CSA week five - Pan seared salmon with cream dill sauce

Another simple dish, but since I'm actually out of town right now you're lucky to be getting a post at all.

The salmon is just lightly seasoned with salt, pepper, dried basil, chervil and dill and seared in a little olive oil over medium high heat for five minutes skin-side down and a quick flip to finish. Kind of like the boneless pan fried chicken recipe now that I think of it.

The sauce is the slightly more interesting bit. It's sour cream, a good bit of finely chopped fresh parsley and dill, a little finely minced shallot, salt, pepper, light red wine vinegar (lemon juice would have been a good choice too), a dollop of prepared horseradish and the pan drippings from the salmon. I wasn't sure dill and horseradish would work together, but it's a nice pairing if you don't go overboard with the latter. Lovely over the salmon. Pretty good on the homemade egg noodles. Made a decent salad dressing too. Not as good on roast beets as I thought it would be, though.

Not quite Thomas Keller's salmon rillettes

[Edit: For all you googlers looking for Keller's actual recipe, it's here. It's worth coming back to read my variation too unless you're dead set on making an exact replica of his dish.]

So, I was watching The Best Thing I Ever Ate, a Food Network show where TV chefs you don't recognize rhapsodize about food you'll never eat from restaurants you'll never go to. That part's annoying, but they do go into the kitchens to show a bit about how the dishes are made and you can pick up some good ideas that way. Usually there's some obscure ingredient or restaurant technique that keeps you from reproducing the dish exactly, but the rillettes aux deux saumons from Bouchon Bistro were surprisingly straightforward, particularly for a Thomas Keller dish. Probably because it's from Bouchon, not the French Laundry (he says as if he's eaten at either).

It's just fresh salmon gently steamed in pernod, diced smoked salmon, shallot, crème fresh, olive oil, egg yolks and lemon juice. I've got most of that in the house. There is a Bouchon cookbook, so I could have looked the recipe up and tried to reproduce it exactly, but salmon rillettes isn't something Keller invented. There are plenty of variations and I wanted to come up with my own.

First, I decided to use gravlax instead of the smoked salmon; It was about time to make another batch. I also wanted to substitute in some other flavoring for the pernod. I'm not going to go out and buy a bottle of a liquor I don't really like for a single recipe. And anyway, it's a liquor I don't really like so I'm probably not going to like how it tastes in the dish.

First step, the gravlax. I kept the dill flavoring, using dill stems I had stored in the freezer, but made some changes from previous batches that I've been meaning to try. I went with the more traditional 2:1 sugar to salt ratio instead of the 1:1 lox-simulating ratio I've used previously. I used demerara sugar which still has a lot of molasses in it for some added interest. And I didn't add weights so I could see what sort of texture I'd get without the compression.


As it turns out, that texture is dense and meaty, but a little mushy on top where the salt was. The flavor is sweeter than previous batches, of course, and has a bit more depth from the molasses. Interesting. I still like lox better, but I grew up with that.


Next step, I steamed another salmon fillet over plain water until barely cooked through, flaked it into a bowl along with the chopped gravlax and mixed with finely chopped shallot, a dollop of crème fresh, a little olive oil, one egg yolk and a squeeze of lemon juice.


That goes into a container and is topped off with a layer of butter to seal it off. I was supposed to use clarified butter but I neglected to check my notes. That goes into the refrigerator to let the flavors blend for a day or two. When ready to serve, crack open the top and spoon onto crostini.


The flavor is in the neighborhood of bagels with cream cheese and lox, but with a richer more complex salmon flavor with shifting undertones of sweet, tart and savory. It's pretty complicated and I'm having trouble pinning it down with words. Sorry. It does seem to be lacking a little something. Maybe it could use some herbs or capers to round it out. (Or maybe not. Adding scallion makes it taste too much like just salmon salad, suitable for a sandwich. No more than a little chives would be best, then.)

