Kombu Cured Salmon, Cooked Sous Vide

Kombu (kelp) is full of glutamic acid which provides Umami -- the rich savory "6th taste". Chefs are curing fish with it and serving it raw, but we're not convinced of the quality of our store-bought Norwegian salmon so we're going to cook ours gently. We don't want to overpower the flavor from the Kombu, so we'll cook it sous vide with minimal seasoning rather than sauteing or broiling.

If the Salmon has skin, remove it so the Kombu can penetrate.
Soak the Kombu until pliant, and wipe down with a slice of Lemon.
Lightly salt the Salmon and let rest while the Kombu hydrates.
Wrap the Salmon in the Kombu and put in a vacuum bag and seal.
Let cure 1-24 hours.
Cook in a water bath at 50C/122F to 52C/125F for 30 minutes.

I don't have a record of how this turned out, but am posting it anyway in hopes that -- now that I can search for it -- I'll make it again and report back.

Croquetas de Sepia y su Tinta: crunchy and rich

Croquetas are little fried balls of bechamel containing something like jamón, chicken, bacalao, cheese and nuts, or in this case, squid with its ink. Almost every little café serves them as a tapa, but usually not the squid ink variety. This is my favorite flavor: the ink gives it a rich "earthiness" (which seems like the wrong word for a sea creature). The proteins are usually diced very small, to provide some texture without poking through the crunchy crust.

Croquetas topped with "allioli rapidísimo"

Sepia and Choco refer to the same species (cuttlefish), while Calamar (squid) is a different beast; both work fine. Many recipes add onions, cooked eggs, wine, nutmeg, etc, but I think those additions would be distracting. This video recipe is quite detailed, but he's using squid already cooked in its ink. Another video makes the bechamel with oil (no butter), and that seems very Spanish to me, I'll do that too. We get squid and separate frozen  packets of ink (4 for 0,69€), and we'll cook the squid then its ink in the bechamel's oil. The bechamel is equal parts by weight of fat (oil, butter, or a mix) and flour. The ratio of milk to fat+oil is about 2.5-2.8. I used Squid, an amount I had on hand.

These are easy enough to make, although the shaping/coating can be a little fussy so having a friend speeds the process.

One of my source recipes made an "allioli rapidísimo" which I made, and it turned out well, so I've written that up separately. 

Makes about 24, and a tapa-sized serving is probably 3 per person. After cooking and cooling, extras  freeze and reheat surprisingly well, baked.

100 g        Olive Oil (doesn't have to be Extra Virgin)

150 g        Sepia/Calamar, cleaned, body and tentacles, fine dice
  1 clove    Garlic, minced
  2 packets  Squid Ink ("tinta")
100 g        Flour

500 ml       Milk, whole
 to taste    Salt

Flour

Egg, beaten
Panko Bread Crumbs

Heat the Oil in a medium sized pan.

Add the Squid and Garlic and cook a few minutes until the garlic is barely golden.

Add the Ink and stir to distribute well.

Add the Flour, and mix thoroughly; cook 5 minutes to ensure there's no raw flour taste.

Add half the Milk to the Squid/Flour mixture, stir until it comes together;

add the rest of the Milk and repeat.

Cook to thicken and intensify, stirring continuously until you have a sauce thicker than cream, perhaps yoghurt-like: you want a stiff mixture when it's cool so you can form them.

Put in a tub, cover tightly with film, cool, then refrigerate; it should be quite stiff.

You can use this time to make an allioli if you like.

For shaping and coating, it helps to have a friend: one scoops, shapes, and coats in Flour, the other then coats in Egg and Panko.

Set out separate bowls of Flour, beaten Egg, and Panko.

Scoop out a bit and make a bite size ball or cork-like shape; a #30 disher/scoop can help here. 

Drop in the Flour, transfer to Egg and coat, then to Panko to cover; this can get messy.

Repeat until all the Squid Bechamel is used.

I like to chill these before frying but it's probably not necessary.

Fry in batches in hot oil, about 190C/375F, until golden all around;

if they soften and leak the filling, remove immediately.

Drain on a paper towel lined plate.

Serve with an allioli or other sauce. 

Eat promptly, while hot.

How it turned out, next time...

The texture was good, creamy rather than liquid or stiff. The filling didn't have enough fishy/squiddy flavor, and wasn't as dramatically black as I wanted. The squid shrank a lot when cooking and was not very apparent in the bite.

Next time, bump up the squid to 200-300 g. Cut it into larger pieces, pea sized, since it shrinks so much. Double the ink to 4 packets.

Consider boosting flavor by adding a seafood stock to the bechamel and cooking it down to intensify.

