Salmon Tartare

I'd never had salmon tartare before, so this dished just barely registered on the 'I'm a little unsure about this one' meter. I've eaten plenty of raw salmon in sushi, so that wasn't the issue. For some reason the different preparation was just a bit foreign to me. But hey, that's what we're here for, right? It's pretty incredibly easy to make once you have the ingredients for this dish. If you don't mind chopping that is. And then chopping some more. And then some more. Needless to say, you're going to want a good knife for this.

Let's get (not exactly) cooking. You're going to need some salmon (obviously), hard-boiled eggs, chives (home grown greatness here), shallot, lemon, red onion, and creme fraiche. The recipe also calls for capers, which I really really do not like at all, so they were left out.

First up was cleaning the salmon. This step is optional if you bought pre-prepared sushi grade salmon like I did. Then it was time to chop, chop, chop. I chopped for probably five straight minutes, and easily could have gone for another five minutes if it wasn't for the fact that I was getting bored. Here's how far I got:

I transferred the salmon to a bowl and mixed in some shallot, salt, half the chives, and olive oil.

With the salmon ready to go it was time to move onto the garnishes. Garnishes is kind of the wrong word, because there is probably twice as much garnish as there is salmon. It's not the main ingredient though, so call what you whatever you want. I'm going to use garnish.

The first step was to chop up the hard boiled eggs. The direction here is to separate the yolks and whites, push each through a grater, and then chop it up. The grater apparently allows for more uniform pieces. I'm not sure the extra time is really worth it. The eggs were followed by chopping the red onion into 1/8" squares and mincing up the chives.

The instructions for plating this dish seemed to me to be a lot more complex than they needed to be. The outside ring, which will make sense in a minute, was supposed to be assembled by layering the egg yolks, then onions, then egg whites, then the chives. I went a little crazy and just mixed it all together at the start. Why do something four times when you can do it once and nobody in the world will know? Except for you guys now I guess...

So here is what I started with. Looks great, right?


And here was I made out of it. I didn't have the requisite ring mold to make the salmon nice and circular. Actually, I still don't have it. I just made something that was almost circular. For a minute I was afraid the oblong shape would cause it to not taste like salmon anymore, but lucky for me that was not the case.

I finished it off with a little scoop of creme fraiche, which really did make a difference, in a good way. It was really good, the two of us ate almost all of it. That's saying a lot, since there was probably close to 1.5 lbs of food on the plate. The salmon was pretty fatty (you can kind of see in the first picture) and that led to a slightly odd, less than appetizing color. Hopefully next time I can get some leaner fish, but it's kind of hard to find a lot of sushi grade choices around here. I'd make this again for sure, not only because it's easy, but also because it's relatively simple to make.

Most of the discussion while we were eating it centered around whether or not tartare would be an acceptable hors d'oeuvres at a party. It's certainly tasty, but would you trust your host enough to eat raw fish at their house? Let me know in the comments.

Hard-Cooked Eggs in Russian Dressing

This may be the simplest recipe in the book, but I wasn't overly enthusiastic about making it. How good could hard-cooked eggs smothered in Russian dressing really be? Regardless, this isn't a 'make the recipes you think will be good' blog, it's a 'cook everything in the book' blog. So here we go.

The first thing you're going to need are some hard-cooked (boiled to me) eggs. Because this book and Keller himself are so incredibly thorough, there are instructions on exactly how to do this: Cover eggs with cold water, bring them to a boil, simmer for about a minute, and then turn off the heat and let the eggs just sit there for ten minutes. Put them immediately into an ice bath. I have made eggs this way twice now. The first time was kind of a mess, which I attribute to not cooling the eggs in the ice bath for long enough. They were pretty much impossible to peel. This time was much better, and everything turned out just as expected. Because these shots are so interesting, here are a couple of pictures:

Now that the eggs are taken care of, let's make some Russian dressing. I, like Wikipedia, had always thought Russian dressing was mayo and tomato based. Bouchon apparently does not believe in Wikipedia. This Russian dressing is mayo, chili sauce, shallots, parsley, chives, and lemon juice. So it's close, but we're trading chili sauce for ketchup.


Those are home-grown herbs. Aren't they great? I don't usually quote the book verbatim, but in this case they're incredibly complex so here they are:

Combine all the ingredients in a small bowl, mixing well. Cover and refrigerate for a few hours to allow the flavors to develop.

