Clarified Butter

Butter is the single most important ingredient in cooking, ranking up there with eggs, salt, and flour. There. I said it. Now that it's out in the open, we can move on. Butter, while great to eat, is also great to saute with, but it has the disadvantage that its smoke point is relatively low --- i.e., one can not get it up to the necessary temperature without it burning. But, if one could remove the impurities from butter which cause it to smoke, we're in business. This brings us to...

Clarified butter. Drawn butter. Ghee. Many words for a relatively simple thing - purified butter. What we're basically doing is heating up butter to the point where its 3 components, milk solids, water, and milk fat separate out due to differences in density. The trick is to extract what we're after, the liquid milk fat.

Clarified butter - makes any amount you wish:

1. Heat butter over medium low heat until completely dissolved.

2. When butter is completely dissolved, you should have something looking like the above but without the two sticks of butter. The milk solids exist as foam on the top and as amoeba looking things on the bottom. Skim off as much of the foam from the top as you can. You get this:

3. Now, slowly pour the mixture into some type of heat proof tupperware, taking care to not bring any of the milk solids with you (take it through some cheesecloth for some very nice clarified butter).

4. Done. Use immediately or freeze in an airtight container indefinitely. 

Uses: lobster, crab, sauteing, hollandaise sauce, many, many others. I don't know. Look it up. Shoot.

Grouper with Fingerling Potatoes, Scallion Radish salad, and Soy-Orange Glaze

While an introductory blog post is still in order, I begin this work upon receiving a copy of "The French Laundry Cookbook" (FLC for short) by none other than Lauren Dodge. This in depth work by Thomas Keller, one of the masters of modern American cuisine, inspires to me to try to replicate these recipes (and many others) and keep a public record. The successes, the failures (mainly failures), and and horrendous messes will be available for all to see.

Today, I decided to cook a (relatively) simple but delectable recipe from the FLC --- Moi with Soy beans, Scallion and Radish Salad, with a Soy-Orange glaze. Of course, to my dismay Central Market did not have moi, nor fresh soy beans (nor the logical substitute, fava beans), so I substituted grouper per recommendation of the fish monger and fingerling potatoes instead of the soy beans. I'll gladly accept the grouper substitute, but I hope the addition of  the fingerling don't cause the dish to stray too far from its Asian influences.

Now.. grouper. Quite an ugly fish, but luckily attractiveness is not reflective of taste. The fish was excellent. It was not flaky, which is usually my favorite aspect of a fish. Instead, it was 'full-bodied', if that makes any sense. Meaty.  Also, worked very well with the sweet tang of the soy-orange glaze.

How does one go about this dish? Particularly, how does one cook a dish which is on the menu in arguably the best restaurant in the world in a kitchen the size of a thimble? Very carefully:

Grouper with Fingerling Potatoes, Scallion Radish Salad, and Soy-Orange Glaze:

There are four main components (plus one that I added for S&G).
1. Grouper.
2. Scallion-Radish salad
3. Fingerling potatoes.
4. Soy-Orange glaze
5. Carrot Powder.

Let's address each in turn. The following serves 2.

Grouper: This will really be the last step. Pat two fillets of fish dry and season with salt (you always hear about seasoning with salt and pepper, but the pepper really never does it for me). Cook over medium heat in oil (canola in this case) 2 minutes first side, 1 minute second side -- this will give you a nice rare fish (does one use 'rare' when describing fish? oh well). When done, transfer immediately to the plate.

Juliened radishes, carrots, and scallions.

Scallion-Radish Salad: Julienne (cut in really, really thin strips) about 1-1.5 tablespoons each of carrot, green onion, and radish (this is probably the most time consuming step). When done, put in ice bath to retain crisp freshness, and as Keller suggests, so the green onion will curl up and hold salad together in the end (I found this not to be true). When ready to serve, remove from ice bath, dry with paper towels, and mix with a bit of olive oil and lemon juice.

Tomato diamonds!? First time for everything.

Fingerling Potatoes: Boil 6 potatoes for ~20-30 minutes in salted water (a fork should have very little resistance going in). When done, cut in half lengthwise and saute with 1 tbl butter, 1 tablespoon diamond tomatoes (!?) and 0.5 tbl brunoise (diced carrots, turnips, and leeks which are quickly blanched individually in boiling water then ice bathed) + salt to taste.

 Soy-Orange glaze: Take 1 cup of good OJ and reduce over medium heat till you have 0.3 cups (you want something that will coat the back of a spoon). Keep warm. When about ready to serve, mix in 1 tbl of cold, unsalted butter 0.25 tbl at a time, then a good dash of soy sauce to taste (about 0.5 tablespoons).

Carrot Powder: Microwave a really tiny dice of one carrot for ~ 10 minutes over low (FLC said 40 minutes... I found it to be nowhere near that). Put these dehydrated carrot pieces in a coffee grinder or spice grinder until you have a powder. This is actually a really neat technique that one can do with a huge variety of ingredients.

Great -- now assembly. Put soy-orange glaze on plate. Fingerling potato on top of that. Grouper on that. Scallion radish salad on that. It should loosely resemble a tower of sorts. Sprinkle the carrot powder artistically on the side of the plate and serve immediately.

Finished product. Eating took approimately 1/200 of preparation time.

End result? Really, really, really good. The fish, cooked perfectly, went splendidly with the tender potatoes, with the (perhaps too) sweet soy-orange glaze really bringing everything together wonderfully. The scallion salad on top was the star of the dish, lending an cold-crunchy-citrusy bite that the dish would have been woefully missing otherwise. Strangely, the last bite was the best, when every component of the dish was bound together by the delicious glaze. The carrot powder, while interesting, didn't really bring much to it though. And those tomato diamonds? I didn't really notice them...

There was one thing I did miss though. After living in Texas for ~ 3 years now, I've come to love heat in dishes. If, after you finish a meal, your mouth is not still reminding you that you just ate something hot, something is wrong. Heat is just not too common in French foods. The above dish, while amazing, had no heat, no spice, no fire to it. The scallion salad on top would have been the perfect place for some julliened spicy thai peppers perhaps... or possibly some cayenne in the soy-orange glaze. I have a feeling I will be adding fire to many of these dishes that I so desperately crave.

Next time... veal stock.