Ruth Reichl's Pasta with Reduced Seafood Cream Sauce -- and Sea Urchins or Scallops

This is based on Ruth Reichl's "Michele's Pasta and Scallops" from her book "Comfort Me With Apples". Concentrating a flavorful fish stock -- then reducing it again with cream -- creates an intense, indulgent sauce. We've served this home made fettuccine and scallops, but the version pictured here is even better, topped with sea urchins and home made angel hair pasta that holds the sauce more gracefully. 

It's easy to make, just make sure you use good ingredients. We've been making it since 2003, it's a treat. Be warned that Sea Urchins are even more expensive than Scallops, a little flat will set you back about $14; they are quite perishable.  Makes a rich dinner for two.

2  cup  Fish Stock (use good stuff, not that junk in a box or can)

1  cup  Heavy Cream

1  flat  Sea Urchins ("tongues"), or 1/2 pound Sea Scallops

         Kosher Salt

1/2 Lb   Pasta, preferably home made angel hair

1  bunch Parsley, chopped fine for a garnish

1  Tbs   Lemon Juice, fresh, optional

1  Tbs   Toasted Bread Crumbs, wildly optional

Get pasta water boiling. Do the rest while it's heating.

Reduce Stock to 1/2 cup, about 5 minutes. I found a measuring cup to be helpful in judging this reduction and the next.

Add cream, simmer to reduce mixture to 2/3 cup, about 6 minutes. It's fine if the cream bubbles vigorously, it won't burn like milk would. It should start to take on a caramelized color and aroma. When sufficiently reduced, adjust Salt (don't salt earlier, the reduction will make it too intense), and keep warm on a very low flame.

Flat of Sea Urchins, home made Angel Hair pasta

Cook the pasta in salted water. If you use dried pasta you might want to start this step earlier; if using fresh, maybe a little later so it doesn't get ready before the scallops. Reserve 1/2 cup of the pasta water. Drain.

If you're using Sea Urchins, you don't need to cook them -- think sushi.

If you're using Scallops, dry them well, sprinkle generously with coarse Salt, and freshly ground Pepper (the black pepper flecks look good against the cooked scallops when served). 

Heat a heavy metal (dude) skillet; I use a cast iron. Film with oil. Grill scallops until just barely cooked, about 1-2 minutes per side. Transfer to plate, cover to keep warm.

Drain and plate the pasta.

Top with Cream Sauce; if it's gotten too thick, thin with a little of the reserved pasta water first.

Top with (uncooked) Sea Urchins, or seared Scallops.

Sea Urchins on intense sauce and pasta

Garnish with Parsley for a color contrast.

Squeeze a little Lemon Juice to brighten, if desired.

I think black pepper distracts from the color, but add if you like.

You can also top with toasted bread crumbs for a crunchy contrast, but that pushes this elegant dish to a more rustic direction.

 

Stuffed Squid in its own Ink

This is dramatically black, surprisingly rich, and not that difficult to make. Serve it over cooked white rice for good contrast.

Squid with ink sauce served over rice

The recipe is adapted from "¡Delicioso! The Regional Cooking of Spain" by Penelope Casas, "Cipirones Rellenos en su Tinta". I've streamlined it to avoid removing the squid from the sauce and overlap cooking and prep times. The squid we get, by Town Dock, frozen and available at BJs Wholesale, does not need the 2+ hours cooking time hers do; this should take about an hour total.  Makes two servings.

Stuffing

1 pound Squid, about 2-4 inches long, cleaned, defrosted; separate tentacles and tubes

1 Tbs Olive Oil

1 medium Onion, chopped very fine

2 cloves Garlic, minced

1.5 Tbs Parsley, minced

Salt

Pepper

I used a 3 Quart Pot, about 6-inches tall, but narrow enough that the sauce mostly cover the Stuffed Squid when it cooked later.

Finely chop the Squid tentacles and fins, saute in Olive Oil with Onion, Garlic, Parsley, Salt, and Pepper. 

Cook about 10 minutes.

Move it to a bowl and reuse the pot for the Sauce.

Sauce

1 tsp Squid Ink

1/8 C Dry Red Wine

1/8 C Fish stock, clam juice, liquid from defrosting the Squid, or Water

1 Tbs Olive Oil

1 medium Onion, chopped fine

2 clove Garlic, minced

4 ounces Bell Pepper, cored, seeded, finely chopped (we used an orange one)

4 ounces Tomato

Pepper, black

In a bowl, combine Ink, Wine, Fish Stock and set aside to dissolve a bit; the Ink is quite thick and wants to stick to itself and everything else.

Heat the Oil and saute Onions, Garlic, Peppers, Tomatoes, Parsley, Black Pepper for 5 minutes. Cover and cook slow for 15 minutes to break down the vegetables. 

