The Mind of a Chef (2012) s05e12 Episode Script
Surf N Turf
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Meat and fish are two completely different things.
Just as versatile, and I quite like that.
It's really incredible.
When it's good like this, it's like winning the lottery.
Very, very savory.
Look how sexy that looks.
It's like a primal feeling.
"I caught my lunch.
" It symbolizes everything that I love about your cooking.
It looks so delicious.
It's like I've died and gone to heaven.
Big on the umami.
That's, like That's, like, flavor.
I just love that, it's awesome.
- It's awesome.
- It's intense.
The whole snake head.
It cures any hangover any time.
Whoo! Okay, ready? First thing, take off the head.
Now we'll take the fillets off.
Belly, all the way to the spine.
Next, along the back.
Belly, back.
Flip it over.
Back, belly.
Now we have two fillets.
Follow it along the ventral line.
Belly, back, back, belly.
I went to the green market this morning, and I found some peas, pea shoots and some bush basil.
The sashimi dish we're going to do today is with sea bream, a classic fish used for sashimi in Japan.
First thing is, I'm going to take the skin off these fillets.
Where did you learn those techniques like that? Actually, I learned them working in Japan.
- Yes.
- And working with Japanese cooks.
Even when I was staging in Europe, there was always a Japanese stage.
- A trainee, yeah.
- So, you ask a lot of questions.
And then what is the difference in texture in between the belly and the back? The belly is a lot richer, because a higher fat content.
- Yeah.
- The back is much more muscular.
In fact, they say the best sea bream, the water is really deep, and the current is very strong.
Because the fish is constantly working to stay in place, it develops a stronger muscular texture.
It's very firm.
And they pride that.
- Yes.
- So I'm actually going to brine this fish.
And this is what I really wanted to show you.
We're going to make a vinaigrette with a sauce that we have made with the bream bone.
How do you treat the bones? We very lightly cold-smoke the bones, stack the bones in a pot with a tremendous amount of ginger.
- Oh, interesting.
- Completely cover it - Yeah.
- with dry sake, and then cook it all the way down to a glaze.
And it does its magic.
How shiny it is, right? - Yeah, and it's emulsified.
- Yeah, you're right.
It's intense.
It's intense but, it is very refined.
- Yes.
- And very harmonious, well balanced.
Oh, I can taste the bones at the end.
You end up with the fish flavor.
- Bream bones - Yeah.
re-served with the fish.
Super interesting.
It's almost like caramel.
Yeah, toffee sauce.
Fish toffee.
So, this is the base of your vinaigrette.
Yes.
That, and then, believe it or not, extra virgin olive oil.
Hey, California olive oil.
So, half and half.
It might need a little bit of acidity.
- A little bit of rice vinegar.
- Sure.
So, I'm going to give the fish a quick rinse.
Very gently.
So, the salt makes the flesh firmer? A little bit.
Removes any kind of stickiness - Ah, yes.
- on the outside.
And it gives a bit of saltiness to the fish, right? Yes.
I'm going to slice some slices from the back here.
Gonna cut some cucumbers.
They look beautiful and fresh, huh? They have a nice crunch to it.
Yeah.
Are you inspired by Japanese presentation? Very much so.
I'm fascinated by the idea of handcrafted.
Yes.
To me, that contributes to the entire appeal of a dish in front of a guest.
Fish toffee sauce.
The sauce has a lot of ginger in it.
That ties everything in with the cucumber and the peas as well.
Not too sweet.
No, no, no, it's cooking with the fish, the ginger loses, like, pungence, strong flavor.
It becomes more subdued.
Yeah.
Super good.
When I think of ginger, I also think of basil.
This is bush basil.
It's very fragrant.
It looks beautiful.
This is an homage to the product and to your philosophy of cooking.
Thank you.
These are all stuff that is just leftovers that - Most people would throw away.
- Exactly.
When you fillet salmon, there's always meat left on the spine, so we're going to use that today.
So, I'm going to just, uh, - scrape it with the spoon? - Yeah, scrape it with the spoon.
Look how easy, it's like butter, isn't it? - Yeah.
- It just kind of comes off.
I think in general, the Western world knows how to use whole animals, and they know how to do that really well.
