kg - about double the size of Atlantic salmon from Tasmania - and has the highest natural oil content of all salmon.

A 150g portion of NZ King Salmon is said to provide the complete daily requirement of Omega-3, sough for its health properties.

Omega-3 is said to provide protection against heart disease and certain cancers, alleviate arthritic pain and boost the immune system.

The variety of cuts is a chef’s delight. Rich in flavour, the fish is perfect for sashimi or for baking, grilling and hot or cold smoking.

The salmon are harvested 52 weeks of the year, processed quickly and can be transported to Australia within 60 hours of harvest.

Experts warn public sector fraud is much higher than estimated by UK’s National Fraud Authority (NFA) in its first annual fraud dictector.

NFA released its first fraud indicator last week, estimating fraud costing Britons £30bn ($A54.38bn) a year, 58%, or £17.6bn, of which was public sector fraud, but Jim Gee, a director of counter fraud services at chartered accountants MacIntyre Hudson and chair of the Centre for Counter Fraud Studies, put it much higher, at more than £27bn.

He told Public Finance, a UK publication for public sector managers, the MacIntyre Hudson estimate was based on an average 4.57% shortfall across all public sectors,

Gee, who is former chief executive of UK’s NHS Counter Fraud Service, noted the NFA’s estimates of the fraud costs were ‘puzzling’ and the losses for the health service, which the NFA estimated at £263m ‘extraordinary’.

He said the fraud calculated by the NFA in UK’s National Health Services (NHS) was only 0.27% of its budget compared with a global average of 5.59% for health care systems, according to recent findings by Macintyre Hudson.

‘I would be very interested in how that was calculated. If we assume the NHS is at the bottom of the global range of losses and as good as or better than any other country then it should still be losing £3.3bn,’ he said.

Gee said the average losses to frauds in the NHS until 2006 when he left was just exceeding 4%. The NHS has not published figures of fraud losses since the end of 2006.

The NFA said their new indicator was the most accurate and comprehensive yet, but admitted that it was ‘likely to underestimate the full financial impact of fraud’, particularly in the private sector because figures were not available for some industry areas or data only included reported losses.

‘As improvements are  made in the quality and availability of fraud loss estimates, it is likely that the overall fraud estimate will increase,’ Anne Jefferies, NFA head of measurements and analysis, said.

Andrew Davis, Experian head of public sector fraud, said fraud in local authorities was much more widespread than implied by the NFA indicator, which concentrated mainly on social housing tenancy and single person council tax discounts.

Further Reading:

Read the story in Public Finance