Stir in the Ink/Wine mixture and any liquid from the defrosted Squid.

While the sauce cooks, stuff the squid.

Stuff the Squid

Load a wide-tipped pastry bag with the cooked stuffing; you can use a spoon but it's fidgety.

Stuff each of the Squid tubes, but don't over fill. 

Close each with toothpicks.

Combine, Cook

Whiz the Sauce with an immersion blender and pass through a fine sieve to strain out tomato skins, seeds, and leave a smooth sauce. Return to pan.

Add Stuffed Squid to the Sauce and cook until the squid is tender enough, ours took about 20 minutes.

If the sauce is thin, leave it uncovered or slightly covered; if thick, put a lid on it.

It should be like a thick gravy, not a loose liquid.

Taste the sauce and add Salt if needed, but be careful since the Ink is pretty salty.

While this is cooking, cook some Rice.

Serve

Add cooked Rice to warmed plates.

Remove the Squids one at a time, and remove the toothpicks; arrange squids on the rice.

Cover with the cooked Sauce.

Garnish with some minced Parsley for contrast.

Octopus Terrine #1 with gelatin

This terrine uses gelatin to capture the tasty liquid cooked out of the octopus, but I rushed things a bit so it's not as clear and dramatic as I'd like. The texture of the octopus was excellent, tender but not mushy; the aspic tasted of octopus liquid and was not too bouncy.

A friend mentioned having "octopus terrine" which I'd never heard of, but then recalled a chef's table meal at Galileo where we watched one of the cooks slicing something about the size of a mortadella but was clearly comprised of octopus tentacles.

Most preps I found simply cooked the octopus then tightly pressed the legs together in a mold while still quite warm, where the internal gel would set them overnight.

The version I'm doing here is based on a British site where they use gelatin combined with the juices exuded by the octopus to bind everything together. I had only small, hand-sized octopi and didn't want to waste the tasty liquid, so I cooked the beasts sous vide to capture the rendered liquid in the bag.

I wasn't very careful about this prep but would like to repeat it, perhaps without the gelatin, saving the juice for another dish like risotto.

1 pound Octopus, cleaned and thawed
Pimenton
Salt
Meyer Lemon Zest
1 envelope Knox Gelatin

Add the whole cleaned octopus to a sous vide bag. Add some Pimenton, Salt, and Meyer Lemon Zest. Seal and cook 5 hours at 77C. The octopus will shrink quite a bit and release a lot of liquid -- I figure we usually lose 1/2 to 2/3rd the weight of the octo to the liquid.

Strain a small portion of the octopus liquid into a bowl and set in another bowl of ice water: we need to cool it to prevent Gelatin from clumping. Add Gelatin powder to the cooled liquid, and let hydrate 5 minutes. Add the rest of the strained juice while still hot and stir well to combine.

With cling film, line a mold, ideally just big enough to contain the octo and liquid. Cut the tentacles from the octo, and slice the head. Add all the bits to the lined mold, then add the gelatin liquid.

Wrap the film around as snugly as you can, which won't be much as the gel is still liquid at this point. Weight the top to press firmly and chill overnight in the fridge.  We used little cutlery trays for kitchen drawers: they were about the right size and stacked neatly for the weights.

The next day, remove from fridge, unwrap carefully and tip out to a serving plate. To serve, heat a very sharp knife in hot water, and slice cleanly.

What Worked, What Didn't

I didn't rinse the octopi when I removed them from the sous vide bag, so the gel was muddied by the spices left on the beasties.

There's too much aspic, I think I'd prefer doing it without the gelatin, just saving the liquid for another use.

Cooking sous vide allows me to dial in the time/temperature I want, and captures all the tasty octopus juice, even if I don't use it in this preparation.

Seasoning was good -- just salt and pimenton -- but I didn't record what I used.

Next Time

Rinse the cooked octopi in hot water so the gel will be clear.

Use larger octopi with big legs.  Use about twice as much to fully fill the mold. 

If not using gelatin, we may need four times as much for the same size. Some recipes sans gel here, here, along with Chef Steps suggestions for sous vide time and temp.

Old Bay Crab Stock and Risotto

On the 4th of July, Summer got a big bushel of Eastern Shore crabs, cooked the way they do things 'round here -- steamed or boiled in plenty of Old Bay seasoning. A bunch of us sat around at Dee's, pickin' crabs all day, and we saved all the bits we didn't eat -- shells, small legs, even all the guts and gubbins. At the end of the day, she and I split up the spoils to make stock.

We had some qualms about using the "mustard", "lady fingers", etc -- they're things we don't eat. But I figured that those masters of stock -- The French™ -- wouldn't waste anything so neither would I.

