Salmon Poached in a Liqourice Gel, Black Truffle, Asparagus, Vanilla Mayonnaise, Manni Olive Oil
Specialty Equipment: water bath, thermometer, vacuum machine
Specialty Ingredients: gellan F, gellan LT100, pure licorice, black truffle
Days: 1
Dish as in The Fat Duck:
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We, the Dutch, form a nation of liqourice lovers. It all starts with visits to your grandma, where a box full of liqourice candy is hidden in the cupboard and some of it handed to you like it is the most valuable product in the world. This engrains a deep love of all things liqourice from an early age. With some this leads not to a love affair with the candy, but an extreme aversion. I love the stuff, so I was happy to cook this dish, which is a combination of salmon and liqourice. I had some trouble figuring out what a ‘stick of concentrated liqourice’ was (as called for in the recipe) and where to get it, but thanks to a comment in a previous post I was pointed to another name for it, namely ‘pure licorice’. I also found out my parents and grandparents used to get this type of liqourice and make flavored water out of it by soaking some sticks in water.
I bought a box of ‘liquirizia pura’ from a company called Oronero at a local wholesaler, but you could probably also find some sticks in an old fashioned candy store. The stuff has the characteristic black color of liqourice, a deep bitter flavor and is quite hard. Together with low-calcium mineral water it forms the basis for the stock the salmon is ‘poached’ in. Gellan is the other main ingredient in the stock, responsible for it sticking and staying on the salmon, even when heated. Gellan is sensitive to salts, so by using a low-calcium water you avoid the stock setting before the fish is dipped into it. The water with the lowest concentration of calcium at my supermarket was from SPA, with 4,5mg Ca per liter. Other mineral waters had values ranging from 30mg to 80mg, so I figured the SPA one had the right level.
The stock is made by boiling the mineral water with some of the liqourice, pureeing it, sieving it and blending it with gellan F and gellan LT100.
When blending the stock in a blender it foams up like crazy resulting in a sort of liqourice cappuccino.
I had some trouble with the stock and the gellans. I made the stock, but did not use it instantaneously and after a couple of minutes the stock started to set on the surface and fifteen minutes later the entire stock had a granular texture making it impossible to coat salmon in a smooth liqourice layer. I thought about it and the two causes I could come up with is that the stock cooled down too much, therefore setting the stock, or the mineral water still had too much calcium and is not suitable for this dish.
Anyway, before all this misery I got one piece of salmon through the stock and had one smooth coated piece. Wait, before I forget, I stuffed one piece with truffle. I didn’t feel the truffle would add anything to the dish (overkill?), so I only prepared one slice of salmon. You stuff it by opening it up horizontally, leaving the fish in one piece, coat it with some truffle and glue it back together with transglutaminase. Although I’m not sure about the addition of truffle, it is a fun little trick to hide some goodness in a piece of fish. Thanks to my vacuum machine I can vacuum pack the transglutaminase and truffles, so I just use it when needed, vacuum pack it again and put it back in the freezer. This benefits especially the transglutaminase, because it is extremely sensitive to exposure to air.
To dip the salmon in the stock I stabbed it with a wooden skewer all the way through and used forks to maneuver it in the hot stock. My hands are not heat resistant, especially against near-boiling liquid.
On the left is a piece of salmon coated in stock that already gelled. What is interesting is that with both pieces a quick dip in the black stock resulted in a see-through coating. For the piece on the right I dipped it a second time in the stock, and only then did it have a complete dark exterior with no salmon color breaking out from the liqourice wall.
The dish is accompanied by vanilla mayonnaise, asparagus, grapefruit, balsamic vinegar and olive oil. I made the mayonnaise first. It is made from a (Chardonnay) vinegar reduction, vanilla seeds, Dijon mustard, eggs, table salt and arachide oil (I used grapeseed oil).
Next were the asparagus. They have to be peeled and cut in 8cm lengths. When shopping for this dish I came across purple asparagus and thought it would look good with the other components, so I used it instead of green asparagus. Contrary to the ‘purple passion’ story, the asparagus tasted just like green asparagus and after cooking even looked like them, so purple asparagus are actually not that different from their green cousins.
