Showing posts sorted by relevance for query salmon. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query salmon. Sort by date Show all posts

Friday, June 17, 2022

Fish, Nothing But the Whole Fish - Encased in Kosher Salt

Hard to believe but the easiest way to cook a whole fish is to roast it encased in a dome of kosher salt. 


Cocooned inside its salt blanket, the protein rich-fish cooks in its own juices. The technique is very low-tech. No fancy machines or tools required. All you need is kosher salt and water.


Some recipes call for egg whites and water to moisten the salt, but from my experience, water alone works perfectly. After the fish has cooked inside the coating of moistened salt, crack open the hardened salt and use a fork to effortlessly peel back the skin. A chef’s knife easily separates the meat from the bones.


When creating the salt coating, it is important to use kosher salt. Do not use table salt and definitely do not use salt that has been treated with iodine, which has an unpleasant minerality. Personally, I prefer Diamond Crystal kosher salt because it is additive-free.


When you buy the fish, ask to have the guts and gills removed but there is no need to have the fish scaled because the skin will be removed before serving. If the only whole fish available in your seafood market is larger than you need, a piece without the head or tail can still be used. To protect the flesh, place a small piece of parchment paper across the cut end, then pack the moistened kosher salt on all the sides to completely seal the fish.


Even though the fish is cooked inside salt, the flesh never touches the salt. The result is mild tasting, moist, delicate meat.


After removing the salt-roasted fish from the oven, let it rest on the table on a heat-proof trivet. The sight of the pure white mound, warm to the touch and concealing a hidden treat is a delight. Before serving, take the fish back into the kitchen to remove the salt casing, head, tail. skin and bones.


What kind of fish to use?


So far I have used the technique on trout, salmon, sea bass, salmon trout and pompano with equally good results. 



Choose a fish that is as fresh as possible, with a clean smell and clear eyes. When you press the body, the flesh should spring back. Cooking time is roughly 10 minutes per pound but will vary depending on the size and thickness of the fish.

 

In general, a whole fish weighing 3 to 5 pounds will require a three-pound box of kosher salt.  Since that is an estimate, it is a good idea to have a second box of kosher salt on hand. 



Salt-Roasted Fish

Use only enough water to moisten the kosher salt so the grains stick together. Too much water will create a slurry, which will slide off the fish. Because kosher salt is not inexpensive,  use only as much as you need. A quarter-inch coating around the fish is sufficient. 


Placing herbs and aromatics inside the fish’s cavity can impart flavor and appealing aromas when the salt dome is removed. Sliced fresh lemons, rosemary sprigs, parsley, cilantro, bay leaves or basil all add to the qualities of the dish but discard before platting.


Depending on the density of the flesh, generally speaking, one pound of fish requires 10 minutes of cooking at 350 F. 


The mild fish can be served with a tossed salad, pasta, rice or cooked vegetables. The fish goes well with freshly made tartar sauce, salsa verde, pesto, romesco, chermoula or pico de Gallo.


Prep time: 10 minutes


Cooking time: 30 minutes if the fish weighs 3 pounds, 50 minutes if the fish weighs 5 pounds


Resting time: 5 minutes


Total time: 45 or 65 minutes depending on the size of the fish


Yield: 4 to 6 servings depending on the size of the fish


Ingredients


1 whole fish, 3 to 5 pounds, with the head and the tail, cleaned and gutted but not necessarily scaled


1 3-pound box kosher salt, preferably Diamond Crystal kosher salt


½ to 1 cup water


2 cups fresh aromatics and lemon slices (optional)


Directions


1. Preheat oven to 350 F.


2. Wash the fish inside and outside. Pat dry and set aside.


3. Pour 2 pounds of the kosher salt into a large bowl. Moisten with ½ cup water. Mix with your fingers.  If needed, add more water a tablespoon at a time until the salt sticks together.


4. Select a baking tray that is 2 inches longer and wider than the fish. Line with parchment paper or a Silpat sheet.


5. Place a third of the moistened salt on the bottom of the lined baking tray.


6. Lay the whole fish on top of the salt. Place aromatics and lemon slices inside the fish, if desired.


7. Carefully mold the rest of the moistened salt over the entire fish. If more salt is needed, moisten an additional amount of salt.