I got a giant pot I used to use for homebrewing, about 8 gallon capacity, and loaded it up with all the shells and offal; it came nearly to the top of the pot.  I added some carrots and celery, and some trimmings of fennel and onion we keep in the freezer for making stock. I added enough water to cover, and it came right up to the edge of the pot.  I brought it to boil then backed it off to a low low simmer.  After a while, I skimmed the scum with a fine mesh skimmer.

Crabs and aromatics, most of the water added, heating up

Usually, fish stocks only simmer for about 45 minutes -- that's all you need to extract the flavor and you don't want to impart a cooked taste. I tried it at about that time, and it seemed a bit weak, so I let it ride another hour or so: crab shells are thicker than fish frames.  I then had to strain it -- no easy feat! I pulled out the bigger shells and set them into strainers over bowls, then pulled out the small stuff to strain, then finally strained the liquid itself.  Whoa, a bit cloudy that!  I ran it through our finest chinois to filter out all the particulates I could, then gave it a taste. Still a bit thin.

I put the now residue-free stock back on the burner and boiled another hour to reduce and concentrate the flavor. Strained it again through the chinois, then set it to to chill in a sink full of ice water. After cooling I covered it and put it in the fridge overnight; it was about 2am by this point.

Next day, I did what we always do: ladelled out the stock into 2- and 4-cup ziptop baggies, laid flat on a cookie sheet, and froze them solid. This gives us good sized packages for cooking with later. I think I got about 3-4 gallons of stock.

It was still a murky greenish brownish color, not particularly appetizing.  I needed to cook something with it to see how it tasted in context and how it looked. I initially planned on doing a seafood risotto, but figured the color might be better for a dark roux gumbo.  But it's summertime here and risotto seemed a better dish, so that's what we made.

I sauteed some shallots and garlic in some nice olive oil, then added the Arborio rice and sauteed it a bit until it turns a bit translucent. Then I added the preheated stock a bit at a time to cover, and cooked and stirred until the rice exuded starches and began to turn tender (no, you don't need to use your grandmother's wooden spoon, or always stir in a clockwise direction; it's pretty forgiving). I kept adding hot stock until the rice was the right texture, with just a bit of a bite left.  We threw some shrimp in at the very end to cook through, then served, garnished with a bit of paprika.

Risotto with shrimp

"This is really good!", exclaimed Irene. It had a definite seafood taste, but not like fish -- it had the sweetness of good Chesapeake Bay blue crabs.  There's a slight hit of heat from the spicy Old Bay, but not overwhelming; the salt level is in check, too. The color was a bit off, not something you'd serve at a white tablecloth restaurant, but I'm willing to overlook that.

Now I'm really glad we saved all the crab bits and made so much stock!

Octopus sous vide and grilled

We've had some excellent octopus at Dino's and Zaytinya in DC -- tender and charred. When we enquired, both said they were first slow cooked, then charred over open flame; Dino said he then sautés his quickly for service. We wanted to replicate that at home and figured sous vide would be the way to cook until tender, and the barbecue would give it a good char.

We found 1.160 Kg (2.5 Lb) frozen Spanish octopus for $10/pound at Mediterrafish. We defrosted it overnight, then cut off the legs and head (already cleaned), tossing the middle containing beak and eyes.

We bagged it with some frozen olive oil, then chilled in the freezer an hour before vacuum sealing to prevent sucking out all the water.

Typical tenderization methods include smashing the octopus on rocks, beating with a mallet or even a daikon. Cooking techniques usually are to bake in a covered pot (to collect liquid and self-braise) at a very low temperature for a long time, or to boil (with the old wives tale addition of a wine cork, debunked by Harold McGee).  Boiling would lose any liquid that would be released from the octopus, so we used sous vide to keep the beast immersed in its own liquid while slowly cooking at a low temperature.

Different folks seem to sous vide octopus for 3-8 hours between 74-83c (165-180F), some reporting chewiness at lower times and temperatures. We went with 75c (167F) for 5 hours.

We'd read that octopus releases a lot of liquid when it cooks, and it sure did. Our long fat legs seemed to lose half their length and girth, and the vacuum bag was full of a reddish liquid.  We let the bag cool slowly on the counter in hopes the legs might reabsorb some of the liquid, before chilling overnight in the fridge.

The next night, we drained the liquid and weighed the octopus: 315 g.  We'd ended up with 27% of the weight we'd started out with -- that jacks up the price for the meal quite a bit!  What we figured might feed four or more would not be barely enough for two for dinner.  We strained the liquid and will make risotto from it: at least it's not going to waste.