After the fact, I've looked up Keller's recipe to see what he did differently. The big difference is that the ingredients are supposed to be mixed into generous amounts of whipped butter. That's what makes it rillettes--preservation in fat. Mine really is more of a salmon salad. Serving with a chunk of the butter layer goes some way to reconciling the differences, though. He also does use chives so that was a good impulse on my part. From the picture, his looks much less chunky, but I can't see in the directions how that came about. Odd.

I've still got half a batch left. Maybe I'll chop it up fine and mix it with some butter just to try it out. ... OK, I did that. Actually, I tossed it into the food processor with a couple Tablespoons of butter. The result was really good. The flavors stayed complex and intense but with a lot of added richness and a smooth spreadable texture. Compulsive eating with a loaf of good bread and a little bit of chives, parsley or herbs of some sort to add a little freshness in counterpoint.

Gravlax - variation one

Since I knew I'd be baking bagels this weekend, I thought I'd make some gravlax that more closely resembled lox than my first batch.

To recap, gravax: take one fillet of salmon, sprinkle it with 1 Tablespoon salt and 1 Tablespoon sugar, add a big pile of dill (and optionally other flavorings), wrap tightly in plastic and press under a heavy weight in the refrigerator for three days, flipping every 12 hours. For this batch I ditched the dill and substituted a generous teaspoon of finely ground lapsang souchon smoked tea. I ground my own from loose leaf, but you could just tear open a teabag or use smoked salt or a few drops of liquid smoke. Or smoked sugar if such a thing exists.

Here it is after the three days were up:


And here it is sliced topping one of my mini-bagels:


The experiment was a success; the flavor is dead-on for lox. I was afraid the smokiness would be overwhelming--it certainly was in the run-off liquid. The amount of tea I added was a pure guess so a screw up was quite possible. But the flavors turned out nicely balanced between the smoke, salt and sweet (and fishy, of course). The smoke is, of course, the most important part, but as I looked up lox recipes the few I found called for brown sugar. I've been using the local organic stuff that, while not brown, is a bit underprocessed so it's off-white which I think has added a note of molasses now that I'm looking for it. I'll need to try full-on brown sugar at some point.

The texture is not quite the same as lox, though. Good quality lox is silky but can be sliced paper thin without tearing. My gravlax tears more easily and is rather denser and meatier. The real lox process is wet brining, freshening with a soak in unsalted water and then cold smoking. No pressing involved, but some drying from the smoke. The silkiness comes from all the retained moisture and it must be that last step that gives it it's structural integrity. I wonder if pressing for just the last 12 hours would approximate that. That's going on my to-do list, but only after I've tried some other fish types and adding other flavors. No reason to try reproducing what I can buy at the corner deli when there's a world of possibilities out there.

Dim Sum Sunday - gravlax

This week's Dim Sum Sunday theme is Mama Mia. Or possibly last week's. The folks at Karmic Kitchen announced this theme with their own entry a week ago, when it was appropriate and then announced a new theme on Thursday. I don't know if they're giving us lots of warning or none at all. Well, no matter. Mama Mia can be interpreted as either cooking one of your mother's recipes or something Swedish and I already had both on my to do list.

Right now: Swedish. Gravlax is a traditional Swedish cured salmon dish and surprisingly simple to make.

All you need is a salmon fillet, salt, sugar and dill (although there are plenty of optional extras).

I checked the salmon for bones and laid it skin-side-down over a few springs of dill on a sheet of plastic wrap. A lot of recipes add extra flavors at this point but I kept it simple for my first time out: for my 7 ounce fillet, 1 Tablespoon of sugar, 1 Tablespoon of sea salt and 1 teaspoon of ground black pepper mixed and spread over the flesh side of the fillet. That's topped with an big pile of dill (CSA dill I've had in the freezer for some time); a half cup's probably plenty, but you can't use too much. I was going to leave it at this, but just in case the common addition of flavored liqueur is bringing out alcohol-soluble flavors, I poured a couple teaspoons vodka over top. That all got wrapped up in two layers of plastic wrap, laid in a platter with a high rim, weighted down with cast iron and a can and left in the refrigerator for three days, flipped every 12 hours.