8. Place the baking tray into the pre-heated oven.


9. After 30 minutes for a 3-pound fish and 50 minutes for a 5-pound fish, remove the baking tray from the oven and allow the fish to rest for 5 minutes.


10. Using a chef’s knife, slice into the salt dome on the back side of the fish, along the fin line. Make another slice on the bottom of the fish. Lift the salt dome off the fish and discard. Using the knife, make a cut across the gills and the tail. Insert a fork under the skin and lift the skin separating it from the flesh.


11. Have a serving platter ready. Using the flat side of a chef’s knife, slide the blade between the flesh and the skeleton along the fin line. Separate the flesh from the bones. Try as best you can to keep the entire side of the fish intact, but no worries if the flesh comes off in several pieces. When you place the flesh on the serving platter, you can reassemble the fillet.


12. Turn the fish over and repeat the process on the other side.


13. Discard the head, tail, bones and skin. 


14. Serve the fish at room temperature with sauces of your choice and side dishes.

So delicious. So easy to make.

And email me photographs of YOUR FISH when you make it.

Enjoy!


Tuesday, March 14, 2017

A Young Chef Practices His Craft in an Art Gallery

Dinner begins on a dark and windy night. An errant newspaper skitters across the street. My invitation to a tasting by chef Paul Shoemaker, says the address is 4200 Lankershim Blvd, North Hollywood 91602 but the entire block looks abandoned. Using my iPhone as a flashlight, I locate the numbers on the building although a battered sign says this is the Evolution Dance Studios.

To escape the darkness, I follow a rectangle of amber light. Just beyond the doorway, the entryway brightens with stylish lighting and colorful paintings on the wall. A plaque declares this is INTRO. A few steps more and I’m inside a large space with a beautifully set communal table. Overhead bare bulbs hang like trapeze artists. Bingo! I’m here.

General manager, Rob Ciancimino greets me with a flute of light and dry Marcopolo prosecco.  I join the other twenty guests and wander around the space, which doubles as an art gallery. The colorful paintings are by Oscar Meza, a multi-talented professional skateboarder and artist.

Rob returns to see if anyone needs a refill. Glasses are raised and he pours. He tells the group that he is happy we’ve joined him tonight.  INTRO is open for Friday and Saturday night dinner and available for private events. All of this is prelude to the fall when he and his partners will open Verse, a bar, club and restaurant down the block.

It’s time to take our seats and read the menu. The fourteen courses are a mix of elegant ingredients (big eye tuna, foie gras, Maine lobster and Hamachi) and comfort foods (beets, dates, bone marrow and ravioli). And because this is fine dining, there will be wine, including a tasting of wines hand carried by Matthew Ospeck from AuburnJames winery in St. Helena.

As we are introducing ourselves to our table mates, Ciancimino sounds a small chime. It's time to begin our meal. 

Chef Shoemaker comes out of the kitchen to talk us through his first dish. He has a great smile. He avoids the traditional toque and chef's whites. Appealing and friendly, he wears a baseball cap and a brown apron. His first presentation is visually stunning.

The Edible Cocktail is a Meyer lemon icy-foam gin martini sharing a block of charred wood with two Asian spoons. We raise our glasses to salute the chef and each other. The cocktail is delicious and fun like eating a best-ever lemony snow cone. Then we feast on the spoons, enjoying the mix of textures, temperatures and flavors. Sweet, frozen, crunchy, spicy and acidic sensations roll around in our mouths. The evening begins with a “wow”.

The next dish riffs on the great versatility of salmon. Half a dozen roe are scattered on top of a thin slice of sashimi quality belly meat which in turn is placed on a strip of salmon skin cooked to chicharon-crispness. Designed as a sensory encounter, when placed in the mouth, the skin evaporates and the roe releases its salty creaminess leaving the pleasure of the fatty, pliant belly meat. The art of the dish is notable because even after the bits and pieces are consumed, the favor sensation continues with the wonderful heat of Togarashi, the sharp edged Japanese pepper powder.