At the barbecue, we brushed the legs and head with olive oil and dusted generously with pimenton, like a pulpo a la gallega presentation. I used skewers to keep the octopus parts from falling through the grates, and grilled for a few minutes a side.

What worked, what didn't

The octopus turned out tender enough, with a slight mucilaginous-ness which may be due to not rinsing off loose skin after cooking.  We didn't get the crisp char we wanted at all, and the octopus stuck a bit to the grill: these may be connected, as I didn't scrub and oil the grates.

The skewers worked well at holding things together and removing them to plates quickly.

It's also disappointing that $25 worth of octopus barely fed two people. I'll look around the Asian markets, and our local Brazilian/Portuguese store says they carry it.

Next Time

If I could determine a way to reduce loss to liquid I would, even if I sacrificed a bit of tenderness.

Thoroughly rinse off the loose skin after cooking so we don't have any mushiness on the outside.

Get the coals really hot and close to the grill grates, then clean and oil them before adding the octopus. Use the skewers for cooking again.

Mahi Mahi al Pil Pil

I think we may have broken new ground here: the classic Basque Pil Pil sauce is always made with bacalao -- salt cod. We repeated the modern poaching-in-olive-oil technique that we used recently, but this time for mahi mahi. It rendered a lower quantity of the gelatin required to make this wonderful emulsified sauce than bacalao, but it was plenty to sauce the fish: like bacalao, the fish -- along with good olive oil -- produced its own hollandaise/mayonnaise-like sauce, super rich. In tonight's experiment, we also tried a sea trout because it had a thick subcutaneous layer of fat, but it didn't render the gelatin like bacalao does, so it could not make its own sauce.

Mahi Mahi and Sea Trout with Pil Pil sauce, shishito peppers, potatoes

We reasoned that a cold-water fish with a layer of fat would work like cod, from which bacalao is made, so we got sea trout (150g); it looks very much like salmon.  We also wanted to try a warm-water fish like we find when we visit Florida, so we got mahi mahi (270g). The quantities don't really matter here, the technique does.

We put each fish in its own small pan, skin side up (the skin sticks if it's touching the bottom), and covered with tasty extra virgin oil; we added a couple cloves of garlic to each. Heat up each to poach the fish, and hopefully release some precious gelatin which will act as an emulsifier.  Keep the oil well below boiling of water so you don't evaporate off any rendered gelatin. The trout released no gelatin, but the mahi mahi seemed to release a little.  The oil was about 90C/194F.

We pulled the trout out after about 15 minutes, but the mahi mahi is a more dense fish so we left it for about 30 minutes. Our theory is that the gelatin comes from just under the skin, so we pulled off the skin and added it back to the hot oil to cook another 10 minutes. We strained the oil into a measuring cup and let it settle, and after another 10 minutes or so were delighted to see oil on top and something that looked like heavier, water-based gelatin on the bottom. I separated most of the oil off and poured the gelatin portion into a tall narrow glass to separate further.

Oil on the top, gelatin on the bottom

I slurped the bottom layer of what we optimistically assumed was gelatin with a turkey baster and transferred it into a cool skillet. I then whipped this a few minutes with a fine mesh strainer to beat air into it and was very happy to see a foam form, the precursor to an emulsion. I added some of the now-cooled oil little by little to establish the emulsified sauce.

Whipping the gelatin until a white foam is established

It seemed more thin than the bacalao-based emulsion but I kept adding oil and it built up nicely. I had the heat on as low as it can go on my cooktop, but I'm not sure I needed any heat at all -- I think too much heat would cause the sauce to break.

Add the fishy oil little by little at first, more aggressively when the sauce is established

Once well-established I could add more oil with impunity. This 19 second video should show the sauce coming together.

The sauce was rich with olive oil flavor, a fine quality oil pays off here since it's really the only ingredient.   It wasn't seasoned with anything, so when we plated, we added some salt and a squeeze of fresh lemon juice.

What did we learn?

I've not seen recipes for pil pil using anything than bacalao. There are "shrimp pil pil" or "gambas al pil pil" but these are really shrimp in oil with garlic and hot chili pepper: "gambas al ajillo" and not an emulsified sauce at all.

Bacalao isn't the only fish from which gelatin can be extracted to use as an emulsifier for pil pil sauce. but not all fish will release gelatin. We have no idea which will and which won't, but mahi mahi definitely will. 

Next Steps

We'd like to repeat the experiment with the easier-to-find dried bacalao, the kind that's as hard as a sheet of plywood, and encrusted in salt. This is the classic form, and has to be hydrated with fresh water for a couple days. It has skin, and usually has bones which we're hope will be easy to remove once poached.  This is the baseline that all other work should really start from, and we're quite certain that will work fine.