That's pretty tough, right? Here's what it looks like:
More great shots, right? Again, a direct quote for the difficult serving instructions:

Cut the hard-cooked eggs lengthwise in half and place them cut side down on a serving platter. Spoon the sauce generously over the eggs.

I didn't really think they were anything great, that's for sure. It tasted more or less like you would expect that combination of ingredients to taste. Obviously there were eggs, there was mayo, and there was chili sauce. Nothing spectacular, but you can make it in about four and half minutes, so maybe it's a good addition to an set of appetizers.

Carrot and Chickpea Salad

I made this salad during a week in which I stormed my way through three recipes. Either that, or they stormed through me. Suffice it to say that I won't be trying three recipes in a week again. It's not that this recipe is hard; it's not at all. The problem that I'm finding with several of these recipes is that they're not always worth the time required to put them together. That is by no means an indictment of their quality, but as you'll see below three days for what essentially amounts to a side dish is probably more time than 95% of us have to give to Tuesday night dinner.

Enough with the ranting, let's do some cooking. Just kidding, first you have to soak the chickpeas for 12 hours. Night number one is now toast. Ok, done with the ranting...

The next night it was time to start applying some heat to some food. Here is the first set of ingredients:


That would be a leek, a carrot, an onion, some chickpeas, and the stuff required for a bouquet garni. For the uninitiated like me, bouqeuts garni (or is it bouquet garnies?) are all of those remaining ingredients wrapped up in something. Keller calls the herbs wrapped in leek greens a bouquet garni and a sachet if you wrap it in cheesecloth. I was hoping to find a super extra high res photo and description from Ruhlman's excellent blog, but it was not to be. You'll have to look it up if want more information. Carrying on...

Into a pot went the soaked chickpeas, a bunch of water, half the leek, the bouquet, carrot, and onion. All that stuff got brought to a boil and then simmered for quite awhile. I cooked them for about an hour, even though the recipe gives a 45 minute guideline. I kind of wish I'd cooked them a little longer, as the chickpeas still had quite a bit of bite in the finished dish. Oh well. I transferred them to a dish and let it cool and then removed all of the things that weren't chickpeas or water. Into the fridge it went, and day 2 was over.

Finishing the dish up was pretty easy. I needed a few more things:


Round the clock we have bay leaves, thyme, garlic, lemon (juice), olive oil, parsley, and carrots. Everything that wasn't bright orange went into a skillet. I haven't posted much in the way of photos of the actually cooking process, so here's my attempt at starting that:


That cooked for just a minute or so until everyone in the vicinity (me) could smell that I was in fact making something that we get to eat in the very near future. After that, in went the carrots:


I cooked them and tossed them around for another minute or so, then in went the chickpeas and some salt and pepper just until everything was warmed through. It was finally almost time to eat. I let everything cool down and took out the aromatics, and stirred in the lemon juice and parsley. Here's what made it to the table, and I have to say it's one of the prettier things so far.


The verdict? It was pretty good. The chickpeas probably could have been cooked a little longer, but I'm not really sure how tender they would have ever gotten. One thing we agreed on was that the carrots would have made an excellent dish on their own. And it certainly wouldn't have taken three days...

Smoked and Steamed Salmon Rillettes

Starting with this post, I'm going to add a new feature to each new adventure of Cooking Bouchon. Somewhere, somehow I'm going to document the the 'firsts' that I encounter during that particular session in the kitchen. The new stuff is the most challenging and the most interesting to me, being that I started this whole activity mostly for my own education and edification. Now on to Smoked and Steamed Salmon Rillettes.

First, Keller's introduction provides us with the usual insight into both how the cooking should be approached as well as the final dish itself. Here we get a little lesson on rillettes (First #1). For the uninitiated like me, rillettes are typically meat mixed with its own fat served as a spread. I've heard of pork and rabbit rillettes, but not of salmon ones until now. This might be in part due to the next statement of truth from Keller. Salmon, while fatty as fish may go, is certainly not pork. Because of this lack of fat, we're going to put some butter in this sucker. Last up, a little lesson on steaming raw salmon. I don't have any kind of steamer other than a vegetable steamer, so that's what got used. Another proposed option is poaching the salmon in court bouillon. Court bouillon, by my count of Keller's recipe, requires 14 ingredients. Granted, some of these everybody in the world has laying around their kitchens (water), but that's a ton of work to poach a half pound salmon filet. Vegetable steamer it is for me.

