ironchef
Executive Chef
I guess I'm somewhat of a mad scientist when it comes to food sometimes. We get in this beautiful, fresh, whole hamachi. We clean it, fillet it, and we have this beautiful, beautiful fish. Great color, texture, and fat content. The kind of quality you'd find at a really good sushi restaurant. Now hamachi is great just with soy sauce and wasabi. It's traditional, and it just works. But, it's just too simple. And there is a time and place for simple. Some foods can get lost in complexity. You taste it, it has a lot of flavors going on, and it just doesn't work. Like a good steak. You do too much to a really good steak and it's ruined. The challenge is knowing which foods you can and should showcase simplicity, and knowing which foods you can push the envelope with.
Everyone who knows me knows that I love working with seafood. Seafood is the most versatile protein on the planet. You can do more flavor-wise to seafood than anything else which is part of the reason why I love to work with it. So this idea of flavors just came to me out of the blue as I was watching one of the other guys clean the fish. It started off with something citrus-y like yuzu, and the other flavors just started to fall into place as I was thinking about it. The coolness of the cucumber foam really brought all the flavors together.
Fresh Hamachi Crudo
Yuzu Aioli, Truffle Essence, Hawaiian Red Alae Salt, Shaved Icicle Radish, Bird's Eye Chili Dust, Micro Opal Basil, Cucumber Foam
Everyone who knows me knows that I love working with seafood. Seafood is the most versatile protein on the planet. You can do more flavor-wise to seafood than anything else which is part of the reason why I love to work with it. So this idea of flavors just came to me out of the blue as I was watching one of the other guys clean the fish. It started off with something citrus-y like yuzu, and the other flavors just started to fall into place as I was thinking about it. The coolness of the cucumber foam really brought all the flavors together.
Fresh Hamachi Crudo
Yuzu Aioli, Truffle Essence, Hawaiian Red Alae Salt, Shaved Icicle Radish, Bird's Eye Chili Dust, Micro Opal Basil, Cucumber Foam