Can we cook the bacalao with a minimum amount of olive oil using a sous vide technique? Use only the amount of oil you'd need for the sauce, maybe 200 ml, not the pots full we need for poaching. Freeze the olive oil solid (so it doesn't squirt out) and place in a vacuum bag with the hydrated bacalao and a couple cloves of garlic. Cook at the same 90C/195F for 30 minutes or so and check for rendered gelatin.

If sous vide works, can we use a lower, fish-friendly temperature, e.g., 50C/125F instead of the 90C/195F we used today?  We could hold the fish almost indefinitely without fear of over cooking, as long as we need to render gelatin.

Can we get gelatin from skinless, boneless bacalao that's now showing up in regular gringo grocery stores? This would make it much more accessible.

Can we season the sauce as we're building the emulsion? Salt seems easy, since salt cod's full of it. Can we add some lemon juice or white wine, or would those denature the gelatin and ruin the sauce?

Is the garlic important? In old school Catalan and Provençal aioli, garlic is the emulsifier. It's a very difficult sauce to make as it's a weak emulsifier and it breaks in the blink of an eye. Once we've established above what works with garlic, does the quality suffer without the garlic?

Stuffed Squid with Pepper/Pimenton Sauce

I really enjoy squid: it's quick to prepare, and stuffing them takes 'em to another level. We threw this together with things we had around the house and it came out rich, earthy, and intensely flavored. No recipe this time, just improvising.

Irene cooked the tentacles then we ground them in a food processor with some salami for flavor, some sautéed onions for sweetness and liquid, and an egg to bind it all. We wanted a smooth stuffing about the consistency of a pate. We used a pastry bag to stuff each of the squid -- so much easier than trying to force-feed them with a spoon. Then I sealed them shut by running a toothpick through the opening of each sock-shaped squid. It's a little tedious but not horrible for a work-day dinner.

We had some oil I'd infused with half a barrel of mint leaves harvested from the garden: we'd had squid stuffed with mint once in Sorrento and found it a surprisingly harmonious combination. So we shallow fried the stuffed squid in the minty oil until done. The squid don't take long and the filling was cooked except for the egg so it didn't need much time. Some of the filling squeezed out of the squid as they shrank while cooking; it looked like a flavorful fond so I strained off the oil and crisped up the shards in the skillet a bit.

Irene had meanwhile cooked up a zesty sauce of roasted red peppers, sautéed onions and garlic, and a healthy dose of pimentón -- Spanish smoked paprika. When the pimentón hit the oil left from the sauté, it filled the kitchen with such a powerful aroma I almost got whiplash as I spun around to inhale the fragrance. Great stuff.  She whizzed this all together with a stick blender until mostly smooth, resulting in a sauce that's more rich and thick than a tomato sauce, and much more interesting.

She sauced the plates and I burned the tips of my fingers yanking the toothpicks out of the squid socks before nestling them in their sauce.  A generous garnishing with the crunchy bits brought a further intensity and new texture to round it out.

Fun meal, and definitely worth doing again, perhaps next time with ground, spiced, pork belly.

Bacalao al Pil Pil

Bacalao is salted, dried cod; pil pil is the amazing Basque sauce that is created by the addition of olive oil, which is whipped into a Hollandaise to Mayonnaise-like creamy texture.  In this post, I'll share a modernist technique we learned at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival's Basque food demonstrations: it's much more reliable than older procedures we've tried. This will be a fairly detailed post because I want you to be successful when you make it -- it was a revelation to us.

Background

I've written about my love for Bacalao elsewhere in this blog. While popular in the Nordic countries, Portugal and Italy, I've mostly had Spanish bacalao dishes -- specifically from Catalunya and the Basque country. It's got a firm texture and slight funk that I like.

But what I'm really excited about is the pil pil sauce, and how it's different from it's more famous emulsified cousins. What's cool about pil pil is that it needs no added emulsifier to make it thick and stable.

Emulsions

An "emulsion" is a mixture of two or more liquids that normally won't stay together as one. An oil and vinegar salad dressing is one example: it's unstable -- you have to shake it to get them to mix, and if you let it sit, the oil and vinegar will separate.

An "emulsifier" is an ingredient that will help the separable liquids combine in a stable way. In a Hollandaise sauce, the egg yolk keeps the water and fat in the butter together in a sauce. In Mayonnaise, egg yolk does the same for the oil, vinegar and lemon juice. In the Mediterranean, Aioli sauce uses just garlic as an emulsifier to make a sauce from of olive oil; this is a more difficult sauce to make as garlic has less emulsifying power than yolks. Less commonly, paprika can be used as an emulsifier. The food industry has developed plenty of concoctions used as emulsifiers.