The last preparation (already the last one?) were the grapefruit cells. Here is some inside information on what the dissecting of grapefruits does to stagiaire’s at the Fat Duck kitchens. For a coupe of plates it not that bad of a job, but I can’t imagine having to do it day in day out for a fully booked restaurant. Removing the cells is simple, but time consuming, and if you’re going to do it you’ll soon figure out what works best for you.
Two garnishes are Manni olive oil and a balsamic reduction. The reduction is made by reducing a 15-year-old balsamic vinegar, but I didn’t follow this step. I think an excellent balsamic should not be heated and just be used like it comes in the bottle. I used a very tasty 12-year-old balsamic that delivers quite a punch without reducing it. As for the Manni olive oil, it is one of the most exclusive olive oils in the world. On their website you can read about the product, it’s production process, bottling and transportation. All this results in an olive oil that costs 44€ for 2 bottles of 100ml each (one box). The minimum order is five boxes, so 220€ for a few drops on the plate of this dish seemed a little steep. I don’t even know if this amount includes shipping costs. But I have the same feeling as with the balsamic, I would never integrate it in a dish with so many strong flavors. I would dip my bread in it and eat it with some salt. I feel it is used to give the name of the dish a nice ending, instead of it being a significant contribution to the recipe. Wow, this post becomes a bit serious.
Anyway, to complete the dish I vacuum packed the pieces of salmon and cooked them at 42˚C to the same temperature, which took about 45 minutes. The coating remained intact, although there was some brown colored water in the bags after cooking. I also cooked the asparagus (in oil) and plated the mayonnaise, grapefruit cells, balsamic and asparagus. Just like the strawberries dish, the salmon and asparagus are garnished by toasted, whole coriander seeds. Below a vertical cross-cut of the cooked, stuffed salmon.
I did not really enjoy this dish. It is not that the liquorice made me think of candy, but I just didn’t like the taste of it. It most definitely didn’t clash with the salmon, but I didn’t enjoy it’s presence. The funny thing is that the test subject that absolutely hated the leather essence in the olive purée, loved the liquorice in this dish. A complete reversal of our appreciation for a dish. The mayonnaise was ok, but not really my cup of tea, the asparagus, thanks to the cooking method, extremely tasty, and the olive oil and grapefruit were overshadowed by the salmon/liquorice combination. The bright point of this plate of food was the salmon: a mix of a raw and a cooked piece of salmon. It is not comparable with a medium-rare cooked salmon, it has a texture and flavor only achievable by cooking it at a low temperature in a water bath. If there is one thing I would recreate it would be the cooking of the salmon.
It’s funny about those purple vegetables: my mom had some purple beans in her vegetable garden and they also turn green when you cook them. Guess the colour is just for show! I think I’d have issues as well with the liquorice/salmon combination,it just doesn’t sound too appetizing. I do have to look into one of those new home immersion circulators that have just become available in the States: sous vide really does something for the food.
Marvelous work and a great blog! Those grapefruit aren’t much fun are they.
Keep up the good work,
Lennie
He Karen, sous vide is great, so I would look into it. My only remark is it can be a lot harder to do properly than is often described. https://thebigfatundertaking.wordpress.com/2010/01/12/13-cookbooks-sous-vide/
Lenny, a couple of pieces of grapefruit are ok, but thank god I didn’t have to feed an army.
Well ive just spent all morning making this dish and ….er…hummmmm……im still deciding if i like it or not.The actual salmon “dipping” temperature would have been nice to know.I phoned the fat duck to find this out but didnt get an answer…too busy.So by trial and error i found that repedative dipping 3 or 4 times coated the salmon with a beautiful shiny gel.The asparagus wouldnt stand up so i wrapped them in a piece of salmon just for a nice “photo” look.
As far as the grapefruit goes….i would recommend pomelo instead , nice and sweet and the segments fall apart beautifully.
Now ill go and edit the 80 photos i took .
Its so nice to know theres people out there that share my amateur passion….we`re all crazy.
And this site…my new discovery will take up a few hours tonight…forget reading the fat duck cookbook in bed for a night.
cheers.
Lol.I am amazed Alan that you had the balls to ring the fat duck to ask about how to cook one of their dishes!
I would have thought, perhaps wrongly, that HB et al have given away as much they want in the book. Yet, perhaps more importantly, you rang one of the worlds top 3 restaurants just to ask about cooking tips!