Ok, some actual food. The only modifications I made to the recipe were to cut the yield in half and to not marinate the salmon in Pernod. I've never actually cooked with Pernod, but I am not a fan of anything that even remotely tastes like anise, licorice, or any thing similar. So that was out. Everything else was by the book.

The recipe calls for salmon filet, smoked salmon, shallots, creme fraiche, lemon juice, eggs, butter, and chives. And some basic seasonings, but I don't give away entire recipes here, remember?

What, you don't see the chives there? That's because I totally forgot about them until I was about three rillettes in right before dinner. We ate them with chives, but you're not going to see any pictures with chives in them around here. Ok, if you really want to see some chives, head over to the asparagus post.

First up is to steam the salmon (First #2). This took all of about four minutes for me. This was probably because I had halved the recipe and then halved that piece of salmon to fit into my little vegetable steamer. It came out medium-rare, as directed, and not eating all of it right then was a bit of a challenge. While all of this was going on, I sauteed up some shallots in a tablespoon of butter.

Now for the fat. What? I just talked about a tablespoon of butter? That's not fat. How about throwing in another stick and and mashing it around. That's fat. Once that's nice and creamy looking, in goes some creme fraiche (First #3).

Everything gets combined in a bowl in some pre-determined order so that the fish doesn't get absolutely pulverized, and then transferred into glass crocs. In my case there were two crocs, one to be eaten in a couple of hours and one to be sealed with clarified butter (First #4) for later enjoyment. Here's a picture of the results:


And one step closer to my mouth:


Now it's not the most visually pleasing dish of them all, but it's probably one of the best I've made so far, save possibly the desserts. It was smoky, salmon-y, and creamy. You could make a meal out of it fairly easily. That might not be the healthiest option, but it would be delicious. So, here's a recap of the new things:

1. Rillettes. I'd never really even heard of them, except for a possibly skimming over in Bourdain's book.
   
2. Steaming salmon. I hadn't done this before either, and it turned out to be very easy. I was a bit wary of getting the doneness right, but it was pretty easy. And deliciously moist and tasty.
   
3. Using creme fraiche. I've eaten it before, but never cooked with it. Not much else to say here.
   
4. Clarified butter. I'd never made it before. I was worried that skimming the junk off of the top would be difficult, but it really wasn't. It was pretty easy in fact. You want to see the rillettes, sealed with clarified butter? Are you sure? Ok then:
   

How great of a picture is that? That really is it, I swear. Here it is from a bit of a better angle:


In a few days I'll crack open that top layer, and enjoy that butter-soaked salmon in the middle. If I'm feeling healthy and hungry I may even go for the plain old rillettes at the bottom. Mmm, rillettes.

Roasted Beet Salad

The introduction to this recipe talks about beets being one of the best vegetables in the world. It read, verbatim, 'Beets are about the best vegetable in the world.' See, you get the truth around here.

The ingredients and preparation of the recipe is about as easy as it comes. The grocery list for this was nothing more than beets, red wine vinegar, OJ, red onion, and herbs and seasonings. For the visually-inclined:


The procedure goes something like this:

1. Roast beets
2. Marinate beets
3. Plate beets
4. Eat beets

Step one takes a lot longer than you would think. I left them in there for about 1:45, and they probably could of used another 15 minutes or so. There's a neat little hint on peeling beets using a paper towel after they're cooked that works really great, certainly a lot better and neater than peeling them while they're uncooked.

Step two is pretty self explanatory. Step three is as well, with the note that you add the onion somewhere in between steps two and three. That lets them mingle with the beets and marinade for a bit, and turn a really cool color.

Step four was about as expected. The marinade wasn't overwhelming by any means. In fact, it was really way way in the background. I say that was as expected because of the little love fest paragraph introducing the recipe. This is meant to taste like beets with a slight onion tang, and that's exactly what it does. We ate it with gnocchi with mushrooms and butternut squash. It wasn't exactly a magical pairing, but it worked out all right.

Oops, two more steps:

• Wash your hands and everything in your kitchen.
• Throw all the paper towels, foil, and everything else that's disposable away. Helpful hint: Put everything in a clean bag first. If you skip this step, you're neighbors will probably strongly consider calling the cops after they stumble upon your twenty blood red paper towels in the trash.