Salmon with XO Cream Sauce
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Salmon with XO Cream Sauce, Salmon Roe, Pickled Ginger, and Turnips in Shellfish Stock
Cara was randomly assigned Eric Ripert's iconic unilaterally cooked salmon to reinvent.
Cara: "I'm incredibly nervous. He's famous for expressing quality through execution and simplicity. So it's nerve wracking. As someone who cooks Chinese food which is like five bajillion ingredients shoved into a dish, it's kind of like complete opposite."
Cara: "I'm trying to pay respect to the original dish and then change it into something new. I think I need to take it away from France if I'm going to make it my own. So I'm going to break it down and then rebuild it up with Chinese flavors. I'm making salmon with XO sauce. XO sauce is a Chinese sauce that's like an umami spice bomb. But the reality is XO is not mild. You don't want it to be too spicy. The fish is the star, and you don't want anything to overwhelm that. It will really just kill the profile. And so cutting it with cream softens the intensity of that flavor profile drastically to match the subtleness and the deliciousness of the salmon."
Cara: "Instead of going a horseradish sauce, I'm going for an XO sauce. Roasted turnip instead of beets, and then we're doing scallions instead of leeks."
Cara: "This is Eric's method. It's a unilateral method of cooking the fish where you only put heat on one side of it. I've never done this before. The cooking technique creates an incredible texture for the piece of fish, and it showcases how beautiful salmon is. If this goes wrong, I'm probably going home."
Cara (presenting): "I've never cooked salmon this way, but I really enjoyed it, so I hope I did it some justice. I took sort of all the components and twisted them into something Chinese. I made salmon on a bed of turnip greens with sauteed scallions, an XO cream sauce, salmon roe, pickled ginger, and turnips in a shellfish stock and butter."
Eric Ripert: "Did you blanch the ginger julienne?" Cara: "Yes, twice — to let the salmon shine."
Eric Ripert: "The salmon is cooked almost to perfection. I like very much the flavor combination of the scallions and the salmon eggs. Really, it's a dish that I love."
Suzanne Goin: "The ginger on the salmon is delicious. The unilateral [method] was definitely the way to go, just visually and also texturally. And the scallion, I loved how you did it two ways, and that brought so much freshness and brightness to the dish."
Michael Cimarusti: "I think this dish was brilliant in the sense that you took a dish that was very French in execution and in spirit, and it just took a hard turn to the east. I love that warming sensation that I get from both the XO and the ginger. And I wish I had a baguette to finish this sauce — a French baguette — because it's so damn good."
Padma Lakshmi: "Cara, I think you gave us a really elegant dish that both channeled the essence of Eric's subtlety but brought in what we've come to love from your food as well."
Result: 113 of 120 points — first place, advances to Final Cook.