Their phone is nearly always engaged because of people trying to book, yet you imagined someone would answer the phone, pop the phone down, tieing up a FD phone line, then pop, most probably, over the road to ask at the kitchen how to cook the dish.
I am not having a go mate, you have awesome chutzpah, I however would never dream of doing such a thing.
doris
He man, good to hear stories from others.
I also found you had to dip the salmon multiple times in the liqourice for a good layer of gel, while the book instructs to only do it one time.
Gellan sets extremely fast when it cools, so as for the temperature I would always keep it as high as possible to prevent it from forming a gel.
I would love to see some pictres or get a URL if you’re gonna put it online.
“”As far as the grapefruit goes….i would recommend pomelo instead , nice and sweet and the segments fall apart beautifully.””
But that is against the spirit of the recipes, make your attempts a living hell, hehe.
Oh and just a footnote…. here was me thinking i was pretty obsessed with my food and my cooking……then i found this website………………
then i found a real proper nut case , shes an American girl , similar blog to this.
She`s cooked her way through the French laundry book…with photos
and now shes working through the Alinea book….with photos
Everyones gone nuts.
But i shall stick to this site for the time being as the Fat duck is my current obsession.
Anywhere i can send my photos to please ?
cheers
Alan
hey alan
could you let us know the web address for this other fl / alinea blog. i just discovered this one and its pretty inspirational.
cheers.
top comments and tips by the way, keep them coming please
http://cookthroughblogroll.blogspot.com/
I have the blog of The French Laundry in my links. It’s good stuff.
You can mail the photos to thebigfatundertaking@gmail.com. Are you gonna make any other dishes or already have?
Salmon was my first effort today….ive just emailed you some pics.Cheers.
Alan
After visiting the fat duck and subsequently following your method I can assuredly say that its pretty spot on – well done and many thanks for helping me replicate an astonishingly good dish!
My fat duck salmon dish had chargrilled artichokes instead of asparagus and it was topped with trout caviar (i used salmon roe, which is pretty much the same). Also i found Hestons recipe using agar flakes for the jelly, which is really simple and cooked the salmon in the dishwasher set at 50 degrees – it was perfect.
I’m gonna try the egg and bacon ice cream next. any suggestions?
He Doug, I haven’t made the dish, so can’t really help you there. I usually run into things when actually cooking a recipe, which is hard to predict from the book itself.
All I can say is go with your own taste, cause every bacon is different and you could end up with a nasty ice cream.
Actually, I wonder why Heston decided to use “pure liquorice” rather than starting liquorice root (“zoethout” or “sweet wood”, we Dutch call it). I’ve tried making liquorice from liquorice root and it was pretty tasty- it had a bit more root-flavour than usual store-bought liquorice. Especially considering the way the pure liquorice is used in this dish, there would be no point in using industrial, pre-made liquorice rather than self-made root essence.
I read two accounts of people explaining how to get the endocarps/juice cells out of grapefruit. One was from a supposed former Fat Duck intern saying they did it all by hand, and it was hell. Another account claimed they simply smashed skin-off grapefruit segments after freezing them in liquid nitro. In a kitchen where nitro is available (I hear you’ve found a good source now), my tendency would be to try the nitro method first- why complicate, right? If you happen to have some spare nitro at any point, I’d be interested in hearing how well that works (if at all)!
He Marc. Maybe the colour? I don’t know if you get a pure black colour from the roots. What’s interesting is that the presentation of the dish changed quite a bit recently and the liqourice gel seems to be a little lighter, more of a dark brown. Maybe a change to roots?
Somewhere in the book he states that he tried to use liquid nitrogen to separate the individual cells, but after thawing they turned bad, so it was back to manual labour.
The roots themselves won’t give you pure a pure black. If you’ve ever had the brown honey liquorice (honingdrop) they sell in Holland – that’s about the colour you’d normally get from roots (although it may go a bit darker when reduced further). I guess it’s one of those things where we’ve gotten so used to the coloured version that the original no longer looks “right”. Ever given a second thought to the colour of margarine and cheese? Here in the UK, Red Leicester is a particularly blatantly obvious example of dye abuse.
Did the mayonnaise you made for the dish differ alot from the mayonnaise you got at the Fat Duck? You didnt seem too satisfied about your version, but both you and other people I know have said that the mayonnaise served at the fat duck was one of the highlights of the entire menu.
