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| Salmon With High Marks Chef Michel Richard Takes Grilling To 3 New Levels By Emily Kaiser Even salmon have a season, and this is it. Beginning in late April, wild salmon start trips upstream to lay their eggs, and from now through September, Pacific fishermen will keep busy pursuing the prized coho, king and Copper River varieties. RELATED ARTICLES
No Matter Which Level, Best Bets For Grilling Where's That Salmon From? Happily, wild salmon season coincides with Washington's pre-mosquito grilling season. But before condemning such prize catches to possibly rusty grills (and rusty grill cooks), we asked Michel Richard, one of Washington's four-star chefs, for help in kicking off the season. His challenge: to devise three recipes -- beginner, intermediate, advanced -- that would give everyone a good reason to brush off the grill and brush up on their skills. Richard might seem a counterintuitive choice for the job. As the chef explains, standing in the kitchen at his Citronelle restaurant in Georgetown, "There is no grill in a French restaurant." True, the classic batterie de cuisine does not include a Weber. Nonetheless, there are two gorgeous grills in Citronelle's vast, gleaming kitchen, though they are rarely used. And in the end it was probably the >fish itself that won the day: "Salmon is one of my favorite fish," Richard says, gazing fondly at a king salmon fillet. "It's so tender, so tasty, so beautiful." He didn't always know this. When the chef was growing up in France, his mother would cook Atlantic salmon for her family for six hours in the poacher. "I hated it!" he recalls. "There was never enough mayo at home to be able to swallow that dry stuff." Richard is now vigilant that no salmon be overcooked on his watch. "I like it a little raw," he says. "Barely cooked." For this reason, he was at first reluctant to grill the fish at all. The heat of a grill, he explains, is much too high to control. Unless you are careful, it can dry out fish in a matter of minutes. To get the more tender, succulent results he needs for his customers, Richard cooks all his food at unusually low temperatures. If he cooks something at high heat, it is only for a few >moments in a saute pan, to give it a crispy edge. Then he finishes it, as many restaurant chefs do, in one of the ovens. But whereas most restaurants keep their ovens at 500 degrees during restaurant service -- to cook food as rapidly as possible -- Richard keeps his at 250. He saves the grilling for home -- or rather, he has enjoyed the hamburgers and steaks his wife prepares for him and their children in their backyard in Great Falls. "I love the grill. It's so simple. You don't have to wash any dishes," he says. So he decided one Friday, in the quiet between lunch and dinner, to try grilling salmon at work. It took him only a week to come up with the recipes. He had finished them that morning but now was rereading the ingredient list, checking that he had all he needed. difficult to imagine what the final dish will taste like. Not so for Richard's mise en place , the orderly array of tools and prepped ingredients set out before cooking begins. Cherry tomatoes, curry powder and macadamia nuts? Salmon stuffed with . . . mozzarella? A few steel saute pans sat on his two islands of powerful stoves. Four convection ovens hummed quietly along the back wall. On the central island, a few copper-lined pots simmered upon a wide flattop. But Richard fired up one of the two grills, his sous-chef helping him turn the knobs. As he prepared, he kept a stream of banter going, much the way a magician uses patter to distract an audience from picking up his tricks. Only as the final dishes appeared were the ingredients' mysteries solved. To keep the beginner recipe simple, he marinated whole fillets in a light curry oil before grilling them, then served them with a rustic salad. The tomatoes and nuts -- as well as olives, cucumbers and croutons -- provided all the nuttiness, crunch and sharpness you'd want from a spring meal. For the intermediate recipe, a little more intricate, Richard slit small pockets in the sides of the fillets, then stuffed them with a mixture of eggplant and mozzarella. The cheese, which at first seemed doomed to become a stringy burnt mess, served as a mild counterweight to a zingy eggplant-and-soy-sauce mixture -- and it hardly melted at all under the chef's gentle cooking. Finally, Richard made quick work of the advanced recipe. He took a long fillet of salmon and cut out an entire tubelike opening down its center. Into this he inserted asparagus spears, then sliced the whole thing sideways into four stunning portions: bundles of asparagus encircled in pink salmon wraps. To solve the problem of the high heat, Richard grilled only one side of the fillet. To keep things interesting, he chose a different side for each recipe. For the beginner's, he grilled the traditional flat side. But for the intermediate and advanced recipes, he grilled just the edges. Each dish came with its own balanced vinaigrette. "The only thing I don't like with salmon is sweet things," he explained. "Acid is best -- a little vinegar, or something citrusy like orange, lemon, to cut the fattiness. It's such a rich fish." Richard was pleased. As he finished garnishing his final dish, he mused aloud that perhaps he might even include a grilled salmon recipe in his forthcoming cookbook, slated for publication next year. Even so, don't expect to be able to order grilled salmon at Citronelle anytime soon. For the time being, the grills will stay off. After all, during dinner service they provide a perfect spot for the line cooks to store their spoons. |
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© 2001 - 2008 Emily Kaiser |
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