Cooking for Engineers, a website I often look to for reality checks, says the weight and flipping are dispensable, but I can't imagine getting the same firm texture without the even squeeze pushing out the water the salt pulls from the fish. You can see how it was squished flat. On the other hand, that water is pretty tasty so I wouldn't mind if some of it stayed in. I'll have to give it a try the other way to compare and contrast.



Here; after I carefully rinsed and brushed off the dill, sugar, salt and pepper; is the result, sliced thin and served with the traditional mustard sauce and crackers.

The mustard sauce is:
1 ounce Dijon mustard
1/2 teaspoon dry mustard
1 1/2 teaspoon sugar
1 Tablespoon white wine vinegar
3 Tablespoons olive oil
1 1/2 Tablespoons dill
Some recipes say to add the olive oil bit by bit while whisking furiously, but mustard's an emulsifier. I just dumped everything (bar the dill) into a bowl and stirred for a minute until it came together. No big deal.

The crackers are Kavli whole grain crispbread from Denmark. Thin slices of pumpernickel or whole wheat bread are traditional, but my kitchen's been too hot for baking and this did fine.

My, and probably your, point of comparison is lox. This isn't quite the same but it's close enough for government work. They both have the same lovely salty-sweet salmon flavor and a similar firm but melt-away soft texture. The gravlax has no smokiness, of course, and some subtle dilliness to it. Loximilitude aside, this is really good in and of itself. But, it's simple. And I know I did that on purpose, but even with the mustard dill sauce (which isn't half bad in a honey-mustard dressing sort of way) it needs something--I dunno, capers, lemon, cucumber, something. But then you don't sit down and eat a pile of lox, either. That's best with all the additional flavors of an everything bagel, cream cheese, tomato and onion. Let's call it even; they're both good leads, but they need their back-up singers to really shine.

... I've done a little more reading and found that the sugar to salt ratio is open to personal taste and 1:1, which resulted in the lox-like flavor, is unusually low. Most recipes call for twice to four times as much sugar as salt which would make for a rather different result. That variability, plus the various other changes that fall within the tradition make for lots of room for playing with flavors here. And going beyond that opens up lots more. Add a little ground lapsang souchong for smokiness to get closer to lox. Substitute soy sauce and cilantro to make a southeast Asian version. Or use whitefish and go a completely different direction with it. (These are not my original ideas, I should point out. I haven't seen actual recipes, but the suggestions are out there on the Web already.)

Bonus! Cooking Corner's gravlax page recommends, once you've sliced all the meat off of the salmon skin, deep fry it to make chips. Easy peasy, but they pop so you definitely need a spatter-guard and they make the oil unreusably fishy so use as little as possible. On the other hand, they're pre-seasoned for your convenience. They suggest serving the chips on top of cold boiled red potatoes, but I liked them on top of a graxlax-laden cracker for a bit more crunch.

CSA week 16 - Zucchini, cucumber and salmon salad

This was actually just a zucchini and cucumber salad to accompany a salmon fillet, but it needed the fish in there to work so I'm considering it a unified whole.

My original plan was to make zucchini noodles but my mandolin just shredded it instead of making tidy strips. So it was on to plan B. I ran the cucumber through the mandolin to shred it as well. Both ended up with a pile of shreds and a plank of outer shell that I couldn't run through without risking my fingers. Those I sliced as thinly as I could.

I squeezed the liquid out of the shredded cucumber and salted the zucchini and let it drain for a half hour before wringing it out too. That may have been a mistake since I ended up with a nasty overcooked vermicelli texture. I decided to chop up those extra slices and add them to the mix to help the texture out. And then I added parsley and Chinese celery leaves--roughly chopped so that they're vegetable components of the salad, not just herbage--some dill and capers.

If I had any in the house I would have mixed all that with sour cream and topped it with caviar. Yougurt would have done too. But I had to settle for mayonnaise thinned with white vinegar. Salt and pepper to taste and the flavors didn't quite work, but it was edible.

