Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street Television

- This week on Milk Street, we start in Norway, with a whole new way to cook salmon.

We start with a dill-salt rub, then we do a roast acorn squash with brown butter, and we finish up with smashed potatoes.

We all love those, but with a chili lemon vinaigrette.

Please stay tuned as we do some of our entertaining favorites.

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- So the question is, how many different ways can you cook salmon?

In over 40 years, I've cooked it, I think, almost every way except this way, which is the best way.

We went to Norway to get the answer to this, got on a fishing boat in a fjord.

It turns out they cook things very simply over wood fires, like mackerel, lobster, they just throw over fire.

They take haddock and make a ceviche out of it.

We went to Oslo to see how they cook salmon, and what they do is salt it heavily and let it sit before cooking.

And that salting is just simple, but it's an amazing thing.

It changes the texture of the fish.

So we decided this is our new favorite way to cook salmon.

- Yes, and it is mine.

You know, here, we don't have salmon leaping out of the fjords and onto our plate, but we do eat a lot of salmon.

So at Milk Street, we really took to heart the notion of keeping the cooking method very, very simple and letting the salmon shine through.

Acknowledging the Norwegians know a thing or two about salmon, we decided to adapt their method of using salt.

We already knew that the salt reacts with the salmon proteins by causing them to tighten up a little bit.

They become firmer-- not tough-- but simply denser and meatier.

And it's an incredible effect.

So the next question was which type of salt to use.

Sea salt was the obvious choice, but the differences in texture of sea salt, not to mention the salinity and intensity of flavor, made that a little unreliable, and we got inconsistent results.

But we came to prefer a good, basic, non-iodized kosher salt.

We love the slightly coarser texture and the fact that it has a very clean taste.

We found that this works best with a larger piece of salmon.

If you try and salt smaller fillets and let them sit a little while, they got actually too salty.

So we're starting with a two-pound piece of salmon.

This is cut from the center portion of a whole side, and you want the thickest area to be at least an inch thick.

- Okay.

- This one is beautiful.

It's probably an inch and a quarter here and a little less than an inch there, so it's perfect, And it still has the skin on it, but that's not as important as having a larger piece.

- Okay.

- So we have two tablespoons of kosher salt, we're adding a little bit of chopped dill to it, and we're going to rub that in together.

What this does is break down the dill a little bit, because salt is very absorbent and you want to give it some of that dill flavor.

- Dill being the herb of choice for salmon, of course.

- (laughing): Are there any other herbs for salmon in Norway?

- No, no.

- Rub it into the skin.

And then we're gonna let this sit in the refrigerator for at least 45 minutes up to an hour.

You don't want to let this stay on too much longer, because the salt is going to start penetrating the flesh, which is the whole point of this, right?

And it's going to start the tightening of those salmon proteins.

But if you leave it on too long, it will actually make the whole salmon way too salty.

- (sighing): Oh, that smells good.

- You can smell it, right?

Okay, so I'm going to take this to the fridge and we'll let it stay in about an hour.

We're going to pickle a cucumber now.

We've discovered this goes beautifully well with salmon.

- Can I just ask a question?

Did this win first prize at the Tunbridge County Fair?

- (laughs) - (laughing): Like, I mean, this is the biggest cucumber I've seen in my life.

- So, start with a little bit of water in this bowl.

We're gonna add our typical pickling solution of a little bit of white vinegar...

Some granulated sugar.

Couple of teaspoons of salt, and a little more chopped dill to continue those flavors all the way through.

And we'll just whisk this until it dissolves.

Let that sit a little bit.

Do you think we have enough cucumber here?

- Well, this is an English cucumber.

- It is.

- But it's so odd, like, the English are known for one vegetable, the cucumber.

- (laughs) - Well, at least they got one on the board, so... - True.

- They are good, because they don't have big seeds.

- So we're going to just cut off the ends, and then we're gonna quarter the whole length of the cucumber.

And we'll do this two at a time, cut side down, and just cut on a very thin diagonal.

Thin slices.

We found that because we're going to be serving the salmon in smaller portions, that a smaller slice on the cucumber just looks really beautiful on top as a garnish, rather than having big old round slices.

Now, this is a quick pickle.

