- What I'm looking for is for the fat
to start rendering and to start bubbling over
and we call those pizza bubbles.
We're basically trying to make Neapolitan-style pizza.
So this is either the best brisket you've ever had
or the best Neapolitan-style pizza you've ever had.
(funk music)
- So today we have several products here
that we're gonna go through step by step
on the technique of handling them.
And we're gonna highlight the curing
and dry aging process of fish.
Here at Erizo for the menu,
curing and aging a fish plays a really vital role.
There's a lot of ingredients that are super seasonal.
And so preservation of seafood is a really vital thing
to, you know, just honoring tradition
but as well as being able to preserve product
to have throughout the year and to utilize
the most of it that we possibly can.
Two things that we're trying to accomplish when we dry age:
one is to eliminate moisture.
It's gonna have more of the natural oils in the flesh
express themselves, it's gonna have a firmer texture.
More of a bite to the fish, rather than having
a watery quality which is typical of a fish
that is either still in rigor mortis
or hasn't been cleaned properly.
The idea that fish straight out of the water,
or the fresher the fish is the better, is completely false.
This is something that is standard practice
in most sushi restaurants, they just don't
really talk about it as much during the dining experience.
Okay, so we have a McFarland Springs trout.
We're gonna dip this fish into beeswax.
So we're gonna go ahead and clean this fish.
So typically we don't buy any sort of farmed fin fish,
but this is a trout that was developed
in Northern California.
We buy from a company called Two By Sea.
But it's almost its entirely own breed
because of what they feed it.
So this is the only farmed fish that exists
that is fed a 100% vegetarian diet.
But it's also just far and away superior in quality.
You know, it's not something that's, you know,
legal to serve wild, it's not a commercial fishery.
So being able to work with a farm
that's just doing it the right way and then also
coming up with this high quality of an ingredient,
it checks all the boxes.
The beeswax technique for preserving things
is an ancient technique.
It's a wax layer that keeps out light and moisture.
The nice thing about using the wax
is that it adds a really nice aroma to the meat.
So here we have our beeswax that we're gonna use
to encapsulate the fish to help
extend the dry aging process.
As you can see this has just been melted down.
Thing about beeswax is that it cools down so quickly.
And you're just trying to get as really thin of a layer
as possible so it'll just be dunked extremely quickly
and taken out and it'll cool almost instantly.
And we're just getting essentially
a paper thin layer of wax on the fish.
So not only does the beeswax help create a layer,
essentially blocking moisture from escaping too rapidly,
it also adds a nice flavor and aroma to the trout itself.
(light classical music)
As you can see here we have the trout aging in beeswax,
we've just hung up.
And then we have the other fish that are a week older
that have already been submerged in beeswax
and then had the wax removed
and now they're just drying out.
And these are one of the ones
we're gonna grab to break down.
So essentially what we're looking for here,
is we just wanna feel that it's dried out slightly
but isn't completely petrified.
And you can see that this is also dripping oil,
which is another sign that the fish is properly conditioned.
(light classical music)
Okay so here we have the fish that's been aged
for about a week in the beeswax
and we're gonna remove the wax to show you
what the changes have made inside
as far as to the texture of the flesh
and also of the skin.
So first up is to remove the head.
Straight through.
And then we're gonna start
to peel the wax away from the tail.
(light classical music)
The skin has really dried out.
It's not tacky anymore.
But it still has flex to it so it's not super dry
which is the main reason why we use the beeswax,
so we can age it for longer
without the fish getting too dry.
You can kind of brush your hand across.
You can just see this fat,
that the oil's starting to express itself.
So that's just gonna make the fish taste more like itself.
It's gonna have better mouthfeel.
Also the fact that this has dried
and the oil is starting to express itself
creates a little bit of separation
between the meat and the skin,
which almost causes the skin
to puff off of the outside of the meat.
We're gonna trim this up a little bit
to get it ready for the grill.
(slow groove)
- So I'm just going to put oil on the skin side only.