The salmon I rubbed with salt, pepper and dill and fried in olive oil, skin side down, for three minutes. After the flip I turned down the heat, poured some white wine into the pan and covered to let it steam for a couple minutes. When the fish was done I removed it to on top the salad, cooked down the liquid left in the pan to nearly nothing, mounted it with a little butter and poured it over top.


It turned out a bit better than I expected, really. The meatiness and oiliness of the salmon and the rich buttery sauce balanced out the light crunch and slightly funky flavor of the vegetables and the tanginess of the vinegar and capers. So it worked out and, in the end, I can recommend making along these lines.

One last thing while I'm here: tomorrow I'm going to the Coral Gables Food and Wine Festival . I'll be there early before the crowds so I get in fewer people's ways while I'm taking pictures and making notes. Last year I made the worst possible choices of what to try so if you see me there do please say hi and point me to what you think I ought to be eating.

Salmon with white chocolate sauce

I wish I could remember why I bought a half-pound chunk of white chocolate. I doesn't seem like something I'd buy without some purpose in mind, but no idea. As long as I've got it, I may as well carve off chunks and make some use of it. I've been noticing savory white chocolate sauces showing up on cooking competition shows for the last year or so and I've been wanting to try it before it gets too passe. I found a couple straightforward recipes on http://www.cacaoweb.net. As you already know from the subject of this post, I'm trying the salmon recipe first. I'll try the other in a day or two.

I'm not making any changes to the Cacaoweb recipes to start other then cutting them down to my single serving to start out. Once I get a feel for the ingredient I'll improvise a little more. Here's the first recipe a few annotations:

Salmon with White Chocolate Sauce
Yield: 1 serving

Ingredients
3/4 tablespoons butter
3/4 teaspoons all-purpose flour
1/4 cup fish broth [I've got some homemade fish stock in the freezer]
1 1/2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice (unsweetened)
1/2 oz (15 g) white chocolate
1/4 tablespoon fresh, green pepper corns (or dried red pepper corns) [I picked red peppercorns out of the peppercorn mixes I have to make up a quarter teaspoon.]
------
1/2 tablespoons butter
1/2 pounds filet of salmon cut into 4-5 oz (120-150 g) portions
Salt and pepper


Method
Make first white sauce with white chocolate, then cook the salmon:

1. Melt 3/4 tablespoons butter in a small saucepan over medium heat.
2. When the butter has melted add the flour and mix well.
3. Add fish broth, stirring constantly to incorporate and cook the flour.
4. Let the sauce cook on low heat for approximately 15 minutes, stir regularly. [I found that the sauce thickened up too much over the fifteen minutes so I added more stock to keep it saucy.]
5. Add lemon juice, white chocolate and pepper corns.
6. Add salt to taste. [There's no 'meanwhile' here so I assume you're supposed to keep the sauce warm for the next ten minutes while you cook the salmon for the chocolate to melt and the flavors meld. My salmon was done in five, but the sauce seems well incorporated.]
7. Melt 1/2 tablespoon butter in a nonstick pan over medium heat.
8. Cook the pieces of salmon for about five minutes per side until it has browned. Add salt and pepper to taste. [I think it works better if you salt and pepper the salmon before adding it to the pan. Also five minutes per side seems like an awful lot.]
9. Serve the salmon with rice, sauce and cooked asparagus or broccoli. [or squash]

So, you want to know, how did it taste?

First off, the combination of white chocolate and lemon is synergistic on its own as I've found earlier when making ice cream, but once you add fish broth you really can't recognize white chocolate in the mix until the lingering finish, and even then you have to be looking for it. The citrus brightness hits first, with a savory unctuousness coming in underneath. There's a definite, but inarticulate, seafood flavor there that pairs well with the salmon. That fades too leaving a sweeter finish with the white chocolate closer to the top. Oh, and the red peppercorns give another off-kilter flavor component somewhere between black and Szechuan peppercorns when you bite into one.