For his tastings, each dish, from the first to the last, from small plates of single bites like the bone marrow ravioli or the butter poached lobster to the larger plates of Hamachi and hanger beef steak, demonstrates Shoemaker’s culinary talent. His flavors are balanced. Every element has a contrary element. Sweet is paired with acidic. Crispy with pliant. And, more often than not, a gentle heat lingers at the finish to prolong the experience. 

Adding to the sensory experience, the dishes are beautifully platted. Some are served on charred blocks of textured wood. Others in pure white porcelain bowls. Shoemaker arranges the edible ingredients like an artist applying paint to canvas. The ingredients are as much a part of the visual portrait of the dish as they are part of the flavor composition.

Each time the chime sounds, we are alerted to the beginning of a new adventure.

For the sixth course, a single Maine scallop in a porcelain white bowl is placed in front of me.  Cross-hatched with grill marks, the pink-white scallop the size of a silver dollar rests on a pillow of avocado mousseline next to a pale white cube of pickled daikon, smaller than a dime. At the bottom of the bowl, chef poured a pool of house-made ponzu broth with a gathering of white and black sesame seeds. The scallop is paired with AubernJames’ Meritage 2010 (Napa Valley), a lovely, crisp white that compliments the delicate flesh and acidic broth.

Selecting the ingredients for this dish as with all the others, Shoemaker searches for the best ingredients. If he can't find what he wants locally, he looks elsewhere. 

What Shoemaker serves depends on the seasons. He tells me with a big smile that this week he is expecting a FedEx delivery of Dutch white asparagus. He is the kind of chef who delights in the perfections of the moment. Who will source ingredients from half-way-around the world. 

In his travels he is always on the look out for quality providers, which is how he found the fisherman in Maine who supplied him with the scallops for our dish. And the scallop is perfect. Tender. Slightly sweet. Full of briny flavor.

A DIY Kitchen Produces Sophisticated Results

Looking at the complexity of each dish, it is easy to visualize Shoemaker’s kitchen. It must be high tech, fitted out with the latest gadgets. Given the detailing of the platting, surely there must be a dozen sous chefs bending over plates with tweezers picking micro greens from their mise en place.

Nope.

Shoemaker’s kitchen is a large space with a playhouse feeling.  When I walk in, one of the chefs is taking a break on a rope swing secured to the ceiling. There are some high-tech tools like a sous-vide cooker but INTRO’s kitchen is very basic. The two 1970s era stoves were purchased on eBay. There is no grill so with DIY inventiveness, to place grill marks on the scallop, the chefs use a kitchen torch to heat a knife red hot. Pressing the sizzling knife against the scallop creates the cross-hatch marks and adds a hint of caramelization.

Back in the art gallery-dining room, the chimes sound. To explain the dish, Shoemaker reappears as the servers place the next dish in front of each diner.

Foie gras is served nigiri style, on pressed rice. Who would have imagined that fat slices of beautifully charred foie gras go so well on vinegared rice, itself also lightly charred on the bottom to create a thin crust? The sweet acidic flavor so essential to balance the richness of the foie gras comes from a single blackberry sliced in half and a dollop of sour plum sauce.

The foie gras is exactly what I want from a fine dining chef. He should have a mastery of technique. Display flawless execution. Present artful platings. Cook with inventive parings of textures. From the beginning to the end, Shoemaker delivers in all those ways.

At the End

Talking about the meal, everyone has their favorite dish. Mine is the pork belly. A fat triangle of pork skin is fried to airy crispness. Which contrasts perfectly with the fork-tender, apple cider poached pork belly served with a sunny-side up quail egg, the yolk still runny, and pureed sweet potato flavored with maple syrup and bourbon. As we eat, all conversation ends. We're all too busy savoring each bite to talk. I am careful to maximize the deliciousness of the dish. I swab bits of pork belly into the richly sweet sweet potato, being sure to add a bit of egg yolk and maple syrup.
As people finish, they say to no one in particular, “Wow.” “That’s amazing.”

