Cured of what? Cured of being boring. OK this is not something you will catch in the Solent but you could buy some from Tescos on the way home. This is from James Martin and so easy it almost isn’t a recipe! All you do is take a skinned fillet of salmon – whole, half or quarter side, and cure it for 12 hours. Then you can slice it and use like smoked salmon in salads, as a starter, an hors d’oeuve or whatever. Here is what you do.

Take your slab of salmon. Mix sugar and sea salt in equal quantities (half a cup of each will do half a side of salmon). Tear off a large sheet of cling film. Make a bed of cure mix using half the cure. Lay the salmon down on top and sprinkle booze on it – James uses good whisky but you could experiment. Half a cup for half a salmon side again. Cover with the rest of the cure and wrap it up in the cling film to make a parcel. Refrigerate for 12 hours, preferably on a deep plate as it will probably leak juices. Then rinse thoroughly in water and you will find it now looks cured – very firm and not at all raw. It will have shrunk too. Simply slice and enjoy!

We tried this with a salad of rocket, beetroot, gherkins, hard boiled eggs, radishes and home-made blinis with sour cream, pretending to be Russians. It was good!