The food traditions we choose as adults define who we are

When my husband and I married five years ago, I was involved in two love stories. The first featured my husband. The second developed in the company of my husband.

Our gravlax love story started in the lead-up to our wedding — we always chose gravlax whenever we ate out. Prior to the big day, the chef catering our wedding reception proposed to make gravlax as an entree. Of course, we said yes.

On a humid January day in the NSW Southern Highlands, my husband and I got hitched. When we received our plate of gravlax at the reception we blocked out the world, cut into the cured salmon and tasted its salty sweetness.

That tasting may have gone unnoticed by our guests but it meant a lot to us. Our gravlax wedding moment went on to forge a food tradition that's become the centrepiece of many culinary celebrations in our life together.

Treasured food memory

My husband and I learned how to make gravlax during our first year of marriage. Now, we make it at home just because we can. We eat it with family during Christmas festivities and bring it to special get-togethers with friends.

To us, gravlax is special because it's associated with a treasured food memory. I believe the food traditions we form during adulthood are unlike the ones we inherit as children.

Adult food traditions are often the result of choice. As adults, we choose the foods we love, just as we choose our partners and friends. In that way, my husband and I chose gravlax.

Sweetness with a salt-kick

Gravlax (otherwise referred to as 'graved salmon') is a Nordic dish of salmon that's cured in a mix of gin or vodka, beetroot, salt, sugar, horseradish and dill. The vibrant red fish is presented cold and thinly sliced, with a layer of dill spread across its top.

It's traditionally eaten as an entree with a mustard-based dressing on the side and paired with rye bread or crackers.

If you adore salmon sashimi, you'll love gravlax as the curing process softens the fish. It also provides the salmon with a subtle salt-kick balanced by an addictive hit of beetroot-inspired sweetness and fragrant dill finish.

All you need is time for curing and basic ingredients. Once made, the fish lasts up to three weeks in the fridge. You can eat it for breakfast with eggs, at lunch on a sandwich or for dinner with a rustic potato side.

An enduring symbol

While I've clearly declared my love for gravlax in many different ways, I also have to admit the dish's downside. Sometimes, it reminds me of someone who I have lost.

I recall making gravlax for Christmas Eve lunch a month before my mother died, less than a year after we married.

As I write this, I'm struggling to hold back the tears. Yet, with the feeling of grief comes a memory of the mother-daughter relationship I once had. The thing about food traditions is that the more you practise them, the more they come to represent. Their roots grow.

Over the years, gravlax has continued to provide meaning at family celebrations. This is despite the fact my household doesn't have a genetic attachment to the Nordic dish.

I don't claim to hold any rights to the dish or be an expert on how to make it. When we cure salmon at home, we simply pay homage to the original creators of gravlax and offer our love for it.

I hope that my husband and I will continue our gravlax food ritual for as long as we can. After all, the dish has grown to symbolise more than just our nuptials. Gravlax represents a multicultural Australian tradition, family and love.

Yasmin Noone is a food journalist, a keen home cook and a passionate feeder based in Cronulla, NSW. Find her on Instagram @yasmin_noone.