Halibut vierge

Sûeh-Tsai Mŏw-Töw it says on the other side of the tin, snow cabbage green soybeans. It is exactly the same thing as collard greens or mustard greens and the like, and I mean exactly like those things, except different.

The halibut comes from an exotic and distant land, grand on a scale impossible to comprehend and mostly frozen in various forms of ice and snow for most of the year and the place is known mostly for the days being either all daylight or all nighttime darkness with ridiculously short in between phases, along with other exotic displays having to do with planetary magnetism and charged particles and solar wind. Witnesses describe it an awesome inspiring and moving spectacle of shifting patterns of streaked light that appears to dance across the sky. 

Alaska. It is extraordinary. These halibut fish are big as people, some of them are. This one wasn't but some are. You can go there and fish for them yourself if you like rough sea adventure. Your fishing pole will be thick as a broomstick and about as short. The larger halibut do not fight much but you just try to lift them up from off the sea floor. They do not cooperate. I saw this on television and my friends confirmed it. The one guy on television and his friends were all huge men. Linebacker type big guys. The fellow struggled for a very long time, the weather moved in and things became choppy, the guy goes, "It's like dragging up a garage door." At length he gets the fish at the edge of the boat and the other men helped pull it in and it was like dragging a wet king size mattress onto the boat which is a recreational boat, not a commercial fishing boat, and he breaks one of his fingers getting the fish flipped on deck. 

Halibut revenge. The cost demanded of the sea. A navy diver friend of my brother said it is sort of like space in that your tools just go away from you, in his case plunk, and they're gone forever, utterly unforgiving. He said they lost more expensive tools that way and there is nothing they could do about it, no getting them back. The amount of hand tools lost is incredible. It was like nothing could be removed from the sea without the sea reaching up and taking something else to even out the give and take. They're all generally sensible people other than that, non superstitious scientific educated people.

Halibut, sake, soy sauce, fish sauce

The last cooked halibut disc. Cold straight from the refrigerator, dipped in boiled poaching liquid jazzed up with sake, soy, fish sauce. 

Halibut with aged balsamic vinegar, spinach and lima beans

With spinach and lima beans.

This is one of the halibut steaks that Joe's business partner brought into their office with the idea the sales staff would take it, but none of them wanted it. Two were packaged together in this package, this is the smaller of the two halibut pieces. 

The halibut was poached on low in oil reserved for fish. It looks like a raw chicken breast on the plate, and that is unfortunate because the fish is actually cooked perfectly, it flakes apart when coaxed with a fork and it is very moist. The halibut flesh denatures at temperature around 145℉ / 63℃ and it dries very easily and quickly so the closest the fish can be brought to that temperature the better. That's brought to that temperature through and through by sitting there in the oil hot enough to cook the fish but cool enough to stick your finger in. It bubbles lightly while it sits there as if it were boiling but the oil is hardly hot enough for the fish to boil.  

The spinach and the lima beans were frozen also. Cooked in butter

Both were drizzled with seven-year balsamic, and that's what made this so fun tonight.

Halibut in Japanese fish broth

Kombu (dried kelp) katsuobushi (shaved dried bonito) dashi (stock). Frozen vegetables heated briefly in the broth. Halibut poached briefly in the broth.

The technique here uses two pots to produce ichiban dashi (first stock). Usually the technique described below will be followed twice with an addition of water for niban dashi (second stock) for a clear stock base with a broad range of uses. The result is extraordinary and reminiscent of the sea.

The white dust on the kombu is mineral bloom. It is entirely natural. The excess white dust is wiped off the kombu with a clean damp kitchen cloth. This particular kombu is not heavily coated so that step is omitted. The kombu is soaked in cold water and brought to a boil. The pot is removed immediately from the heat source so the kombu never actually boils. The kombu rehydrates rapidly. In this case, the kombu was allowed to soak in the cooling water for 10 minutes. So the resulting liquid amounts to a kombu tea. The kombu is removed.

A small package of katsuobushi is added to the liquid which is brought back to the boil. Any foam that forms is skimmed off. The heat cut off again within 30 seconds and the liquid allowed to cool again. The katsuobushi sinks to the bottom of the pot.

Here's where the second pot comes in.  The used katsuobusi flakes are strained out, the liquid into the second pot. Now you have a liquid that is flavored with kombu and with katsuobushi, so one, a sea-vegetable, and two, the essence of  smoked and dried and shaved skipjack tuna.

You also have a floppy wet piece of kombu and a pile of used strained katsuobushi that can be used for a second round of dashi. If you choose to produce a second broth then add half the original amount of water, return the kombu, and return the used katsuobushi flakes with an additional amount of fresh katsuobushi flakes amounting to half the original amount used. Bring to a boil again, cool again, strain again, and  -- Tadaaaa! -- niban dashi.

But we're not doing that because we have a big fat piece of flavorful halibut that will do to the liquid what the second round would do.

The vegetables are reheated in the broth which is brought back to the boil a third time. The vegetables are strained from the liquid, which pours back into the first pot. The vegetables are tipped  into a serving bowl and covered.

The ichiban dashi now flavored with vegetable is brought to a near boil a fourth time. The halibut is placed in the hot fish and vegetable stock and allowed to cook off the heat while the liquid cools down. In this case, the final reheating of the stock was up to 170℉/77℃ so well below boiling, and cooked the fish fillet as it cooled to finish within five minutes to 140℉/60℃, which is a very nice serving temperature.

The gently cooked fish fillet and its broth, now flavored with kombu and katsuobushi, vegetables, and halibut, is placed in the bowl awaiting with the vegetables.

Now, this seems a lot of back and forth with heating this liquid, and it is, but the steps described above can be combined. The katsuobushi doesn't have to be strained out, it's perfectly edible if you do not mind little bits floating around. I've done that before. The kombu and katsuobushi can be heated together for a less than perfect result, in fact, it can all be done at once and you will most likely be satisfied with the result, but this careful technique described here provides control over each element.

Kombu and katsuobushi in convenient little packages ↑. 

A small piece of kombu with very little mineral bloom ↑. You will see this packaged in large sheets, usually regular A4 sheet paper size, but it also comes in much larger sheets. This is the stuff you will see Iron Chef Morimoto use in rehydrated form to wrap fish fillets. It is a source of glutamic acid, the origin of MSG, isolated by Kikunae Ikeda and patented by Ajinomoto Corporation, and  it is the origin of the term for the flavor sensation 'umami'.  All of this should tell you that no additional salt is necessary. 

A very small pile of katsuobushi ↓, dried and usually fermented, then shaved skipjack tuna. You will see chefs use this by the handful. An excellent product, it has several uses beyond fish stock. It can be purchased in large bags. Otherwise, the dried tuna can be purchased separately and shaved at home. The shavers are boxes with a mandolin-type shaver on top and pull drawer in front. The shavings fall into the box and are collected in the drawer. Search in images [bonito shaver] to see what I am talking about. 

ARTS !

Halibut

This halibut was given to me by friends who caught it with their own bare hands and possibly a fishing pole.

Dredged through home-milled whole grain flour flavored simply with salt and pepper. Fried briefly and gently to flake in butter and olive oil. Finished with a steam of white wine with capers used to deglaze the pan. Total elapsed time, four minutes.

Get the perfect flakiness on that fish.

Heirloom tomato drizzled with oil sprinkled with sea salt. Seedless grapes.

This was so good I couldn't stand it. I licked the plate like a dog to get the last speck, which is great because now I don't have to wash it. I can do this with impunity because there was nobody here to smack me. Ha ha ha ha ha.