From the snout to the tail, and everything in between.
But a lot of people, actually, when it comes to fish, just kind of end up throwing all that stuff away.
And that's the best bit.
You know, when there's such a limited supply of fish, it's nice to know that you're going to use all the parts and everything.
Yeah, it's kind of respectful, right? It's respectful, it really is.
Look how much I got off those two sides.
Damn.
- That's a lot, right? - That's rad.
I'm going to actually take the skin now.
I want to take all the meat off, and all this.
There's a lot of, like, fat under here, too, and when you make this salmon chip, you want to get all this stuff off of it.
I usually like really big chips, so I'll cut it pretty big.
Yeah, they kind of shrink more than you expect them to, don't they? Yeah.
It's so amazing.
I just love that look.
It almost looks like snake skin there.
I know.
Make some shoes with that.
Yeah, salmon shoes.
It might not smell so nice.
So, I'll put this in the oven, just for like, four or five minutes, 350, just to dry it up just a little bit.
So, what do I do with this, then? Okay, so now you're going to want to chop that all up.
Right.
Fine, like really fine? - Pretty fine.
- Okay.
- What do you think? - That looks good.
- Yeah? - Yeah.
So, I like to think of this as sort of like tartare.
In my tartare, I usually like egg.
Today we're going to use salmon eggs, pickles.
These are Japanese pickles.
And then, for the mustardy part of tartare, I use yuzugoshÅ.
It's yuzu with a little bit of, like, green chili.
It's really powerful, really spicy, but really fragrant.
Really big on the umami.
That's, like That's, like, flavor.
- Yeah.
- Okay, what's next? So, yeah, we'll just put all this stuff in.
I usually put the pickles in first.
Because it has salt on it, too, I usually like to put that in and then taste it.
So, some yuzugoshÅ, a little bit of mayonnaise just to kind of give it some more fat.
Oh, this is going to be nice.
It's going to add nice creaminess to it, too.
And some soy.
I like it because it's a good way to put a different kind of salt into your seasoning.
So, a little bit of this, right? Mm-hmm.
So, this is basically your seasoning.
- Yeah.
- So, I'm going to mix? Yeah, just mix it all up.
Texture of those pickles in there is going be, uh, - that nice crunch.
- That nice crunch, yeah.
- What do you think? - I think that's good.
- Not bad for a first time.
- Seriously.
All right, so about four or five minutes, pull out the skin out of the oven.
Okay.
Here goes.
Oh, look at that puff I love that, I love that.
That was a good one.
This crispy sound.
I think this is ready, right? It's almost stopped sizzling, and, you know, you want to take it out.
While this is hot, I put on some of this seasoning.
This is a little bit of dry seaweed, a little purple shizo, and some yuzu salt.
I'll take some of this tartare and just put a little bit down here.
And kind of like, when you get beef tartare, like, there's a little hole that has the egg yolk.
So, I kind of like to put a little pool of the salmon eggs in there.
So, I'll leave you to mix up some of those salmon eggs with some daikon sprouts, and a little bit of olive oil.
So, just aim inside that little nook in there.
Great.
- That looks awesome.
- Thanks.
A lot of plants that surround us here in the forest are actually used in cooking, and has been for a very long time.
But they're mainly the obvious ones, like, all the berries and all the mushrooms, and a few different herbs and so on.
But there's so much more I can use.
There's very, very few plants in this part of Scandinavia that will actually make you ill or kill you.
So, you know, you can experiment a lot.
Three minutes until the scallop goes on until it's properly hot.
I think we can actually start spreading the coals now and go, as quickly as we can.
This here has some juniper.
I'm going to cut a few of these, like, nice, big branches, and bring with me to Fäviken.
And we'll use them to both season and to decorate the, um The scallop dish.
And you want, like, nice-looking, full branches like this, that doesn't have too many berries on them, because if you have many berries, they don't give off smoke the same way.
These lower branches, it's going to be trimmed off at the restaurant and become seasoning.
The upper part is going to be coupled with another one like this one and then placed on, like, in the moss, like this.
And then you're going to have a scallop there and a scallop there.
And a little piece of coal here giving off smoke.
The scallop dish is one of the dishes that's been on the menu the longest at Fäviken.
