Today, Michelin-starred chef Dominique Crenn is in the Bon Appétit test kitchen to make her most difficult dish: oysters, cucumber, and wasabi. Crenn is the first female chef in America to attain three Michelin Stars at her experimental restaurant, Atelier Crenn, in San Francisco.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00Food is movement. It's all about evolving.
00:03Everything is in front of us. We just have to find it.
00:06My name is Dominique Rennes. This is Signature Dish.
00:15So the dish I'm making today is cucumber, oyster, and wasabi.
00:19In the recipe there is two parts. There is the cucumber, plankton, and oyster.
00:25And then on the side, I'm going to recreate, with the leftover oyster liquor, a frozen oyster shell.
00:33This dish might look overwhelming, but at the end of the day it's just three ingredients with a lot of technique.
00:42Oyster is one of my favorite ingredients.
00:46It reminds me of my dad taking me to the crier at 3 o'clock in the morning,
00:51eating the oyster on the beach with him. It really connects you to what I love, which is the ocean.
00:57Alright, so I'm going to recreate a frozen oyster shell.
01:02We're going to add a little bit of oyster liquor.
01:05This is, you know, like when you chop an oyster and then there's a lot of water there.
01:09That is the best. The umami that's like, oh my god, this is so good.
01:15Obviously, when you have oyster, you drink wine. We're doing a little wine reduction.
01:21A little bit of lemon juice. Salt.
01:24There will be a little bit of a chemist here.
01:27We have the xanthan gum and the methyl cells.
01:30They are a stabilizer, but they also bind things together.
01:35I mean, you can see it's much thicker now.
01:40It's like oyster in your mouth.
01:42This is the canister that's going to create, you know, an aeration.
01:46This is the one that they use to make whipped cream.
01:49This beautiful thing is going to set and the next step is going to be nitrogen.
01:54So I first started working with nitrogen in 2011.
01:58My pastry chef, my partner, Juan Contreras, that came out with the great idea to work with this.
02:04Alright, so instead of having a mold, we're using the shell.
02:08So when you use nitrogen, you make sure that everything is very cold.
02:14Cocktail.
02:15I'm going to see if the mousse that I made with the oyster liquor is stabilized.
02:21Yeah. We need to build it.
02:24Nitro is used usually in medical area, you know.
02:28We love it. It's sealed, you know. It's sealed the flavor and enhance the flavor.
02:33There you go. Look at this. Look at this. Look at this baby.
02:37There were just two people that do this technique at work, so it's consistency and they know exactly what to do.
02:43I make about 50 every night.
02:46It's meditating. It's the way of doing a technique. There is art to it.
02:51I just love it. It's beautiful.
02:53When I look at the oyster, I just want to eat the shell and obviously it's not possible, so that's it.
03:05I just painted the plate with plankton.
03:07That's one of the most important things that you can find in the ocean.
03:11There is no plankton, there is no ocean.
03:14The way that we cook is that we break down all the ingredients, the products.
03:18So we took the cucumber, break that down, compress it.
03:22Compressing helps to bring flavor back into the ingredients.
03:27So we're going to create the flowers.
03:30Flowers have to be always a part of a dish because it brings life back to the dish.
03:35So this is a vegetable that has a lot of water.
03:37And we add more juice that was left over and we're creating right now a gelatin.
03:44Mix it little by little.
03:46You see it's starting to jellify a little bit.
03:50And then we're going to strain again.
03:52It's going to bring brightness and a little bit of acidity to the dish.
03:57We're going to put that in the fridge and it's going to set for about 20 minutes.
04:01I like to bring the flavor of the ocean with the flavor of the earth.
04:07So what we're going to do, we're going to do peas and wasabi pearl, like the oyster pearl.
04:13Wasabi is a root.
04:14Let's bring some earthy spiciness to the sweetness of the oyster and I think it's an amazing combination.
04:21So we made a pea puree.
04:24Water.
04:25And wasabi.
04:27We're going to need to emulsify with some agar agar, some lotus gum, to stabilize and to make a gel.
04:33Do not walk away from your pot.
04:35You always make sure that you mix.
04:38As soon as it goes to a boil, you take it out.
04:41And then always strain.
04:42When you use any type of hydrocolloid, to get a beautiful consistency.
04:47Look at this, so pretty.
04:49We're going to let it hang out five, six minutes.
04:52It's too hot right now to use it.
04:53And in the meantime, you can go walk the dog again.
04:59Have a glass of wine, have a coffee.
05:01Call your friend.
05:02Call your grandmother.
05:04Okay, are you guys ready?
05:05It's really fun.
05:07The first time I saw this technique, it was my French kitchen in San Sebastian.
05:11I thought it was like so amazing, you know.
05:13Look how beautiful they are.
05:16So now I'm going to plate the dish.
05:19So we have oyster that have been marinated in gin and oyster liquor.
05:23We made a cream out of the oyster.
05:25We brush it and herbs all on top of it.
05:29You have the beautiful cucumber flower that has been set into his own gel.
05:33And then here, different type of flowers.
05:36Some are like peppery, some are more floral.
05:40And we forget something.
05:42Where are the pearls?
05:44They are here.
05:46Look at this.
05:48You get the oil out and then one by one.
05:51My beautiful oyster shell.
05:53I'm going to put oyster powder.
05:55We do mushroom leaves here.
05:58Et voila!
06:00Cucumber, oyster, wasabi.
06:03So you get fat, you get acidity, you get sweetness, you get brightness.
06:08You get the ocean and the flower just kind of layer everything together.
06:12A food critic said that my food was too beautiful.
06:15My food is not beautiful.
06:17Nature is beautiful.
06:18We're just repainting what is out there.