Overall, it's not at all bad, but it's not knocking my socks off either. I'd call it an interesting novelty. But everyone's socks are different so maybe it'll do the trick on yours. I could easily see this as someone's favorite sauce, just not mine. It's easy; try it yourself and see what you think.

CSA - Avocado salmon sushi

Next up out of last week's CSA share are the avocados which are finally ripe enough to use. This first recipe doesn't use a whole lot of it, but it's been a really long time since I've made sushi at home and it's good to keep up the skills.

This was something of a spur of the moment idea though and I don't keep sushi-grade fish just lying around the house. I do have some not-too-bad salmon, though, so I decided to use that. There are a couple of choices if you're going to use lesser fish for sushi: either you can sear it, and if my salmon had skin that's the way I would have gone, or you can chop it up into a paste like you find in spicy tuna rolls.

My woefully understocked pantry is missing Japanese-style mayonnaise too so a real spicy roll wasn't going to happen. Instead, after mashing up my salmon (and removing the darker-colored nasty-tasting line of flesh that runs down the middle. I thought it was called a bloodline, but looking up the term didn't turn up information on it so I must have been wrong.) I added a couple dashes of powdered wasabi, a dash of powdered ginger, a dash of white pepper, a couple teaspoons of soy sauce and a teaspoon of sesame oil. I mixed that all up and set it aside in the refrigerator to let the flavors of the powders bloom a bit.

Next up is the rice. Sushi rice should stick together because of the stuff it's mixed with, not due to starch so you need to rinse it thoroughly before cooking it. Cover the rice with water and stir until the water is cloudy with starch, pour it out and repeat until the water runs clear. I went through four rinses and my rice still turned out sticky so just do the best you can. Cook the rice in your usual way, adding in a chunk of kombu if you've got any. When the rice is done add 1/8 cup of rice wine vinegar and a Tablespoon of mirin (a little less of sugar will do) per cup of uncooked rice. Mix thoroughly and spread it out on a jelly roll pan or cookie sheet to cool. Personally I like my rice a little warm, but some people get it down to air-conditioned-room temperature. It's up to you. That's the basics. I understand it takes years to really master making sushi rice so there are plenty of subtleties I'm not even aware of much less capable of explaining.

Then comes the fillings. I sliced up half an avocado (and used no more than half of that) and slivered a scallion to go with my salmon paste. Cucumber would have been good too. Some people go for red or yellow pepper, carrots or zucchini but not me. I would have added some sesame seeds, though, if I had thought of it earlier.

Now for assembly. Take a sheet of nori and lay it out shiny side down. If you've got a bamboo sushi mat, well then you know all this so I'm going to assume you don't. I put the nori down on a cutting board, but I think that's why it lost its crunch so fast. A sheet of plastic wrap in between should help with that and with rolling later. Wet your hands and drop a lump of rice into the middle of the nori. Spread it out without pressing it down. You want a thin layer with the green of the nori visible through and an inch left bare at one end. You'll use less than you'll expect.


Then lay out the fillings at the end opposite the bare strip. This time you'll need to use a little more than you'll expect. Wet a finger and run it along the remaining exposed nori so it will stick and seal up the roll when you're done.





Once everything is laid out and ready, it's time to roll. If you used plastic wrap, grasp the edges and flip the filling-laden end of the nori over. I didn't so instead I slipped my chef's knife underneath and used that as a long spatula. If you've got an offset spatula for icing cakes, that should be ideal.




Pull the overturned section of the roll towards you to tighten it up. Not too vigorously or the nori will split, but firm enough so it holds its shape.







Finish by rolling the resulting cylinder over the rest of the rice and the exposed nori. Lay the roll seam side down and press a little to get a good seal.









Using your sharpest knife slice the roll in half, place the halves side by side and cut them in thirds.



Stand them up and if you're like me, you've got some mediocre sushi. Sushi at its best is all about balance and technique elevating simple ingredients and preparation. That's why it takes years of training. It's not really the sort of thing that's going to give exquisite results to the amateur home cook. Still, it's fun and a change of pace so worth a try now and again.