And what's interesting with that is that actually it still changes.
Like, it looks the same, but it still improves.
We're trying to sort of tickle people's senses the most we can during those two and a half hours.
And that involves creating contrast.
Because if you just go into some kind of maximum level of deliciousness and stay there, it's going to get boring really soon.
You know, if you have a huge bowl of potato chips of your favorite flavor, nothing is as good as the first three.
Then it's just the same.
Like, it's just the same flavor all through.
And at the end it's just, you know, not that pleasurable.
Whilst if you change back and forth between potato chips and cheese curls, you know, it's going to be much more interesting.
Even though cheese curls is a disgusting thing to eat.
I enjoy working with meat like this.
It's essential to understand these processes if you're going to be a good chef.
And you can really see the difference from animal to animal, like how they lived and what affects what, in terms of quality.
For example, I can see that it's been grass fed.
I can see that in the color of the fat.
And some people, they even say that you can't get beef of any quality from feeding them only grass and hay, and that they don't get fat the way they should, and all that.
And this is clearly good evidence that, you know, that's not the case.
This piece here now is pretty much ready for aging.
We're going to leave it for one week.
We want it to be completely dry on the surface, so that the kidney fat will adhere nicely to it.
The reason why we cover all the meat surfaces with kidney fat is because we want to keep the meat from drying out too much, and keep too many microbes to be introduced into the meat after it's put to rest to mature.
I don't know what kind of dish I'm going to make.
We're just going to have to see, like, how the meat tastes, how it turns out, and what's available to go with the meat when the meat is actually ready.
This is the rib eye, which has now been aging for about five months, encased in kidney fat.
And the next step now before cooking it is to take it off the bone, and then trim, like, all of this fat and, like, the oxidized parts of the actual meat.
What's happened here during this period of aging is that a lot of the connective tissue has broken down, so the meat has become a lot more tender.
And this is actually one of the main reasons why we use older animals, because they have much more connective tissue in them.
So, they can withstand a much longer aging process without becoming, like, unsuitably tender.
As we go further in, it's just, to me, absolutely fascinating that, when you cut the crust away, first you have this sort of sensation of really strong, gamey aromas, and blue cheese and mold and stuff like that.
But, like, in here, it smells like fresh cream.
It smells like when you pour it into a bowl and you're about to start whisking it.
Every time I do this, like, when it's time to open up a new piece of meat and see what's inside, it's kind of like a lottery, you know? When it's good like this, it's like winning the lottery, because you never really know.
It saddens you when it goes wrong, when it goes rotten, which happens.
And I also believe in, like, not playing it safe all the time with everything you do.
Because that very easily turns boring.
But it's kind of worth that when you get a completely unique product that you can serve to your customers, which they will never get anywhere else.
Or it is really worth that when it works.
This is now trimmed down and ready to be cut into slices and cooked.
When you have beef of this quality, that has been aged for such a long time, I like to do a very simple dish that doesn't really create a lot of complexity around the meat, but rather underlines that sort of initial beefiness and meatness of the protein.
And in this case, it's a dish that's based on several different items containing a lot of umami.
One of them is sugar kelp.
And I like it because it has that kind of sea iodine flavor.
Another item on the plate is something we call "tasty paste.
" It's almost soy sauce tasting paste, which is basically pure umami.
It's very, very savory.
It kind of really reinforces that meat flavor.
So, I'm just going to put this into the hot cast iron pan.
Give it a little bit of butter.
I kind of keep this meat moving around, so that we don't get any spots in the pan that heat up more than other spots.
And then the whole point is to create a really nice caramelized surface without burning either the meat or the cooking fat, the butter.
Just having, like, a deep, dark taste of caramelizing dairy.
And I keep it moving all the time.
And this is really the most efficient way of browning meat.
I think that's going to be enough for now.
I'm just going to leave this 'til the exterior that we just fried has a temperature which is lower than what we're aiming for the middle to have.
So, now the temperature of the exterior of the meat has gone down, and it's time to give it, like, one last blast.
This butter here is, like, darkly browned, but it's still not burned.
Like, it tastes super good.
It's kind of an additional seasoning to the meat.
I'm not going to keep it in the pan for very long.
Something like that.
