- So this is a Columbia River sockeye salmon
swimming probably 24 hours ago.
And we're gonna cedar-bake it or cedar-roast it.
And this is a chunk of red cedar
that we've soaked overnight.
And we'll end up serving right from the board.
I'm basically just gonna open it up like a book
and then tack it to the board with some steel nails.
Try to maintain the head and the tail.
Whenever I'm looking for fish, I'm looking for a clear eye,
no fish smell.
It should just smell fresh.
We soak the cedar overnight.
It absorbs the moisture so it doesn't ignite
while we're cooking,
and it's also gonna steam the fish as we're roasting it
over the fire.
So all of the essential oils in the cedar will sort of
perfume the fish.
(exuberant music)
What's fun about having the whole fish on there,
roasting it on the board,
is we'll serve it right on this board so people can kinda
pick it all the whole, whole animal.
And I'm basically just gonna tack it to the board
with some steel nails.
We use steel rather than galvanized cause they'll,
galvanized can release chemicals as they're heated.
We can use a little bit of this Sequoia.
Kind of holds it as well as just adding
a little bit more flavor.
(hammer pounding)
This is a traditional Pacific Northwest Native American way
of baking fish.
(exuberant music)
(hammer pounding on metal spike)
(exuberant music)
Scoop a little of the coals underneath it
to try to put a little bit of color.
This is a really simple recipe of salt, smoke, fire, cedar,
and really good fish.
(exuberant music)
(car engine humming)
(door slamming) Hi.
- I'm Mona Johnson.
- And I'm Jaret Foster.
- And together we make Tournant.
What's so special about what we do is that we can
literally take our kitchen anywhere.
That means that we can set up on a mountain top
or by the sea or by a river or in a meadow.
And that is really special because that means
that we can take these elements of our surroundings
and bring them to the plate.
- All of our cooking I think is put through a lens of the
Pacific Northwest cuisine with lots of farm-to-table
and lots of great just respect for the ingredients.
But we're inspired by the fire stories around the world,
where at any point where cooking has been done,
at one point it was done over an open fire.
(fire crackling)
This is a pork loin.
And as you can see there's this amazing fat cap on it
and it's still got the skin on.
But I'm gonna trim away some of that fat
and then put skin back on it.
And we'll try to maintain this skin cause it'll kind of
protect the meat as we're cooking it.
So this is pasture-raised pork raised on alfalfa.
They're an heirloom breed, so they were bred for flavor.
So they're bred for the intramuscular fat.
They're bred for flavor rather than yield.
We're going to rub this pork down.
This is all just kosher salt.
So we're seasoning the pork.
Then I'm gonna rub it down with
a mustard and pistachio pesto.
That'll be just kind of a marinade for it.
(buoyant music)
This is kinda the fun part,
where you get to kind of put it back together.
Tucking some rosemary into it and on it.
Again, just trying to work many flavor and aromatics into it
as we can.
Use a kind of torch a little bit,
put a little bit more smoke on it,
and then we'll tie the roast and hang it over the fire
for the next couple hours.
When we're cooking,
we're trying to get out of the way
of well-sourced ingredients.
We are just trying to get them from the farm to the plate
with good technique,
taking good care of them
from the minute that they come into our possession
to the time that they are reaching the people
that are dining with us.
- We're also doing our take on a French mussel dish
called eclade de moules.
And our Pacific Northwest version is to roast these mussels,
which are from Totten Island inlet in Washington.
So we'll be throwing those over the flames
with some rosemary and also some fresh pine boughs.
The pine does something really special.
When it burns, it releases like all of this smoke.
It releases its essential oils.
And so it really infuses the mussels with this kind of
deep woodsy, piney flavor that's really unique and special.
- Mona lends her love of beauty to all of our food.
I can tend to cook elementally and just lots of big flavors,
lots of great textures.
There's certainly a masculinity to it.
And Mona will bring in a feminine aspect to it
that elevates her cooking in a way
that I couldn't do on my own.
We're gonna start building peka.
There's this lovely cast iron dish
and then a dome that'll sit over it
that we'll build a fire on top of.
(pot lid clanking)
The traditional peka is a lamb peka,
and it's a family-style dish, maybe similar to a paella.
I'm just doing a whole bone-in lamb shoulder.
Got just a little bit of the rib here,
little bit of the spine.
But there's just like a bunch of just flat meat in there.
I'm just gonna work some salt into it.
- For this peka we're trying to kind of keep it simple.
It's really about the flavors of the vegetables.
A lot of the heirloom varieties in there.
Two different types of Japanese turnips,
and there's gonna be lots of wine in there.
So everything will steam and then start caramelizing
and roasting after all the liquid burns off.
And it's gonna be so flavorful.
(buoyant music)
- So we put this thick gauge steel dome
and we piled coals on top of it
so we're actually getting heat from the top down
on all those vegetables and lamb,
as well as a low fire underneath it, to get it simmering,
to get everything up to a nice temperature.
The only place I've ever seen these is in Croatia
in both the north industry
as well as down the coast, which is called Dalmatia.
And I had to have one.
(buoyant music)
I've always been enchanted and in love with fire,
but I think the most inspiring part of my childhood
growing up in Montana was we would get out of town
as soon as we could and go camping
and always building a fire and always cooking over the fire.
I was just like, I love that. So much fun.
And I was just, it was, you know,
an excuse to sort of get in there.
(buoyant music)
Lookin' good.
We've got a little bit of roast from the top.
Not a lot 'cause it's only been on for a minute.
(fire crackling)
- So one of the dishes we're doing today
is a take on a Spanish dish called escalivada.
And it's basically an ash-roasted vegetable salad.
So we're taking all those wonderful vegetables,
eggplant and peppers and tomatoes and onions,
and we're roasting those over the ashes and in the coals
until they get really blackened and charred on the outside.
And then let those cool off,
strip off all of like the charred skins,
and then use all of the,
kind of the luscious, unctuous vegetable within.
It's totally blackened and charred,
but then peeling it away,
get to that really tender flesh inside.
The transformative power of fire on a simple vegetable
is always alchemy.
It's always magic to us.
So maybe that's part of the thing that keeps us so engaged
and excited about what we're doing
is that it's always interesting.
It's new every time.
I would say that the dish that is closest
and nearest and dearest to my heart is escalivada.
It's one of the dishes that Jaret made for me
when he was trying to woo me.
And obviously, it worked.
(spirited music)
- So we're inspired by all of these global techniques.
All of this, the ceremony around food,
as well as some of the equipment,
community gatherings, flavors
and put them through a Pacific Northwest lens.
(spirited music)
- So with our dinners,
we really try to create a full experience
and we want people to be outside in nature,
to interact with their surroundings,
to really connect with each other,
to be able to see us preparing the food over the fire.
So we hope that people walk away with this
real sense of place, you know.
They really get to taste the food on their plate.
(spirited music)
They get to experience a moment in time that's like
away from their normal lives,
and they get to put their phone down for a minute
and really be in the moment.
You know, really being present is something
that's so hard these days.
So I hope that when people come to a meal of ours,
they really get to connect with the food on their plate,
to remember that it was grown or raised or fished or foraged
with care.
And to really appreciate all of the work that happened,
from the farm to the fire, to the plate.
(spirited music)