This will be ready in as little time as an hour, which is perfect for our salmon.

But you can also leave it in the fridge up to 24 hours.

- You know, the Japanese do a lot of quick pickles, like, in 15 or 20 minutes.

- Yes.

- And they have those little containers, they press down on them.

- Yes.

- And they serve them for-- with almost everything.

It's just a really good technique.

- Yes, and they use firmer vegetables, too.

They have the radishes and the daikons and carrots.

- Chrysanthemum blossoms.

- (chuckling): That's right.

Okay, one more little expert mix, please.

Thank you.

Now, this is a quick pickle.

So this is going to be ready in as quickly as an hour, or it can stay in the fridge up to 24 hours.

Here is our salmon out of the fridge.

It has already been rinsed off.

So you want to wash off all that extra salt.

And then we're going to blot it dry.

Now, the salmon is already perfectly seasoned with salt.

Ready to cook.

We're just going to add a little bit oil on top and put a little bit of pepper.

Want enough to coat the whole surface.

- A little bit of olive oil.

- (laughs) - A generous serving.

- A generous amount of oil to coat.

Would you like to do the pepper seasoning?

- Sure.

- This is going to go into the oven.

We've already preheated it at 350.

This is going to go in for 12 to 15 minutes, that's it.

And we want it to come to a temperature of approximately 112.

We want it a little bit underdone at that point, because then we'll tent it with foil and let that soft residual heat finish the cooking.

- Okay.

- Okay, it's just out of the oven, you can see that it's still on the rare side.

It's about 112 degrees, and we're going to cover it with foil immediately.

You want to do non-shiny side down.

Seal it up.

So the foil traps in the residual heat, and it allows the salmon to finish cooking very gently.

We want it to get to about 120, which is medium rare, and that will take about ten minutes, if you can stand to wait.

- I can stand ten minutes, but not 11.

- Okay.

All right.

So, like, the beautifully simple cooking method, the salmon is sitting here, streamed-line and lovely.

Now, a quick note about the skin being on the salmon, it's a great way to cook a large piece of salmon, because not only does it help it stay together, but it gives a little buffer from the heat of the pan, so you get a gentle cooking method.

Another good thing about it is, you can slice it and just slide it right off like that, and the skin is very, very tender.

Sometimes it'll slide off the skin.

Sometimes the skin comes with it.

There you go, medium rare, just like you like it.

- Perfect.

- And if you would like, we have the pickled cucumber.

- This is almost as good as the salmon.

I love this.

Dill?

- Please, thank you.

This is the technique we use a lot, which is adding fresh herbs at the very end, because it just gives you that extra layer of bright flavor.

And, yes, definitely a little lemon.

- It does look good.

- It does.

You know, we talked earlier about what the salt does to the proteins of the fish.

It firms it up just a little bit, it makes them denser and meatier and richer, if salmon could be any richer.

- So good.

- But the texture is just so delicate at the same time, right?

- Well... - Mm.

- A lot of farmed salmon has a textural problem, among other things.

It gets a little mushy and mealy.

I once actually went salmon fishing up in Canada in the spring.

And we caught one and ate it then?

- (gasps) - And it's very firm.

- Right.

- But what you get at the supermarket, which is farmed, does have a texture problem.

And this really helps solve it.

- It absolutely does.

- The texture really is different, it is meatier.

It's also nicely salted throughout.

I mean, it's a very different experience than just eating a piece of baked or broiled salmon.

It's quite different.

- Yes.

Mm.

- See?

- The pickle, right.

- It's not just a condiment.

- (laughs) - It's a main course.

- But even by itself, I mean, you saw how much cucumber we had from that one English cucumber.

This in the fridge over the next day would be fantastic to go on anything.

- This is what we love here at Milk Street.

It doesn't happen every day.

We find a technique somewhere else in the world that is simplicity itself and it makes something much better, but it's not more work.

A little bit of salt and dill on it, throw it in the oven for ten or 12 minutes, letting it sit.

It completely transformed the texture, and it's nicely salted throughout.

And the dill and the cucumbers really add something extra.

So, salted salmon with dill.

It'll change the way you think about salmon.

Also change the way you cook it.

Today, we're going to make some roasted acorn squash, but a little bit different.

