Eric Ripert of Le Bernardin has been faithfully continuing his excellent series on cooking with a toaster oven. Though I recommend watching, I'm really interested by what is clearly something of a bugbear for Ripert - being properly "focused" when seasoning. The snippets below, from each of his episodes other than the one involving a mango dessert, illustrate the point. The questions they raise are clear - is focused salting that important to food of the quality that Ripert produces in his restaurant? And second, is it as significant a question for the home cook as Ripert suggests?
My experience is that salting enough is extremely important, but that patchiness in salting across a piece of fish or meat is less so. In the pantheon of home cooking problems, I would put inconsistent salting across surfaces somewhere below inadequate seasoning, failure to brown, and cooking to just done (and not overdone) as the most significant cook's "craft" problems faced by the home cook. But I wonder if people disagree. (I'll see if I can get the Chef himself to address this through a comment, but barring that, I'll ask the question here).
Broiled Red Snapper Fillet: 1:12 "You can see the way I'm seasoning. I'm not too far, I'm not too close to the fish. I'm maybe five inches on top of the fish, and I'm very focused on it."
Salt and Pepper: (a written post only): To season, hold your hands six to eight inches above the food and sprinkle a fine coating of salt and pepper all over the surface before cooking. Be methodical about seasoning evenly–if you have uneven fillets, use more salt and pepper on the thicker portions.
Parmesan Zucchini with Balsamic: 1:38 Then some fine sea salt, and I make sure I'm very focused when I'm doing the seasoning, because the zucchini is so thin, if you are not concentrated in putting the salt and pepper, you may have something extremely spicy or extremely salty.
Herb Roasted Chicken Tenders: 1:00 Making sure at all times to have your fingers very dry, so that way you can season very precisely.
6/30/2008
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Making sure at all times to have your fingers very dry, so that way you can season very precisely.
I am bad about this -- my fingers are perpetually damp when I'm cooking meat or fish because I keep washing them to avoid getting Germs on other parts of the meal -- and it can make a difference at the extreme if a chunk of wet salt goes into a single bite. I like peppery food so that rarely seems as much of a problem.
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