Eating In: Charlie Trotter's Olive Oil Poached Salmon with Leek

By Kevin Grzyb in Food on Apr 7, 2006 7:30PM

Chicagoist has an affinity for Charlie Trotter. The first meal where we really tried to impress a girl was made with recipes from Chef Trotter's arsenal. (We're married to her now) Love him or hate him, the guy is a badass in the kitchen and sets the bar for excellence in his art, and that’s why we’re so happy that he’s our haute cuisine hometown hero. We’re also food geek enough to admit that we taped episodes of ‘Kitchen Sessions with Charlie Trotter’ while it was running on WYCC (Channel 20 – for those of you, like us, who aren’t sucking on Comcast’s idiot teat, but lo we do miss The Sopranos). We were looking for a tape to record last week’s Simpsons and found an episode of ‘Kitchen Sessions’ that we watched and were intrigued by. So, we went about gathering the ingredients to the best of our ability. We are occasionally put off when a chef references an ingredient that he had some sherpa hand deliver to him from a hidden fjord that you can’t get anywhere else in the world, which is only available for three days when the moon is in a waning crescent. Our appreciation is great when a chef understands the different skill levels and ultimate depth of commitment that a person at home can invest into a meal and offers commonly available ingredients or substitutions.

This dish consists of three major elements; the poached salmon, a rice cake and leek confit soup, with a reintroduction of leek as a garnish. Olive oil isn’t cheap, nor did I want to use a vat of it for this dish, so rather than the three inch deep nine inch by nine inch pan that Chef Trotter recommended using in the oven, we opted for a medium sauce pan on the stovetop. The main reason we went for the stovetop is that our non-professional oven can’t be set to a temperature low enough to make this preparation work. The key here is to regulate a low temperature, as best you can, this may involve turning off the burner intermittently. You’ll see that the results are worth the effort.

We started with the leeks, figuring that we’ll use the same olive oil for both, leeks and salmon, and the leeks will add their flavor to the oil. We started the leeks mid afternoon while we were cleaning and doing some household maintenance. We cut up three leeks, cutting off the root end and the thick greens, using the white portion. We added thyme, bay leaves and black peppercorns to the oil and let the leeks cook for about an hour and a half at around 150 degrees. Check temperature with a thermometer, if you have one, or the hardcore way is to stick your finger in the oil, if you can’t keep your finger in the oil, it’s too hot. If there are bubbles forming at the ends of the leeks, it’s too hot. The leeks are done when they are tender all the way through, test this with a knife. Transfer the leeks to a food processor or roughly chop them and process them with an immersion blender (they are stringy at this point) then run the processed leeks through a strainer retaining the liquid and discarding the fibers. Let the oil cool to room temperature.

You will also want to steam the basmati rice ahead of time, as it will need to be chilled in the refrigerator to be turned into pan seared rice cakes. The day we decided to make this, we forgot to get basmati rice, so we used a wild rice blend that we had on hand, the substitution worked well for this recipe. Steam the rice (if using straight basmati, Chef Trotter added pine nuts at this stage), allow rice to cool slightly and place in a square or rectangular pan lined with plastic wrap. Flatten into a quarter inch layer, loosely packed with the back of a spoon, wrap the top with plastic wrap and chill in refrigerator to set (at least forty-five minutes.)

We reused the olive oil that we used for the leeks on the salmon. We bought a beautiful piece of Scottish salmon from our fishmonger and cut it into two three inch by three inch pieces about an inch and a quarter thick. Place the salmon in the oil, you can add fresh herbs or introduce new ones, as the herbs from the leeks will have wilted. Place the pan over a burner and heat until one hundred and thirty degrees, slightly cooler than the leek if you’re cooking by touch. If the edge of the salmon start to turn color or bubbles form, the oil is too hot, remove from the flame and let the salmon cook off the heat, the oil will maintain a temperature that will cook the salmon through. The salmon should poach in the oil for 10-12 minutes and should retain its color and opacity. Season with salt and pepper prior to plating.

While the salmon is poaching, remove the rice from the refrigerator and turn it out of the pan on a cutting board. You will be able to cut the rice into shapes, so cut two piece the same size and shape as the salmon. Transfer the rice cakes to a pre heated skillet with a little of the poaching oil in it and sear the rice cake until they crisp up and start to turn golden at the edges.

The final part of the dish is the garnish. Julienne strips of leek and separate into a small pan with poaching oil over medium heat. Pan fry the leeks until crispy.

The assembly:
We used a deep plate, which worked nicely to handle the leek soup. First place rice cake on the plate, on top of that a piece of the salmon, next ladle the leek soup around the rice cake evenly. Finally, Twist a fork in the pen fried leeks, as you would spaghetti on a plate, and place a small bunch on the top of your salmon. As Chef Trotter is fond of doing, you can reintroduce on of the ingredients at this point, so we added a few fresh thyme leaves, just to bring out the herbs that were first in the poaching oil.

This isn’t a light summer salmon dish and it’s not the simplest of preparation steps, but in the end it yielded a delicious and beautiful dinner, with the added bonus of herbed olive oil, retained for further uses.

Enjoy.