I’ve made it myself once and I really liked the taste of it, but it was almost too thick to drag across a plate.
Hi, yeah the mayo was very good. Thick, luscious, coating your mouth, it was one of the highlights of the meal (how strange that may be for a ‘simple’ mayonnaise).
It should indeed be very thick, so you didn’t make a mistake. I think I had the same reaction as you and thinned it down a bit; not the way to go. Also, I wonder if the vanilla I use is top quality. I’ve read there is a definite difference between vanilla stalks, but always thought my wholesaler sold top quality stuff.
Your mayo looked pretty different to mine, but maybe that’s because of the grapeseed oil (I went with groundnut oil).
Anyway, I thought the mayo was great (I served it with salmon cooked sous vide, but without the liqorice gel since I’m still waiting for my Gellan to be delivered), but it wasn’t mind-blowing, so I figure I’ve must have done something wrong. Perhaps the vinegar, or the quality of the vanilla.
By the way, in some pictures of the salmon (for instance the one you took at the resturant), the liqorice-gel looks much thinner and has more of a brown-ish colour, although there are also pictures of it with a more solid and black coating. Do they make that gel differently nowadays, or is the coating just thinner?
He Adam, what vinegar did you use? Make sure to use chardonnay vinegar (or something similar) of good quality. Once I tasted the stuff from FORVM and compared it to cheap white wine vinegar I understood there’s a major difference in flavour.
I wanted to ask about the liqorice gel when I was there, but forgot. When they switched from the scattered presentation to the more streamlined one the coating changed as you said to a more thin, brown one. Knowing the Fat Duck they probably changed the recipe (Heston said the dishes are in a permanent state of evolution).
Funny how replicating a recipe can often be very difficult, at least to equal the taste of the original. There are so many small nuances absent from the book, you really have to get a close up view in the restaurant to see how it’s done.
Do let me know of any future attempts.
I couldnt find chardonnay vinegar anywhere, but I’ll probably order it online once the other ingredients are delivered, so I can make the entire dish. First I bought some cheap white wine vinegar in a supermarket, but I felt that it was much too strong, so I switched to a milder white balsamic vinegar. Does chardonnay vinegar go by any other names? The only two white vinegars I’ve found around here are “regular” white wine vinegar, which tastes horrible, and white balsamic vinegar.
Hm, perhaps the Fat Duck are using the roots instad of concentrated liqorice, as you discussed a few posts ago? Perhaps it will appear in a new edition of the book or something.
I’ll let you know 🙂 I’m gonna try to make some of the dishes at home when I find the time, although I won’t even be close to what you’ve accomplished. It’s really been a great blog to follow!
No, it’s just vinegar made from Chardonnay wine, so you’ll only have different brands. I think any good oilve oil/vinegar shop will carry it or a local wholesaler.
And Adam, I just had too much free time!
I think I’ll try to find some really good Chardonnay vinegar in a local deli shop, or perhaps order the Formv one online. I figure I won’t need much for the recipe. I’m gonna do some traveling soon, but I’ll start with the salmon dish when I get back home in a month. Hopefully my gellan has arrived by then. I’ll let you know the result 🙂
By the way, did you always use the same amount of ingrediens as the book says when you cooked the recipies? Or did you try to scale it all down? Using 1.6 liters of water (for the gel) for 4 small pieces of salmon sounds like throwing band aid on a gunshot wound. I suppose the amount of liqorice stock isn’t proportional to the amount of salmon, even though they do it in batches of that size.
Too much free time or not, it’s still friggin amazing to go through with it 🙂
The book is a pain in the ass when it comes to the coherence of individual components within a recipe. I scaled down constantly if I thought it wouldn’t effect the outcome (in a major way). I would reduce the amount of poaching liquid, but not below about 1 liter to keep it ‘workable’.
Thank you! It sounds reasonable, I’ll try to cut the amount of ingredients by half, that would give me about 1.2-1.3 liters of licorice stock. Perhaps one could even mess around with the amount of gellan to get a thinner coating and a less rubber-isch texture?
I also hate that the book says so little about plating, and the pictures does rarely help you with it either.
Amazing page!! From where did you get the licorice ORONERO? Thanks in advance 🙂
I got it at a local wholesaler. https://www.sligro.nl/