While this is resting for a few more minutes, I'm just going to give it one more basting of this garlic and thyme butter.
This is now cooked and ready to go.
I'm going to take a sheet of kelp and just kind of glaze it in this slightly thickened version of beef stock.
A little bit of a fermented mushroom powder, which is also very, very savory.
A little bit of kelp oil to give kind of a stronger, green flavor profile to the kelp.
And a little bit of the savory tasty paste.
So, they're rib eye of dairy cow, aged for five months to acquire really savory, concentrated beef flavor.
The whole idea with this dish is basically to create the foundation on which the flavor of this fantastic grass fed dairy cow can kind of shine.
Food should be like Looking at it should be like you're looking at a perfect jewel.
Everything's sharp.
When I look at food that's attractive, it's like you hone in on it.
Like, you're attracted to the most attractive thing.
You go through mistakes and you're like, "Hmm, no Perfect.
" Like, "That one there.
That one's got my name on it.
" I got to where I am today because I landed in Louisville and I decided to explore my surroundings.
I feel like I owe it to my cooks in the kitchen to go, you know, "We've got to go explore.
" I say we get a little funky with the next dish.
Eel has that wonderful in-between flavor.
The meat itself is actually denser than fish.
It's its own category, you know? I think that's why it works nicely as an accompaniment.
All I'm doing is adding a little cream to this, and then white soy sauce.
This actually has a really haunting, subtle flavor to it.
I'm very, like, tantalized by anything that's not easily categorized.
I mean, how many things do you know that can work with caviar, lobster, and beef? Also, it works in our philosophy of what we do.
I really want people to open up their minds and understand that there's so much more out there.
Listen, if you have a shrimp dish, and a rudderfish dish, no one's going to buy the rudderfish.
Everyone's going to buy the shrimp, just because it's shrimp.
So, we just have to say, "Listen, if you want fish today, this is it.
You're eating barracuda, period.
" Then, at that point, you're either on board or you're not.
Good.
What we've been doing over the years is cultivating an audience to say, "Once you walk through the doors of the restaurant, this is the program.
And if you do, and if you trust us, I promise you, you're going to leave with an experience.
"
Please give to your PBS station.
Meat and fish are two completely different things.
Just as versatile, and I quite like that.
It's really incredible.
When it's good like this, it's like winning the lottery.
Very, very savory.
Look how sexy that looks.
It's like a primal feeling.
"I caught my lunch.
" It symbolizes everything that I love about your cooking.
It looks so delicious.
It's like I've died and gone to heaven.
Big on the umami.
That's, like That's, like, flavor.
I just love that, it's awesome.
- It's awesome.
- It's intense.
The whole snake head.
It cures any hangover any time.
Whoo! Okay, ready? First thing, take off the head.
Now we'll take the fillets off.
Belly, all the way to the spine.
Next, along the back.
Belly, back.
Flip it over.
Back, belly.
Now we have two fillets.
Follow it along the ventral line.
Belly, back, back, belly.
I went to the green market this morning, and I found some peas, pea shoots and some bush basil.
The sashimi dish we're going to do today is with sea bream, a classic fish used for sashimi in Japan.
First thing is, I'm going to take the skin off these fillets.
Where did you learn those techniques like that? Actually, I learned them working in Japan.
- Yes.
- And working with Japanese cooks.
Even when I was staging in Europe, there was always a Japanese stage.
- A trainee, yeah.
- So, you ask a lot of questions.
And then what is the difference in texture in between the belly and the back? The belly is a lot richer, because a higher fat content.
- Yeah.
- The back is much more muscular.
In fact, they say the best sea bream, the water is really deep, and the current is very strong.
Because the fish is constantly working to stay in place, it develops a stronger muscular texture.
It's very firm.
And they pride that.
- Yes.
- So I'm actually going to brine this fish.
And this is what I really wanted to show you.
We're going to make a vinaigrette with a sauce that we have made with the bream bone.
How do you treat the bones? We very lightly cold-smoke the bones, stack the bones in a pot with a tremendous amount of ginger.
- Oh, interesting.
- Completely cover it - Yeah.
- with dry sake, and then cook it all the way down to a glaze.
And it does its magic.
How shiny it is, right? - Yeah, and it's emulsified.
