Salmon Full Utilization - Nose to Tail Omakase

At Quintrell we like to do a lot of tasting menus and this is the beginning of the Copper River salmon season so we're going to do kind of a rundown on a nose-to-tail salmon tasting menu for you know three or four people. I'm going to do some individual dishes and some family-style dishes. I've got the grill going and I've got all these different parts cooking and they're all kind of functioning differently so I'm going to baste a little bit of red butter. For things like the colors I'm going to use my fish sauce caramel and I'm going to have my knock chomp so inevitably I have all these different flavors that I'm trying to impart that pair nicely with the smoke and the charcoal flavor. This dish is Copper River salmon belly. With the congee it's nice to have a little bit of texture so we're going to add some crunchy vegetables and it's also nice to have a little bit of acidity so they're going to be pickled. I have some raw fresh radish which is going to add a nice texture as well. At the end I'm just going to put a bunch of pretty things on it that are going to make sense and taste delicious. So this monochromatic green dish is grilled Copper River salmon loin. Kept the skin on and grilled skin down so it got nice and crispy. When I say monochromatic green it's just everything that I can get green from the farmer's market this week. So I got really lovely bok choy. I got asparagus because it's asparagus season right now and I got a bunch of just lovely different shoots and things like that I'm going to use. I have mizuna and cress and it's all going to get tied together with a green curry and lovely green oil. When we do a lot of tasting menus on a lot of courses they get their own small thing to eat but it's also nice to kind of mix it up and have a couple of dishes that are a little more interactive. This is a Copper River salmon som utilizing the color that we glaze with a little bit of fish sauce caramel and then we serve it with a mixture of different sauces and kimchis and pickles and spices that go along nicely with the dish. The next dish that we did for this tasting menu were the little bit of wings that are coming off the belly portion. They're super fun they're packed full of collagen there's lots of fat there's lots of meat and it's just fun to kind of pick up a little fish wing by a crispy fin. I basted it quickly with a little bit of fish sauce and then served it very simply with some radish and a little bit of aioli. This is a great family style dish. This is a Copper River salmon chop with some seared Hakka white turnips and some Dungeness crab which is still super seasonal in Oregon right now. A little bit of citrus some pickled mustard seed and a little bit of smoky trout roe all of which will add a nice little bit of pop of texture or salinity or acidity. Part of the reason I love a chop on a salmon so much is because it encompasses the loin all the way down through the belly so you get a really nice mixture of different fat contents you get a different mixture of textures. We are going to utilize the head which has got all the remnants of the collar and it has the cheek and there's all these other little pockets of lovely meat that have tons of flavor and surrounded by tons of fat. A lot of people might be turned off by looking at the head of the fish but if we're going to buy this fish from a place that is making sure that we're environmentally sustainable then it's pretty important on my end to utilize the entire fish. It's super super simple and we're really going to rely on the fact that this fish is incredibly fresh. It's only been out of the water for about 24 hours before it gets to me and it has lovely texture and lovely high oil content and it's so nice to taste such a high quality product in so many different ways.