In pil pil sauce, there is no egg yolk, no garlic, no other emulsifier. Everything needed to thicken the sauce comes from the fish itself -- pretty cool!  My understanding is that there are proteins between the skin and flesh of bacalao that act as emulsifiers when leached out as part of the cooking process: every recipe for pil pil I've seen says you must use skin-on bacalao, presumably for this reason.

Science vs. Grandmothers

Teresa Barrenechea's book, The Basque Table, describes the classic technique. After rehydrating and desalting the bacalao, it is simmered in water, then placed skin-side up in a earthenware casserole. A small amount of olive oil is added and the fish is swirled around in a circular motion through the oil until an emulsion forms. Oil is slowly added to the existing emulsion to build the sauce. As she says in the book, "Bacalao al pil pil is technically difficult to make, but not too hard for the home cook to master."

In my experience, it's exceptionally hard to get the emulsion to start; and there are many variables including the amount of heat to apply, whether to add a touch of water, when to add the oil, etc. We've left a lot of the clay from the bottom of our cazuela on our gas cooktop ring in the process of swirling for what seemed like an eternity. This technique, handed down from grandmother to grandmother, may be classic but there must be a better way -- we need to understand why the emulsion forms.

The Basque cooking demonstrations at the 2016 Smithsonian Folklife Festival finally revealed the secret: science!

Chefs Igor and Igor from Escuela Superior de Hosteleria Bilbao gave a great demonstration of this sauce.  After hydrating bacalao, they poached it skin-side up in olive oil for 10 minutes to cook it. They kept the temperature low so that they didn't boil off the precious juices that the cod exuded, which they called "gelatin"; I interpreted this to mean the liquid should never reach the boiling point of water. They also held the microphone to the pot and explained that the noise the small bubbles made was the origin of the name "pil pil"; there is some debate on this matter, but it seems as reasonable as any other explanation. They set the cooked cod aside and poured out the oil containing the gelatin and allowed it to settle out; they then separated the oil from the magical cod juice.

Chef Igor holds the separated cod gelatin with a layer of oil on the top. This is precious, "you can't buy it."

They then poured some of the white liquid into a pan on a very low heat and agitated it to start the emulsion by whipping some air into it. Instead of the grandmotherly technique using the fish itself, they used a small strainer, something that is great at whipping air into the liquid.  When the liquid started to set up a bit into a thicker consistency, they dribbled oil into it -- slowly at first then more rapidly once the sauce was well established. It worked beautifully.

Procedure

We got bacalao, skin on and without bones from a local Portuguese/Spanish shop. They have the dried bacalao but one kind had no skin and the other had bones; the skin-on boneless one was kept in the fridge, and had already been rehydrated so it was basically ready to use.  The 1.6 Kg was $28 so it's not cheap, but neither is fresh cod.

We defrosted it then put it in a pot, skin side up, and covered with good olive oil. We added some garlic cloves and a dried spicy chili, and set it on very low heat.

Because of the thickness of these cod loin sections, it required quite a bit of oil. We heated it very gently, ensuring the oil never came near the boiling point of water, which would evaporate the fish juice. Below, there are 4 cloves of garlic, but you can also see little globules of the gelatin coming out of the fish and falling to the bottom of the pot -- we knew we'd got it right at this point, science to the rescue!

Our cod loin was about 7cm/2.5in thick, about double that of the cuts the chefs used, so we cooked it 30 minutes to ensure the fish was thoroughly cooked through.  Fish is done when it's 50-54C/122-130F, so cooking it low is fine. We kept it below about 80C/182F and just watched in amazement as the fish continued to release more gelatin; check this 7-second video:

(In books, blogs and such we've read, chefs say that when fish exudes white protein it's just at the point of being overcooked. Brining, they say, helps prevent this.  We wonder if the "cod juice" we're obsessing over here is the very same protein liquid that others are trying desperately to prevent.)

We pulled the fish out of the oil and set it aside; it was cooked throughly enough that it threatened to break apart along the muscle fibers, perhaps a bit too long or hot.

We poured out the oil and liquid and let them separate, then extracted the gelatin; we weren't worried that it had some oil left on it -- the pil pil needs it.

We added all the cod gelatin to a pan that was barely heated -- again, we didn't want to evaporate the elixir.  We used a small, fine-mesh strainer to whip air into it. Miraculously, it started thickening a bit after just a couple minutes of agitation.

 

We drizzled a tiny bit of the fishy olive oil into the emerging sauce and watched it get absorbed and expand the sauce.

And then more oil, a little faster now:

Then more oil, without worrying much about how much we were adding:

It thickened to a Mayonnaise-like consistency. The color comes exclusively from the good olive oil we used, not eggs or other additives.