- Yeah, you're right.
It's intense.
It's intense but, it is very refined.
- Yes.
- And very harmonious, well balanced.
Oh, I can taste the bones at the end.
You end up with the fish flavor.
- Bream bones - Yeah.
re-served with the fish.
Super interesting.
It's almost like caramel.
Yeah, toffee sauce.
Fish toffee.
So, this is the base of your vinaigrette.
Yes.
That, and then, believe it or not, extra virgin olive oil.
Hey, California olive oil.
So, half and half.
It might need a little bit of acidity.
- A little bit of rice vinegar.
- Sure.
So, I'm going to give the fish a quick rinse.
Very gently.
So, the salt makes the flesh firmer? A little bit.
Removes any kind of stickiness - Ah, yes.
- on the outside.
And it gives a bit of saltiness to the fish, right? Yes.
I'm going to slice some slices from the back here.
Gonna cut some cucumbers.
They look beautiful and fresh, huh? They have a nice crunch to it.
Yeah.
Are you inspired by Japanese presentation? Very much so.
I'm fascinated by the idea of handcrafted.
Yes.
To me, that contributes to the entire appeal of a dish in front of a guest.
Fish toffee sauce.
The sauce has a lot of ginger in it.
That ties everything in with the cucumber and the peas as well.
Not too sweet.
No, no, no, it's cooking with the fish, the ginger loses, like, pungence, strong flavor.
It becomes more subdued.
Yeah.
Super good.
When I think of ginger, I also think of basil.
This is bush basil.
It's very fragrant.
It looks beautiful.
This is an homage to the product and to your philosophy of cooking.
Thank you.
These are all stuff that is just leftovers that - Most people would throw away.
- Exactly.
When you fillet salmon, there's always meat left on the spine, so we're going to use that today.
So, I'm going to just, uh, - scrape it with the spoon? - Yeah, scrape it with the spoon.
Look how easy, it's like butter, isn't it? - Yeah.
- It just kind of comes off.
I think in general, the Western world knows how to use whole animals, and they know how to do that really well.
From the snout to the tail, and everything in between.
But a lot of people, actually, when it comes to fish, just kind of end up throwing all that stuff away.
And that's the best bit.
You know, when there's such a limited supply of fish, it's nice to know that you're going to use all the parts and everything.
Yeah, it's kind of respectful, right? It's respectful, it really is.
Look how much I got off those two sides.
Damn.
- That's a lot, right? - That's rad.
I'm going to actually take the skin now.
I want to take all the meat off, and all this.
There's a lot of, like, fat under here, too, and when you make this salmon chip, you want to get all this stuff off of it.
I usually like really big chips, so I'll cut it pretty big.
Yeah, they kind of shrink more than you expect them to, don't they? Yeah.
It's so amazing.
I just love that look.
It almost looks like snake skin there.
I know.
Make some shoes with that.
Yeah, salmon shoes.
It might not smell so nice.
So, I'll put this in the oven, just for like, four or five minutes, 350, just to dry it up just a little bit.
So, what do I do with this, then? Okay, so now you're going to want to chop that all up.
Right.
Fine, like really fine? - Pretty fine.
- Okay.
- What do you think? - That looks good.
- Yeah? - Yeah.
So, I like to think of this as sort of like tartare.
In my tartare, I usually like egg.
Today we're going to use salmon eggs, pickles.
These are Japanese pickles.
And then, for the mustardy part of tartare, I use yuzugoshÅ.
It's yuzu with a little bit of, like, green chili.
It's really powerful, really spicy, but really fragrant.
Really big on the umami.
That's, like That's, like, flavor.
- Yeah.
- Okay, what's next? So, yeah, we'll just put all this stuff in.
I usually put the pickles in first.
Because it has salt on it, too, I usually like to put that in and then taste it.
So, some yuzugoshÅ, a little bit of mayonnaise just to kind of give it some more fat.
Oh, this is going to be nice.
It's going to add nice creaminess to it, too.
And some soy.
I like it because it's a good way to put a different kind of salt into your seasoning.
So, a little bit of this, right? Mm-hmm.
So, this is basically your seasoning.
- Yeah.
- So, I'm going to mix? Yeah, just mix it all up.