We're going to finish it with a brown butter orange vinaigrette.

Now, this notion came from a restaurant I've been to a few times, Gjelina, in Venice, just up from L.A. And Travis Lett is the owner and the chef there.

He also owns Gjusta, which is just a few blocks away.

And he is really well-known, especially for vegetables with really interesting flavor combinations.

So he came up with a dressing that was brown butter, some vegetable stocks, lemon juice, et cetera.

We really loved it.

So we're going to start out with that notion.

But first, of course, we have to roast the acorn squash.

So we have a few tablespoons of butter.

We're just going to take one of those tablespoons, put that over the squash, and, of course, some kosher salt, coarse salt, as well.

And we'll just toss that-- I'm going to use my hands.

So you can see, we've cut it in half, scooped it out, and then cut it into rings-- this is about an inch or so thick, which will obviously make it cook a little bit faster.

Now, we preheated an oven.

It's a very hot oven, it's 475 degrees.

This will go in for 25 to 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, we can prepare the sauce.

So we have three tablespoons of butter left.

We're going to cook it until it browns, about three minutes.

Of course, that makes it really nutty, which pairs really well with a roast squash.

(bubbling) So when it starts to brown-- you can see it now-- it goes fast, just like doing a caramel.

We'll add a third of a cup of white wine vinegar to that.

(sizzling) And a third of a cup of orange juice.

So we're going to cook this down till it's reduced about half.

And it's a good time just to mention that when you have fat, let's say melted butter, a little bit of vinegar or something acidic-- this is orange juice and white wine vinegar-- really balances that out, so it's just a great simple method to use in cooking.

Fat plus acid makes a great sauce.

So the sauce has been reducing for four or five minutes now.

It's down about 50%, which is what you want, but we're not quite done.

We're going to mount or whisk in one tablespoon of cold butter at the end.

This gives us a really nice creaminess to it and also balances some of the acidity from the vinegar and the orange juice.

Let me just take a taste to make sure it doesn't need some salt.

Ooh, is that good.

Just a little bit of salt.

Okay, a little fresh herbs.

Parsley.

You want to put that in at the very end, so obviously it doesn't cook in the sauce, and then pour it over the roasted squash.

So the last step is, we have some salted roasted pistachios just to give it a little bit of texture.

I also like the salt on it.

So that's the recipe.

It's a roasted acorn squash with a brown butter orange vinaigrette.

The crunch of the pistachios, the saltiness, the fattiness of the butter.

Also, browning the butter makes it nutty.

And then, of course, the orange juice and the white wine vinegar add the acidity to balance out the dish.

Roasted acorn squash with brown butter orange vinaigrette.

- Today, we're going to have a quick lesson in the "mix" part of cocktail mixology, because the way you mix a drink greatly influences how it tastes once it's in the glass.

Shaking versus stirring, for example.

The classic shake aggressively combines the cocktail ingredients with ice, breaking up the ice for a good ten or 15 seconds.

This causes the drink to dilute and chill intensely.

Now, that's great, unless you don't want it to be as diluted or as chilled.

In that case, you want a more gentle stirred cocktail, which doesn't dilute or break up the ice as much.

Now, this allows you to appreciate the nuances of the ingredients in the cocktail a little bit more.

To show you how this works, we're going to make a classic New Orleans cocktail, the Vieux Carr.

It was created in New Orleans around 1938 and it straddles a kind of a delicious line between an Old Fashioned and a Manhattan, with an herbal infusion in the mix.

It is a potent cocktail, but when you hit just the right balance of liquors and gentle dilution, the result is rounded, rich, and lightly sweet.

So let's make a drink.

We're going to start with one ounce of rye, which is bourbon's more peppery cousin.

Followed by an ounce of cognac.

Now, the cognac adds a gentle sweetness to the cocktail.

Followed by an ounce of sweet vermouth.

Now, this also adds a little bit of sweetness, but also some herbal notes.

But then the secret ingredient actually is Bndictine, which is a French liqueur made from 27 herbs, roots, berries, and all sorts of infusions.

We want three-quarters of an ounce of that, and that is followed by a dash of Angostura bitters and, traditionally, a dash of Peychaud's bitters, but I prefer orange bitters.

