• About The Crew
  • Cooking Through ‘Modernist Cuisine’ At Home

Jet City Gastrophysics

~ Exploring Modernist Cuisine in the Northwest

Jet City Gastrophysics

Tag Archives: salmon

New Cookery with Chef Ian Kleinman

22 Wednesday Sep 2010

Posted by jethro in foams, gels, hyrocolloids, liquid nitrogen, spherification, thickeners, transglutaminase

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

chicken skin, corn, Denver, Ian Kleinman, ice cream, salmon, seaweed

Chef Ian Kleinman

Chef Ian Kleinman (with gelatin and a blender)

I had to spend the month of May in Denver, CO this year because of work.  I grew up there, so I had family and friends to entertain myself, and was able to put my brother’s, sister’s and mother’s kitchens all to good use.  But I also wanted to eat the local cuisine, and the more experimental side at that.    Biker Jim’s Gourmet Hot Dog Stand was certainly a great find, but I wanted to see some more “extended techniques” as well.  I searched for a restaurant that could satisfy my cravings and found, to my surprise, a hotel restaurant in Westminster, CO.

Westminster is a suburb of Denver, and could be Anywhere, USA: strip malls, parking lots and franchise stores.  Nothing suggests it could be a hotbed of Modern Cuisine.  But apparently at O’s Steak and Seafood at the Westin Hotel, they had let a chef run wild: Ian Kleinman.  He was doing a tasting menu once a week.  As a matter of fact, over the last two years, he was able to push out over 100 of these menus.  In a suburban hotel!  Excited, I was ready to make my reservation.  But there turned out to be a problem. He no longer worked there.

Apparently he had left just months earlier.  Well, this was a drag.  I researched some more to see if he was still in town, working at another restaurant.  It turns out he had started his own catering company, The Inventing Room. “We will work with any budget” his website read.  I wonder if he’d cater a dinner for one?  I gave him a call.

I got him on the phone and explained that I wanted a single dinner catered, but I wanted to watch him cook the entire thing.  In the course of our conversation, it went from dinner to a cooking lesson.  This is WAY more than I had hoped for! I said I wanted to focus on different molecular techniques, the more outlandish the better.  He obliged.

The Cooking Lesson

I met him at the commissary kitchen where he prepares his meals for The Inventing Room. He had already been there preparing and had laid out his ingredients for us to work with.

New Cookery Additives

Not Your Mother's Spice Cabinet

We riffed out a couple of dishes that would use a variety of basic techniques: spherification, culinary foam and flash freezing with liquid nitrogen. As its centerpiece, we would use transglutaminase (also known as TG or ‘meat glue’) for what could now be considered a classic Modern Cuisine idea: salmon wrapped in chicken skin.

Now most would brush a slurry of TG directly on the salmon and wrap the skin onto the fish.  Chef Kleinman took a different approach.  After applying TG to a bunch of chicken skin, he rolled the skin up into a ball, wrapped it in plastic wrap and stuck it in the freezer.  He had created a small ham of pure chicken skin.  He took it to the meat slicer to make thin even slices.

Chicken Skin Slices

We took the slices and made little chicken skin ravioli with salmon centers.

Wrapping the Salmon

And then we fried the little suckers.

Frying the Salmon

We plated it with a gelatin based sauce, which we transformed into a foam as well by adding a little lethicin.  Now usually you would use an immersion blender to foam it up.  But Chef Kleinman tends to think out of the box.  He loves going to hardware stores to find equipment and figure out culinary uses for them.  For instance, he’s taken chalk line markers to dispense candy powders.  For our foam, he let an aquarium air pump doing his foaming for him while he attended to other things.

Making Foam

An Aquarium Air Pump Performing Automated Foaming

Next up we went with another modern classic: liquid nitrogen ice cream.  He had a huge amount of ice cream base to work from, and we decided to try something unique: a corn ice cream with caramelized cactus.

Making Liquid Nitrogen Ice Cream

After throwing together some caviar (the key: the mixture should be ‘snotty’ before dropping into the calcium chloride water bath) we flash froze some seaweed as well.  And our dishes were complete.

Chicken Skinned Salmon with Carrot Foam, Caviar, Peas, Seaweed

Chicken Skinned Salmon with Carrot Foam, Caviar, Peas, Seaweed

Liquid Nitrogen Corn Ice Cream with Carmelized Cactus and Seaweed

Liquid Nitrogen Corn Ice Cream with Carmelized Cactus and Seaweed

The salmon in chicken skin was incredibly tasty and the ice cream with cactus was a pleasant surprise to both of us, since we were food pairing on the fly.  It was a fantastic experience and I am very grateful that he allowed me into the kitchen to see his approach to this kind of cooking.