Texture of those pickles in there is going be, uh, - that nice crunch.
- That nice crunch, yeah.
- What do you think? - I think that's good.
- Not bad for a first time.
- Seriously.
All right, so about four or five minutes, pull out the skin out of the oven.
Okay.
Here goes.
Oh, look at that puff I love that, I love that.
That was a good one.
This crispy sound.
I think this is ready, right? It's almost stopped sizzling, and, you know, you want to take it out.
While this is hot, I put on some of this seasoning.
This is a little bit of dry seaweed, a little purple shizo, and some yuzu salt.
I'll take some of this tartare and just put a little bit down here.
And kind of like, when you get beef tartare, like, there's a little hole that has the egg yolk.
So, I kind of like to put a little pool of the salmon eggs in there.
So, I'll leave you to mix up some of those salmon eggs with some daikon sprouts, and a little bit of olive oil.
So, just aim inside that little nook in there.
Great.
- That looks awesome.
- Thanks.
A lot of plants that surround us here in the forest are actually used in cooking, and has been for a very long time.
But they're mainly the obvious ones, like, all the berries and all the mushrooms, and a few different herbs and so on.
But there's so much more I can use.
There's very, very few plants in this part of Scandinavia that will actually make you ill or kill you.
So, you know, you can experiment a lot.
Three minutes until the scallop goes on until it's properly hot.
I think we can actually start spreading the coals now and go, as quickly as we can.
This here has some juniper.
I'm going to cut a few of these, like, nice, big branches, and bring with me to Fäviken.
And we'll use them to both season and to decorate the, um The scallop dish.
And you want, like, nice-looking, full branches like this, that doesn't have too many berries on them, because if you have many berries, they don't give off smoke the same way.
These lower branches, it's going to be trimmed off at the restaurant and become seasoning.
The upper part is going to be coupled with another one like this one and then placed on, like, in the moss, like this.
And then you're going to have a scallop there and a scallop there.
And a little piece of coal here giving off smoke.
The scallop dish is one of the dishes that's been on the menu the longest at Fäviken.
And what's interesting with that is that actually it still changes.
Like, it looks the same, but it still improves.
We're trying to sort of tickle people's senses the most we can during those two and a half hours.
And that involves creating contrast.
Because if you just go into some kind of maximum level of deliciousness and stay there, it's going to get boring really soon.
You know, if you have a huge bowl of potato chips of your favorite flavor, nothing is as good as the first three.
Then it's just the same.
Like, it's just the same flavor all through.
And at the end it's just, you know, not that pleasurable.
Whilst if you change back and forth between potato chips and cheese curls, you know, it's going to be much more interesting.
Even though cheese curls is a disgusting thing to eat.
I enjoy working with meat like this.
It's essential to understand these processes if you're going to be a good chef.
And you can really see the difference from animal to animal, like how they lived and what affects what, in terms of quality.
For example, I can see that it's been grass fed.
I can see that in the color of the fat.
And some people, they even say that you can't get beef of any quality from feeding them only grass and hay, and that they don't get fat the way they should, and all that.
And this is clearly good evidence that, you know, that's not the case.
This piece here now is pretty much ready for aging.
We're going to leave it for one week.
We want it to be completely dry on the surface, so that the kidney fat will adhere nicely to it.
The reason why we cover all the meat surfaces with kidney fat is because we want to keep the meat from drying out too much, and keep too many microbes to be introduced into the meat after it's put to rest to mature.
I don't know what kind of dish I'm going to make.
We're just going to have to see, like, how the meat tastes, how it turns out, and what's available to go with the meat when the meat is actually ready.
This is the rib eye, which has now been aging for about five months, encased in kidney fat.
And the next step now before cooking it is to take it off the bone, and then trim, like, all of this fat and, like, the oxidized parts of the actual meat.
What's happened here during this period of aging is that a lot of the connective tissue has broken down, so the meat has become a lot more tender.
And this is actually one of the main reasons why we use older animals, because they have much more connective tissue in them.
So, they can withstand a much longer aging process without becoming, like, unsuitably tender.
As we go further in, it's just, to me, absolutely fascinating that, when you cut the crust away, first you have this sort of sensation of really strong, gamey aromas, and blue cheese and mold and stuff like that.