The bright citrus flavor rounds out the other flavors a little bit better.

To that we add our ice... And we give it a good stir.

Usually five to eight seconds is plenty.

Again, we're going for a more gentle dilution than if we were shaking.

And then we grab a Hawthorne strainer and a coupe glass... And pour it in.

And that is how we make a Vieux Carr.

- There are lots of places in Paris that are up and coming, like the 11th Arrondissement.

Lots of cool little cafes and restaurants and bars, and one of the places that's pretty cool is Mokonuts, well-known for its cookies-- Moko Hiroyama makes them, and her husband, Omar, make small plates, little tapas plates.

And the one we really liked were smashed potatoes with a chili vinaigrette.

The texture of the potatoes was just amazing and the combination was great.

So we're not going to make the cookies, but we are going to do the potatoes.

- Smashed potatoes are very hot right now.

I'm seeing them on restaurant menus here, and it makes a lot of sense, because the texture is amazing.

But to get started, we have a couple of quarts of boiling water here, and we're going to use a rather aggressive amount of salt.

This is a whole cup of kosher salt.

- Wow.

- Right?

- Okay.

- But it's not all going to be in the potato.

It's going to season everything through, and it's going to lend a bit of a creamy texture to the inside of the potato, but it's not going to be overly salty.

- Okay.

- You got to trust me on this.

- I-- evidently I do, yeah.

- It wouldn't be the first time I asked you to take a leap of faith.

- That's true.

- In addition to the salts, we have some rosemary and also garlic.

So all of that is going to infuse the potatoes with flavor.

Now I'm going to add these beautiful little fingerlings once we're up at a boil.

You want to use these smaller fingerling potatoes.

You can also use, like, a very small Yukon Gold if you can't find fingerlings.

You want to be careful adding potatoes to boiling hot water.

And now is when we set our timer.

A lot of times, you start potatoes in cold water and you might start timing then.

In this recipe, it's really important you don't start timing them until you add the potatoes.

So we're going to time it for 18 to 22 minutes.

We want them to be cooked through, but not falling apart, because we want them to hold their shape when we smash them.

- Okay.

- Do you smell the rosemary?

- I do.

- It's good, right?

The first thing I'm going to do is remove these potatoes.

We want these to dry and cool, because you don't want to put wet potatoes in hot oil.

- So your advice to me is just take time to smell the rosemary?

- (chuckles): Yes, it is.

And then we have some garlic here.

I'm actually going to put this right in the bowl.

We're not going to waste any of that good garlic flavor; it's going to go right into our vinaigrette.

Oh, more garlic.

So while the potatoes cool, we're going to make a really bright vinaigrette.

It's a little bit spicy with some chilis.

There's bright lemon flavor, but the base of it is going to be this garlic from the potato water.

So these are nice and soft.

I'm just going to smash them up a little bit with a fork.

And I have a quarter-cup of lemon juice here.

This is kind of a punchy vinaigrette, because it has more lemon juice than olive oil, whereas a lot of traditional vinaigrettes would be kind of the other way around.

It's just two tablespoons of oil.

- That's why people who talk about three-to-one and four-to-one, I mean, it just drives me crazy.

Right?

You have... Actually, it's half-to-one, right?

- Yeah.

- You have twice as much lemon juice than oil, right.

- And to be fair, we're going to use quite a bit of olive oil when we cook the potatoes in the oven.

And then we have some Fresno chilis here, did take most of the seeds out.

There's a little bit of heat in there.

But we could also use a jalapeo if you can't find Fresnos.

We're going to let the vinaigrette hang out, and that flavor from the chilis, that heat, is going to seep into the vinaigrette.

It's going to be delicious.

We're going to let the potatoes continue to cool, and then we'll move on.

Okay, Chris.

So, these are cool enough to handle, but they're still warm.

If we were to let them get all the way cool, they wouldn't hold together as well.

So, are you ready?

- Well, I'll show you in Vermont how it's done, okay?

- I'd love, I'd love to know.

- We don't use-- no one owns a ramekin in Vermont.

Just...

But they...

It's done like this, you just go... - Wow.

- That was three times.

- Okay, but I'm going to go ahead and use the ramekin.