You can follow Chef Kleinman’s culinary exploits at his blog, Food 102.  Thanks again, Chef!

Jethro

Sous Vide “Raw” Instant-Smoked Salmon

26 Thursday Aug 2010

Posted by sheimend in sous vide

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

salmon, smoked salmon, Smoking Gun

Raw Smoked Salmon-1
Low and slow… it’s true for sous vide, and its definitely true for smoking.  And, if you live in Seattle, you probably know that one of the worlds best smoked foods is salmon.  Smoked salmon has a wonderfully rich and concentrated flavor, but unfortunately it also has the texture of wet leather.  For this recipe, I used a Smoking Gun – a remarkable little device that creates a cold, concentrated smoke that can be captured in a container, or in this case, a vacuum bag [Disclosure: the Smoking Gun I used was a demo unit provided by PolyScience.]  The result: instant smoky flavor.  Then, we delicately cook the salmon to just above rare, which retains the fish’s buttery texture.

Total kitchen time: 25 minutes

Shopping list:

  • 2 salmon fillets, about 15mm thick
  • 1 tsp. smoked salt
  • 1/4 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
  1. Preheat your water bath to 45.5°C.  [Note: Consuming undercooked fish blah blah blah.  Some people will cook their salmon at 39°C, but that’s a little rare even for my taste.  If you’re squeamish, crank up the temp to 52°C.]
  2. Remove the skin from the salmon fillets (reserve for frying, if you want.)  Divide the salt and pepper between the fillets and coat both sides.  Place the fillets, together or individually) into vacuum seal bags, but don’t seal them yet.
  3. Prepare an ice bath large enough for the salmon fillets in their bags.
  4. Load a Smoking Gun with hickory wood shavings.  Insert the exhaust hose into the open end of the bag and fold over the open edge to partially seal the bag.

    DSC_0416

  5. Turn on the Smoking Gun and light the wood chips.  Smoke the entire bowl into the bag, retaining as much smoke as possible.
  6. Holding the open end of the bag up, submerge the bag into the ice bath for a few seconds to condense the remaining smoke.  Seal the open end in the vacuum sealer.
  7. Cook the salmon in the water bath for 15 minutes.  Remove and serve.

Given the soft texture of the salmon, I thought it would be good to pair it with something crunchy.  I fried kale leaves in grapeseed oil for a few seconds per side (look out for major oil splatter!) and roasted asparagus with olive oil and rosemary salt.  I also fried the leftover salmon skin until it was slightly crispy and used it to wrap the asparagus.  This is one of my new favorite salmon preparations, and I can’t wait to see what else I can instant-smoke!

Scott

[Originally posted at SeattleFoodGeek.com]

Search

Categories

From the Twitterverse

Error: Twitter did not respond. Please wait a few minutes and refresh this page.

Feed Yourself

  • RSS - Posts

Recent Posts

  • Ferran In America
  • That One Time We Applied For A Food Patent
  • Ideas In Food At Home: Coffee Onion Rings
  • BOOM: Sansaire Circulator Raises $823k On Kickstarter
  • Dining Northwest Style at The Willows Inn
  • Sansaire, The $199 Circulator: A Brief History
  • Modernist Cuisine At Home: Barbeque Rubs And Another Sauce
  • Modernist Cuisine At Home: More Barbeque Sauces
  • The Price Of Cooking Modernist Cuisine, Part IV: More Gadgets, Ingredients and Resources
  • Modernist Cuisine At Home: Compressed Melon Terrine
  • That One Time We Were Nominated For Best Culinary Science Blog
  • Gastrophysics Labs Closes Doors; Reopens As A “Kitchen”

From the Archives

  • March 2014
  • November 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • September 2011
  • August 2011
  • July 2011
  • June 2011
  • May 2011
  • April 2011
  • March 2011
  • February 2011
  • January 2011
  • December 2010
  • November 2010
  • October 2010
  • September 2010
  • August 2010

Blogroll

  • A Practical Guide to Sous Vide Cooking
  • Alinea At Home
  • Chef Rubber
  • Cooking Issues
  • eGullet
  • Eric Rivera's Cooking Blog
  • Ideas In Food
  • Khymos
  • L'epicerie
  • LeSanctuaire
  • Modernist Cuisine
  • Modernist Pantry
  • Seattle Food Geek
  • Studio Kitchen
  • The Alinea Project
  • Willequipped
  • Willpowder

  • ericriveracooks
  • jethro
  • sheimend

Blog at WordPress.com.

Cancel
Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy