Salmon Gravlax Toasts with Bordier Butter – The French Pantry

Three butters, three pickles, three different bites off the same piece of cured salmon. This is Maison Bordier's most ambitious canapé: salmon cured overnight in salt, sugar and crushed spice, cut into cubes, and set on thin baguette toasts buttered with Espelette pepper, seaweed and yuzu butter. Each butter gets its own pickled vegetable. It is a weekend project, not a weeknight one, because the cure needs eight to ten hours in the fridge before you start anything else. It serves four.

At a glance

Difficulty: Advanced
Serves: 4
Active time: About 45 minutes, split across two days
Cook: No oven; the salmon cures 8 to 10 hours in the fridge and the pickles are boiled briefly
Key ingredient: Bordier Espelette Pepper, Seaweed and Yuzu Butter, 50 g of each

Why this works

The pairings are not decorative. Espelette pepper butter goes with the carrot because AOP Espelette is a warm, fruity chilli rather than a sharp one, and it needs something sweet underneath it. Seaweed butter goes with the pink onion because the iodised Breton seaweed reads as maritime and the onion keeps it from turning into a mouthful of sea. Yuzu butter goes with the radish because the citrus and the radish's peppery bite sit on the same axis. Bordier built these three butters at different times, in 1986, 2006 and 2008, and putting them side by side on one plate is the clearest way to taste what each one actually does.

The cure is straightforward chemistry. Salt and sugar draw water out of the salmon by osmosis, which firms the flesh and concentrates its flavour, while the crushed spices sit on the surface and season the outer layer. Eight to ten hours is the window: less and the fish stays slack in the middle, more and it turns salty and dense. Rinsing with cider vinegar rather than water does double duty, stopping the cure and adding acidity that echoes the pickles. Boiling each vegetable separately in vinegar matters too, since carrot, onion and radish soften at different rates and cooking them together gives you one mushy vegetable and two raw ones.

Ingredients

Read it in four groups: the cure, the pickles, the fish, and the assembly.

Ingredient	Metric	US
Bordier Espelette Pepper Butter	50 g	About 1.8 oz
Bordier Seaweed Butter	50 g	About 1.8 oz
Bordier Yuzu Butter	50 g	About 1.8 oz
Salmon	320 g	About 11 oz
Coarse grey salt	100 g	About 3.5 oz
Sugar	50 g	About 1.8 oz, or 1/4 cup
Pepper	10 g	About 2 tbsp
Jamaican pepper (allspice)	5 g	About 1 tbsp
Fennel flower	5 g	About 1 tbsp
Cider vinegar	53 cl	About 2 1/4 cups
Organic lemon	1	1
Red radish	1/2 bunch	1/2 bunch
Carrot	1	1
Roscoff pink onion	1	1
Honey	To taste	To taste
Thin baguettes	2	2
Coriander	1/2 bunch	1/2 bunch

Method

Step 1: Cure the salmon the day before

Start this the day ahead. Mix the sugar, coarse salt and crushed spices together, then cover the salmon with the mixture on the skin side of the fillet. Put it in the fridge and leave it for 8 to 10 hours.

Step 2: Pickle the vegetables

Cut the radishes into quarters. Peel the carrots and core them with an apple corer, then slice them finely on a mandoline. Chop the onion. Boil each vegetable separately in cider vinegar, correcting the acidity of each with a little honey as you go.

Step 3: Rinse and cut the salmon

Scrape the dry marinade off the fish and rinse it with cider vinegar. Zest the lemon over the salmon, then cut the fillet into cubes of about 1.5 cm (roughly 5/8 inch).

Step 4: Butter, top and finish

Slice the baguettes thinly and lay out the toasts. Butter each slice, alternating between the three butters. Then match each butter to its pickle: carrot on the Bordier Espelette pepper butter, onion on the Bordier seaweed butter, radish on the Bordier yuzu butter. Add the salmon cubes and finish each toast with a coriander leaf.