I reach for my glass of AuburnJames' delicious Cabernet Sauvignon 2009 Napa Valley and notice that chef leans against the wall in a corner of the room. Clearly he is an impresario who takes delight in hearing us appreciate his creations. 

As we finish dinner, Shoemaker brings out his crew. Like the end of a theatrical performance, the cast takes a curtain call. Seen on the street, his cooks would be mistaken for skateboarders. To our applause he stands smiling with Paul Richardson, Erik Punzalan, Raymond Morales, Dro Dergy and Joel Ocampo.

At that moment it seems abundantly appropriate that this space is named INTRO. Ciancimino is using the pop-up chef’s table to introduce Shoemaker to Los Angeles. With the slow roll out to the opening of Verse in the fall, Los Angeles will have the opportunity to meet a very talented chef in an intimate dining experience.

INTRO: Art Gallery & Chef’s Table, 4200 Lankershim Boulevard, North Hollywood 9160. Champagne is served at 7:30pm. Dinner begins promptly at 8:00pm. http://www.experienceintro.com; reservations on https://resy.com/cities/la/intro-art-gallery-and-chefs-table

Monday, March 22, 2021

Carbon Steel Pans Sear in Flavor with High Heat and Easy Clean Up

A few years ago I convinced a chef to teach me how he made crispy skin on a filet of fish. chef Taylor Boudreaux said it was easy. I couldn't believe that. For years I had tried to cook a filet of fish with the skin on and the result wasn't good. Either the skin was chewy or burnt to a crisp.

When I ate Boudreaux's salmon filet with mushrooms, the charred skin was crisp as a slice of perfectly cooked bacon. A perfect contrast to the moist, sweet flesh.

He reveals the secret in the video. A carbon steel pan. That's it. The pan takes an incredible amount of heat. Up to 700F. The skin sizzles and in seconds is perfectly seared. A quick flip to char the flesh and then into a 350F oven to cook the filet on the inside.

After I bought a pan and seasoned it and used it successfully on a fish filet, I discovered the pan's other advantage. Easy clean up. Very much like a cut-down wok, the pan needs only a quick cleaning with a soapy sponge to remove the left-over oil, heated again on the stove top to burn off the water and that's it. No strenuously scrubbing to clean the pan the way I had done for years with the stainless steel pans I relied upon. Just a quick clean up and I was done.

A cast iron pan also works well at high heat, but from my experience the carbon steel pan does a better job. Both pans are relatively inexpensive. A carbon steel pan will cost half the price of a comparably sized, quality stainless steel pan. When you shop for a carbon steel pan, buy one that is made with a thicker gauge steel. I have been using de Buyer pans. Chef Boudreaux recommends Matfer Bourgeat. The advantage of the thicker gauge pans is they retain heat longer than the pans made with a thinner steel. I have followed his lead and now have an equal mix of de Buyer and Matfer Bourgeat pans. Like Chef Boudreaux, I have switched over to Matfer Bourgeat.

Recently, I have seen a great many Matfer Bourgeat and de Buyer pans on Amazon. I recommend looking there. Given the variety, I recommend the frying pans, not the pans with higher, rounded sides and frying pans with smooth bottoms. The ribbed bottoms are excellent to create grill marks, but the ribs inhibit good sautéing. Recently I have become a fan of what are called "crepe pans" because of the low sides. They are ideal for sautéing and charring meats, fish and vegetables.


Using the pan exclusively, I discovered the beautiful work it does on steaks. 


Treated very much in the same way as the fish filets, each side of the dry seasoned steak is charred and, if the steak is more than 1" thick, then placed into a 350F oven to cook the interior of the steak for five minutes. While the steak is resting for five minutes under aluminum foil, quickly sear your favorite vegetables in the pan to pick up the pan dripping flavor and serve as a side dish.


After that, I moved on to tofu, shrimp, octopus and chicken breasts. And then onto vegetables. Broccoli, shiitake mushrooms, Japanese eggplant, carrots, asparagus, green beans, English peas and corn kernels. Every firm fleshed vegetable I tried worked perfectly when I applied high heat using the carbon steel pan.