This may have been too thick for a classic pil pil, but it tasted intensely of olive oil -- including the slight cough-inducing bitterness -- and fish. A thick, stable sauce using only olive oil, in addition to liquid from the fish itself. Rather amazing.

We used some of the left over olive oil to poach baby potatoes, and sautéed home-grown shishito peppers with coarse salt and a bit more of the oil like we'd prepare Catalan Padrón peppers, and sliced and fried the cooked garlic cloves as a garnish.  There's quite a bit of thick pil pil sauce here:

It tasted intense, and worked miraculously -- no magic, no granny's secrets, just a great cooking technique.

What worked, what didn't

Poaching the cod in oil to extract the gelatin worked so much better than protracted pot-shaking. The strainer helped aerate the emerging emulsion.

The taste of the good oil really came through.

Our pil pil was probably too thick for the classic standard, more a Mayonnaise than a Hollandaise consistency.  We had used all the exuded cod gelatin, but probably could have used at most half, reserving the rest for our next adventure.

We had 2 cups olive oil left over. It's not going to waste, we can keep it from oxidizing by freezing it, and use it little by little.

Next Time...

We'd like to find a thinner cut of fish: it would require less oil to cover and cook more quickly.

Cook the fish less, ours was just barely holding together.

Use less cod gelatin, we'd like a less thick sauce and we'd like to use the extra fish juice to make pil pil for other dishes.

We could thin the sauce by adding a dash of lemon juice or white wine, but we wonder whether the ghosts of Basque grandmothers would haunt us to our graves.

Is it true that only bacalao can be used? That it has to be skin-on? In the pot, we saw bubbles of the liquid coming out of the core of the body of the fish, not just from under the skin; try it with:

• skin-on fresh cod.
• skinless cod, fresh or rehydrated bacalao
• skin-on sea trout which also has a thick layer of subcutaneous fat

Monkfish sous vide with mint and basil

Our garden's overflowing with mint and a friend gave us a bunch of farmers' market basil, so we went with a Thai flavor to cook some monkfish. Since this fish takes a long time to cook, we used sous vide to keep it tender, poaching it in flavored oil in the water bath.

We stemmed the basil and mint, washed and dried, sliced fine, then poached it in some (fairly neutral) coconut oil to push the Thai flavor. We chilled that, with the herbs and the portioned monkfish so it would be solid when we vacuum bagged it: this worked well since the coconut oil sets just below room temperature.

A blog post tried a number of different temperatures and found 48C/118F to be the best so we heated the water bath and dropped the bagged fish and oil into it. Once the oil melted, we timed the cooking for 30 minutes. We use a Igloo Playmate cooler to minimize heat loss.

Meanwhile, Irene made a salad out of Malabar Spinach we'd gotten at the farmers' market. It's a more toothsome green so she dressed it early to allow the leaves to soften a bit. The dressing included lime juice, fish sauce, rice vinegar, sugar, salt, hot chili and sesame oil.

Once the fish was cooked, I strained the oil and seared the fish in cast iron with a bit of the oil.

We'd also gotten the season's first corn on the cob. We've made the grilled corn in the Pok Pok cookbook so we did a riff on that -- first cooking it in its husk in the microwave (our standard approach), then heating a bit more of the oil in a pan with some salt and chile flakes, giving it a little browning, then a lashing of fresh lemon juice.

What Worked, What Didn't

The sous vide was great for the monkfish. Cooking conventionally can dry out and toughen the outer area of the fish during the long cooking it needs, or leave the interior undercooked. This cooked it all the way through without overcooking. The time and temperature seemed fine.   The searing didn't add much texture, and that may be because my oil had a bit of the liquid from the herbs or fish so didn't produce a hard sear.

The oil did provide an attractive perfume to the fish, but not nearly so pronounced as we'd expected.  Afterwards, we chilled the oil so we could separate any herb/fish liquid from it, and plan to use the oil to poach squid -- mint and squid is a surprisingly good combination. The oil was fairly neutral with almost no coconut flavor; this is a good thing in most preps, but here we could have used more Thai stylings.

The corn finished in fat with spices and citrus is something we've taken to recently, and it worked here as well. An assertive coconut-flavored oil would take it in a more Thai-flavored direction.

We've never had this spinach before, but it turned out well. The plants are also said to like hot weather so would grow well in our garden when the rest of our salad greens have bolted or withered.

Next Time...

I'd like a good sear so maybe we could use a little fresh oil to avoid any chance of water-based liquid and also since the heat might be driving off the herbal aromatics. Or finish under the broiler or with our Searzall.

I'd also pre-cut the monkfish into medallions before bagging them in the oil. This should allow better flavor penetration and more surface area to sear.