But, like, in here, it smells like fresh cream.
It smells like when you pour it into a bowl and you're about to start whisking it.
Every time I do this, like, when it's time to open up a new piece of meat and see what's inside, it's kind of like a lottery, you know? When it's good like this, it's like winning the lottery, because you never really know.
It saddens you when it goes wrong, when it goes rotten, which happens.
And I also believe in, like, not playing it safe all the time with everything you do.
Because that very easily turns boring.
But it's kind of worth that when you get a completely unique product that you can serve to your customers, which they will never get anywhere else.
Or it is really worth that when it works.
This is now trimmed down and ready to be cut into slices and cooked.
When you have beef of this quality, that has been aged for such a long time, I like to do a very simple dish that doesn't really create a lot of complexity around the meat, but rather underlines that sort of initial beefiness and meatness of the protein.
And in this case, it's a dish that's based on several different items containing a lot of umami.
One of them is sugar kelp.
And I like it because it has that kind of sea iodine flavor.
Another item on the plate is something we call "tasty paste.
" It's almost soy sauce tasting paste, which is basically pure umami.
It's very, very savory.
It kind of really reinforces that meat flavor.
So, I'm just going to put this into the hot cast iron pan.
Give it a little bit of butter.
I kind of keep this meat moving around, so that we don't get any spots in the pan that heat up more than other spots.
And then the whole point is to create a really nice caramelized surface without burning either the meat or the cooking fat, the butter.
Just having, like, a deep, dark taste of caramelizing dairy.
And I keep it moving all the time.
And this is really the most efficient way of browning meat.
I think that's going to be enough for now.
I'm just going to leave this 'til the exterior that we just fried has a temperature which is lower than what we're aiming for the middle to have.
So, now the temperature of the exterior of the meat has gone down, and it's time to give it, like, one last blast.
This butter here is, like, darkly browned, but it's still not burned.
Like, it tastes super good.
It's kind of an additional seasoning to the meat.
I'm not going to keep it in the pan for very long.
Something like that.
While this is resting for a few more minutes, I'm just going to give it one more basting of this garlic and thyme butter.
This is now cooked and ready to go.
I'm going to take a sheet of kelp and just kind of glaze it in this slightly thickened version of beef stock.
A little bit of a fermented mushroom powder, which is also very, very savory.
A little bit of kelp oil to give kind of a stronger, green flavor profile to the kelp.
And a little bit of the savory tasty paste.
So, they're rib eye of dairy cow, aged for five months to acquire really savory, concentrated beef flavor.
The whole idea with this dish is basically to create the foundation on which the flavor of this fantastic grass fed dairy cow can kind of shine.
Food should be like Looking at it should be like you're looking at a perfect jewel.
Everything's sharp.
When I look at food that's attractive, it's like you hone in on it.
Like, you're attracted to the most attractive thing.
You go through mistakes and you're like, "Hmm, no Perfect.
" Like, "That one there.
That one's got my name on it.
" I got to where I am today because I landed in Louisville and I decided to explore my surroundings.
I feel like I owe it to my cooks in the kitchen to go, you know, "We've got to go explore.
" I say we get a little funky with the next dish.
Eel has that wonderful in-between flavor.
The meat itself is actually denser than fish.
It's its own category, you know? I think that's why it works nicely as an accompaniment.
All I'm doing is adding a little cream to this, and then white soy sauce.
This actually has a really haunting, subtle flavor to it.
I'm very, like, tantalized by anything that's not easily categorized.
I mean, how many things do you know that can work with caviar, lobster, and beef? Also, it works in our philosophy of what we do.
I really want people to open up their minds and understand that there's so much more out there.
Listen, if you have a shrimp dish, and a rudderfish dish, no one's going to buy the rudderfish.
Everyone's going to buy the shrimp, just because it's shrimp.
So, we just have to say, "Listen, if you want fish today, this is it.
You're eating barracuda, period.
" Then, at that point, you're either on board or you're not.
Good.
What we've been doing over the years is cultivating an audience to say, "Once you walk through the doors of the restaurant, this is the program.
And if you do, and if you trust us, I promise you, you're going to leave with an experience.
"