My take on Salmon 40 C from Chefsteps

I have repeatedly hoorayed the online cooking community Chefsteps (https://www.chefsteps.com/) on this blog, and this is a new episode of festive outcries on their behalf. "Why", you may ask yourself clicking the tongue and raising a scorning eyebrow, "why this ever on-going lyrical outbursts about a website?" Well, it is because they are fun, easy to follow and are all about finding new and exciting ways of cooking.

This time I have tried out their Salmon 104 F, or 40 C for us in the Celsius world. This project is described in detail on http://www.chefsteps.com/projects/salmon-104-f#/salmon-104-f and I encourage you to try it out.

At the core of the dish is a piece of salmon that has been cured and cooked sous vide at 40 degrees Celsius, which is a very low temperature, indeed.

As you may know, food may be prepared using either salt (as in curing) or heat (as in cooking). Both adding enough salt to cure meat or fish or enough heat to cook it will start to unravel and entangle causing gelling. It turns out that adding both salt AND heat may produce the same result with less salt and less heat producing a spectacular texture. This is what this dish is all about.

After brining the salmon for the required 45 minutes I used a ziplock bag for the sous vide step. Since I wanted to add oil to the fish in the bag, pulling a vacuum on it using my edge style vacuum machine was not an option. For that you need a chamber machine, and currently they are way too expensive for us amateurs. Someone need to come up with an inexpensive one!

To get the air out, I just lowered the bag into the water bath until the ziplock was just above the water surface. This will press the air out so that you can lock the bag and have very little air in it. Depending on the stiffness of the bag, some air may still be left in it, though.

The horseradish cream was easy. I grated fresh horseradish using a microplane and popped it into the cream and left it in the fridge for about 7 hours. According to the recipe you can have it in for up to 24 hours. After 7 hours, mine had a nice but not overpowering taste of the horseradish. After straining I added the salt and the Xanthan and whipped it into a soft cream. The small amount of Xanthan will make the cream velvety. I must say that I did find the end product a slight bit on the salty side, so I may take down the salt a bit next time.

I could not get hold of watercress. What I ended up with was spinach for the pure. This actually worked quite well. And I did love the way the pure is made. After blanching and chilling it, just give it a swirl in the blender together with whatever amount of water that naturally clings to it from the ice bath. Then add 0.1% Xanthan in relation to the contents of the blender. The Xanthan will thicken it a bit and also make sure the tiny spinach particles are suspended in the liquid so that the pure does not start to separate. Salt is added just before serving so that the salt does not have time to start discolouring the nice green pure. I will be trying this with other ingredients as well now.

For the pickled onions I used red onions (could not get baby ones) and spring onions. One has go go with what one can get hold off. This is really easy to make except for one little sentence in the recipe. After splitting the red onion into separate petals, you should

"Finally, peel and discard the membrane from the petals."

Now, there's a time consuming task for you! And afterwords, when reading about the plating of the dish, there is

"You can peel the membrane from each layer before of after the pickling, or not at all."

Hm. Next time it may be not at all.

So, with all the elements done, I was ready for plating. This project on ChefSteps also talks extensively about the plating of the dish. All the ChefSteps recipes are always plated beautifully. I always try to mimic them, but mine mostly turn out looking like a 5-year old had a go at it. I really need to practice this. On this dish I did not do too badly, though. Just need to keep the amounts and sizes down a bit. And the olive oil did not add much, just made a bit of a mess.

All in all a fun project. If you are into a bit of modern cooking and fancy something light, give it a go!