Blast the Heat for For A Charred Vegan Salad

Chef Tips For Crispy Skin Pan Seared Salmon Filets

Friday, May 2, 2014

Picnic Food and Caviar at 30,000 Feet

Growing up, we used to fly from Los Angeles to New York once and sometimes twice a year so my mom could visit her mom who lived on the Upper West Side (110th and Amsterdam). In those days I looked forward to flying. How amazing, I thought, that this big heavy thing could roar down a runway and push itself into the air.

Sitting next to the window and looking down as we passed over desserts, mountains and cities, I was mesmerized.
Even today I regard flight as something of a miracle although the actual experience of being in an airplane isn't as much fun. Terrorism and economics have degraded the airport and flying experience. Having to pay for amenities we used to take for granted like paying to check luggage and being charged to phone an airline agent are high on my list of why travel is less fun than it used to be. And what about being charged for food on planes? When I was a kid, I looked forward to those meals. I know, I was easily satisfied when my favorite not-cooked-by-mom meal was a fried chicken Swanson TV dinner with mashed potatoes and corn in butter sauce.

Putting the fun back into flying

When we fly these days, I make a meal I think of as a picnic lunch. All the foods my family would eat when we went to the beach are great to have on the plane. Think about it. Nothing is better than a shared lunch of cold rosemary fried chicken, deli bar olives, Comte cheese and Breton crackers, chicken salad with mango chutney and toasted almondsegg salad flavored with bacon, arugula salad with home made croutons, potato salad with corn, chopped Italian parsley salad with cherry tomatoes, olives, Persian dukes, croutons and feta cheese with a reduced balsamic and olive oil dressing, roasted beet saladcarrot salad with lemon-pepper infused golden raisins and Fuji apples from a farmers market.
If I'm watching movies on my iPad and snacking on good food, flying is fun again.

Flights out of Tom Bradley International Terminal, LAX

Last fall I flew to Geneva, Switzerland out of LAX. Unfortunately, at the time, while the renovation of the terminal had been completed, the Level 4 food court vendors hadn't moved in.
Last week I was invited to a press reception at the terminal to try out the food and beverages served at the Petrossian Caviar and Champagne Bar.
Not everyone enjoys caviar. It's expensive and, well,  it is "eggs from a fish". Two strikes against caviar to many people. My dad loved caviar. He was Russian and loved all that kind of food: black bread, radishes, herring with onions in sour cream and chopped liver.
Back to last week

Going to the boarding area of an airport when you aren't actually flying is not easy. Special approvals need to be obtained. Passes are issued. Guards inspect you. PR people and airport personnel escort you every minute you are beyond security check points without a boarding pass.

I mention this for a reason.
Level 4 at Bradley International could be a destination for Angelenos. Going to airports and watching planes take off and land used to be a fun thing to do. No more. But if you are traveling internationally out of LAX, arriving at the airport two hours early won't be an inconvenience because you'll have the opportunity to enjoy the open, airy Great Hall with dozens of restaurants and retail stores as good as any you'll find at The Grove.
Petrossian gave us a tasting of their appetizers (smoked salmon canapés with salmon roe, blinis and hardboiled eggs topped with caviar), champagne and a High Society cocktail. Everything was delicious.
Besides serving caviar as God intended--on a blini--Petrossian has also created caviar powder and white chocolate with caviar. The powder is cool. Used instead of salt on the rim of a cocktail glass in the High Society adds a crunchy-salty-caviar flavor that worked great with the gin, St. Germaine and green Chartruse.
Besides a full menu at the Bar, Petrossian also has insulated packs to take on the plane. The snacks come with a big price tag, but if you are a caviar-eating kind of person, the high cost will be familiar.
I wrote a profile for Luxury Travel Magazine with a lot more details.

Pickle Me Up! It's Thanksgiving!

Pickles are delicious anytime of the year. For Thanksgiving they are especially good. Their crunch and acidity counterbalances the delicious...