As we're doing all of the cooking on the skin side,
the skin almost acts as like a nonstick pan for the meat.
Where we don't wanna apply any direct heat
to the meat of the fish 'cause it's
just too intense and will dry it out.
We're sorta cooking everything on the skin side
and then resting it on the other side.
And I'm just gonna really lightly season
the flesh side of the fish.
You wanna do this at the last minute because
salt will pull moisture out of the fish
and even though it's a very small amount,
we're trying to keep this as dry as possible
to facilitate the crisping of the skin.
So we wait til the last minute
because if we did that a few minutes before,
that could create a little bit of steam when it cooks.
So that might sound like kind of an extreme measure
but we're pretty serious about crispy skin here
so we kind of go to great lengths,
we're almost paranoid about moisture
when it comes to the fish.
And we're cooking this basically tataki style.
And the reason that we're doing that is that we,
we want to crisp up the skin without,
almost without cooking the fish at all
so it's gonna be at about rare.
And then we'll rest through to about medium-rare.
We can see we've just barely blistered the skin
but the flesh of the fish is left almost completely raw.
We're trying to retain as much
of that flavor, though, by cooking it.
The more that you cook fish, the less flavor it has.
- Okay, so here we have our mackerel
that's been aged for five days.
This is the same species that we were looking at earlier.
This is just an image of it after it's been done aging.
And we're gonna show you right now
how we butterfly the mackerel in order to serve it
on the menu and grill it whole.
We're just gonna come right down the spine here.
Really gently.
And just cut about halfway.
And pull one of these fillets off to the side here.
(light classical music)
And there we have our Pacific chub mackerel
that is ready for the grill.
- So we're gonna cook this really hot and fast
just to the point where the skin is crisped up.
And by that time it'll be kind of medium rare.
So we just want a tiny bit of oil to go on the fish.
Not even gonna brush it completely.
And it's also really important here
that the way that we cook this,
the skin protects the meat, so there's no direct heat
touching the meat, ever.
We never flip this over until it rests.
To me this is like the seafood version of barbecue brisket.
This is better than any brisket I've ever had.
What I'm looking for is for the fat
to start rendering and to start bubbling over.
And we call those pizza bubbles.
We're basically trying to make Neapolitan-style pizza.
As this is resting, we just season it.
We just really gently season it
by spraying some beef garum onto it
which is basically fish sauce that we make from
the scraps from dry aged beef.
And then just a little bit of finishing salt as well.
- So we have our grilled chub mackerel here.
This has been finished over charcoal.
It's just grilled on the skin side only.
The residual heat sort of warms the rest of the meat through
and allows it to set as it rests.
As you can see the skin on this is still completely crisp
several minutes after it's been grilled.
And it basically would hold like this
so you just serve this at room temperature.
And we're just gonna kind of just
present this really simply.
So this is a sauce.
It's essentially a Salsa Macha.
We think that it's one of the most flavorful fish
that you can serve, it's a perfect size.
The skin is amazing.
We think that this is about the best fish
that you could possibly eat out of the ocean.
Okay so for our next fish here,
we have the McFarland Springs trout.
So as you can see you have all ranges of donenness here.
So closer to the skin it's cooked through.
And it's mid-well, medium, mid-rare
and then almost completely rare on the bottom.
And we just serve this fish room temperature as well,
I think it has the best expression of the flavor
and texture of the trout when it's that temperature.
When I first tried this fish it was almost unbelievable
that it was a farm-raised fish because of the flavor of it.
It's so similar to wild trout.
You can't find this quality of farmed fish
or this much similarity to a wild product anywhere.
We've prepared a shoyu here that we make
that's made with dried mushrooms.
There's matsutake and porcini in this.
And,
just gonna spoon a small amount of that
into the base of the bowl.
We chose to pair this with matsutake
because we think that the flavor development
of the trout as it ages on the bone
has a mushroom quality to it.
Has the same umami.
And then we're just garnishing this served with some steamed
and shredded matsutake mushroom.
(pleasant music)