There we go.

I mean, your way worked pretty well.

- I, you know what?

- (chuckles) - Yeah, this works better.

So, are you going to... - I mean, I can't let you outdo me.

- See?

Yeah, you're quite good at this, so I don't know, I...

I think this adds a whole new element.

- Some stress relief happening here.

- Who needs a ramekin here at Milk Street, man?

I mean... - Beautiful.

- I think we just changed the recipe.

For the better.

- Awesome.

Okay, so now I'm just going to add some oil, which is going to seep into the cracks, be extra-delicious.

You can already see, actually, Chris, where the salt is on the skin.

They look like they took a dip in the ocean or something.

They're going to be delicious.

And this is a generous amount of olive oil here, as you can see, but it's going to help us get really crisp potatoes.

That and the fact that it is a screaming-hot oven.

These are going to go into a 500-degree oven for 35 to 40 minutes, and then we will come back, add the vinaigrette, and have Parisian snacks.

Chris, look at these beauties.

See the little golden edges?

- Well, I can actually smell...

I mean, it smells great.

- Yeah, well, let's, let's taste it.

So, to finish up, I'm just going to put them on a platter.

Can I get you to do, like, some gymnastics here and look at the bottoms of these?

I'll flip them for you, make it easier.

You get some really nice browning from all that oil in the really hot, really hot pan.

That's why it's so important to take the time to let them dry and even wipe off any excess moisture.

They almost look like cookies.

- Well, how appropriate, since Mokonuts is famous for their cookies.

- All right.

Can you hand me the vinaigrette, Chris?

- Mm-hmm.

- Thank you.

And drizzle this on.

And then just a little bit of fresh parsley.

- Mm.

- If you hand me a plate, I'll serve you.

I'm not sure what the appropriate serving size is for tapas potatoes, but I'm going to err on the generous side.

- Are you taking about the wine or are you talking about the potatoes?

- That's a great question.

- So this is the... yeah, the underside is nice and toasty and roasty.

- Mm.

- Mm.

Boy.

- Better than French fries.

- Well, the inside's really creamy.

The outside has that crispiness to it.

A little bit of chew.

But it's really the, the lemon chili vinaigrette.

It's an unusual choice, but it's really delicious.

So a whole new way of thinking about potatoes, instead of just baking them and smashing them.

Smashed potatoes: creamy inside, nice chew to the skin-- I love potato skin.

But the unusual thing is the chili lemon vinaigrette.

I wouldn't think about putting that on, but it's really great.

It has a little bit of heat, it's, obviously, it's very bright, a little bit of olive oil.

A great way to serve potatoes.

So if you want this recipe for smashed potatoes with a chili lemon vinaigrette, and all the recipes from this season of Milk Street, please go to MilkStreetTV.com.

Hm.

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Order your copy of the Milk Street cookbook for $27, 40% less than the cover price, and receive a Milk Street tote with your order at no additional charge.

Call 855-MILK-177, or order online.

- Funding for this series was provided by the following.

- For 25 years, Consumer Cellular has been offering no-contract wireless plans designed to help people do more of what they like.

Our U.S.-based customer service team can help find a plan that fits you.

To learn more, visit ConsumerCellular.tv.

- Ladies and gentlemen, we'd like to be the first to welcome you to Tel Aviv... - Welcome to Oaxaca's airport.

- Welcome to Beirut.

(man speaking Hebrew) - (speaking world language) - Bonjour, je m'appelle Chris.

- We call it supa kanja.

It's the word for gumbo.

- Christopher, you have to make the authentic, original cotoletta alla Bolognese for me.

- So this is the Eduardo Garca blender.

- This is the no electricity.

- Next is dessert.

- That is really good.

- I notice when you cook sometimes, you add a little bit of something and then you just put the whole bowl in.

- I like to be generous with my food.

Generosity is important in cooking.

- That's true.

- Can start building bridges, and food is definitely a perfect common ground.

- This is a generational thing.

It's... it's something that you inherit.

- Yeah, that was great.

(woman speaking Mandarin) - What was this for-- what did she say?

- You get one more chance.

- Salute.

- How is it?

He's speechless.

- I'm speechless.

That's so good.