Tips from our kitchen

Buy salmon you would eat raw. This is cured, not cooked. Ask your fishmonger for sashimi-grade or previously frozen fish, take the centre cut rather than the tail, and keep it cold from the counter to your fridge.
Weight the fillet during the cure. Lay it in a dish, cover it, and rest a small plate with a can on top. Even pressure pushes the moisture out consistently, which is the difference between a firm slice and a fillet that is set at the edges and soft in the middle.
Crush the spices coarsely, not to powder. Cracked peppercorns and fennel seed sit on the surface and come off cleanly when you rinse. Ground spice works into the flesh and turns the outer layer bitter.
Take the butters out 30 minutes before assembly. Cold Bordier butter tears thin baguette slices. Soft butter spreads in one pass. Do not melt it, since a melted flavoured butter soaks into the crumb and the toast goes limp.
Assemble at the last minute. Buttered toast holds for maybe twenty minutes before the moisture from the pickles starts to go through. Do all the prep ahead, then build the toasts as guests arrive.
Keep the three butters visually distinct. The seaweed butter is green, the Espelette is flecked orange, the yuzu is pale. Arrange them in rows on the platter so nobody has to guess which bite they are picking up.

How to serve it

Serve these standing up, with a cold dry white or a glass of brut cider, which picks up the cider vinegar in the pickles. Twelve to sixteen toasts is a generous aperitif for four people. Put them out on a long board in three rows and tell people which is which, since the whole point is tasting the butters against each other. If the seaweed butter is new to you, our La Brújula Spanish Conservas guide covers the other direction to take a buttered toast.

Where to buy Bordier butter in the US

The French Pantry ships Bordier butter across the United States in insulated overnight packaging, straight from the workshop in Brittany.

Churned Espelette Pepper Butter by Bordier (4.4 oz): AOP Espelette pepper in salted butter, warm and fruity rather than sharp.
Churned Seaweed Butter by Bordier (4.4 oz): iodised Breton seaweed, the original Bordier flavoured butter from 1986.
Churned Yuzu Butter by Bordier (4.4 oz): yuzu in lightly salted butter, created after a trip to Japan in 2006.
Churned Salted Butter by Bordier (4.4 oz): the semi-salted base butter at 2.8% fine salt, worth having open alongside for comparison.

For the full range, browse the Maison Bordier collection.

Frequently asked questions

How much Bordier butter should I buy for this?

Bordier blocks are 4.4 oz (125 g). The recipe calls for 50 g of each of three butters, 150 g in total, so one block of each covers it with about 75 g of each left over. There is no way to buy less than a block, and the leftovers keep.

Can I substitute the flavoured butters?

Not convincingly. The seaweed, Espelette and yuzu are churned into the butter on the malaxeur, so the flavour is distributed through the fat rather than sitting on top. Stirring chilli flakes into plain butter gives you hot spots and a grainy texture. If you can only get one of the three, make all the toasts with it and vary the pickles instead.

How should I store Bordier butter?

Wrapped in its paper in the coldest part of the fridge, where it will hold for weeks. Cut off what you need and let that come up to room temperature. The flavoured butters are best used within a few weeks of opening, since the aromatics fade before the butter does.

Does Bordier butter need refrigeration?

Yes. Bordier butter is a fresh, hand-churned product and ships cold in insulated packaging. Get it into the fridge as soon as the box arrives.

How long does the gravlax keep once it is cured?

Rinsed, patted dry and wrapped, three days in the fridge is a sensible limit. Cut it into cubes only when you are ready to build the toasts, since cut surfaces dry out fast.

What if I cannot find fennel flower or Roscoff onion?

Fennel seed, lightly crushed, does the same job in the cure. For the onion, any sweet mild variety works: the Roscoff is prized for being sweeter and less aggressive than a standard red onion, so a Cevenne or a Vidalia is closer than a plain red.

Salmon Gravlax Toasts with Three Bordier Butters