White Hwedeopbap
As seen on TV
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Who made this dish?
The randomizer generated:
Protein: Salmon belly;
Produce: Cauliflower mushrooms;
Equipment: Banana leaves;
Style: White;
Wild card: Ostrich egg
Kevin approached the battle set on cooking the food that got him to the semifinals.
Kevin Lee: "For me to get the win from my legendary Jet Tila will mean the world to me. So my strategy is to cook my food. That's what got me here." He chose hwedeopbap, a Korean dish from his childhood.
Kevin Lee: "It was one of my favorite dishes growing up. Hwedeopbap is still a very unknown dish. It's got seafood sashimi. It's got fresh vegetable." He described his plan as "a salmon belly hwedeopbap with mushroom rice," with banana leaves "on top to really absorb a lot of the aromatics." The white randomizer drove every decision.
Kevin Lee: "My game plan is making sure this plate is all white from start to finish. One thing I know about the salmon bellies, if I take the skin off perfectly, it's gonna leave a nice white flesh on that salmon. So I'm not going to cook the salmon." He adapted the traditional sauce.
Kevin Lee: "Typically, this hwedeopbap is served with a red gochujang based vinaigrette sauce called chojang. But today, the challenge is to make everything white. Egg whites are white. We got tofu, that's white. Garlic is white." He used the ostrich egg in multiple ways.
Kevin Lee: "I want to really use this ostrich egg multiple times. It'll be nice to have a nice, thick, savory meringue, add a nice mouthfeel. I'm adding vinegar. I'm adding garlic." For texture and to literally cap the plate in white, he fried rice paper.
Kevin Lee: "If you fry up some rice paper in the fryer, it'll puff up to this nice white cylinder. I can almost use it as a lid to sit on top to cover everything in white."
On plating: Kevin Lee: "I'm gonna set a nice banana leaf on the plate. Going in with the mushroom rice. Then we have the pickled napa cabbage with the salmon sashimi. Some daikon radish that has been shredded with our tofu vinaigrette with the savory meringue and the crispy rice paper."
Voiceover: "This chef would like you to mix everything up as you eat. This is hwedeopbap, a summer style Korean salmon sashimi. A sushi style rice was constructed by cooking out the rice with banana leaf. The white sauce on top of your rice and your fish is constructed of lightly cooked ostrich egg. The savory meringue was whipped with the ostrich egg whites. Then you have a white julienne of daikon. Rice paper finishes the dish to add a little bit of crunch."
Cat Cora: "I think this is a really delicious dish. The salmon belly is very tender. I know how hard it is to cook with an ostrich egg. I did that at Iron Chef. I like the fact that they whipped it and made a meringue out of it. I think it's nice and light on top. I'll take it."
Brooke Williamson: "There's so many smart technique forward moves on this plate. The meringue itself has so much flavor. The banana leaf, I don't taste it a whole lot. I definitely see it randomizer wise. I would say that's the weakest point."
Mei Lin: "I really love the textural components that really just amp up this dish. You obviously see white. There's white throughout. Just texture alone, the fried crispies as well as the fried rice paper, I think really made this dish a star."
David Chang: "Hwedeopbap is one of my favorite dishes in Korean cuisine. My mom loved eating it. This is not the traditional version, but that's why we're here, to reinterpret and to sort of express oneself. It was a bold take, but it is very flavorful. The leaf was harder to taste, but it was a dish that showcased the chef's ability to have a lot of technique and culinary knowledge, and that was on full display here."
Score: 83. Winner of semifinal 1.
