Recipe Salmon Net Allumette
- Thread starter flyinglentris
- Start date
ElizabethB
Legendary Member
flyinglentris
Disabled and Retired Veteran
Happy New Year!
I'm ready to photo-document this recipe now. Before I start, let me apologize for posting the recipe in a very simple way without revealing some of the tricky little secrets to pulling this whole affair off. I'll re-edit the original post to direct attention to this post to make sure people don't stumble around and get frustrated. You'll see what I mean by that.
The first thing we need to talk about is sharpening up that cutting knife and having a pair of tweezers among your kitchen utensils. The tweezers are going to be very much helpful to the cause.
The day before the meal, bake the salmon and refrigerate it flaked.
For enough for about two to three people, two small fillets will do the trick.
After baking the salmon, remove the skins and flake with a fork. Then refrigerate so it is cold and ready for preparing the dish on the day of the meal.
Let the fun begin. We start with the celery, tops and bottoms off.
Cut each stick in half down the groove and then begin to make the Julienne cuts. Keep in mind that celery sticks are curved. Begin the slice at one end and drag the knife while using your free hand to straighten the celery as you drag. When you get close to the other end, you can drop the back of the knife to finish the cut.
When you have enough strips to cover a microwavable plate, lay the strips out on the plate to cover it and then we do trick #1.
Trick #1: Microwave the celery strips for about 30 seconds. Check to see if the strips are soft enough to bend and weave. You might need to do this 3 or 5 times. If you do it right, the celery strips will be pliable, but still retain some crispiness. Microwaving the celery will also enhance its flavor. There are several ways to alter the flavor of food: 1) mixing or compositing, 2) pickeling, 3) aging, 4) heating and others. Here, we have heated the celery and altered its composition and so, its flavor. And we did this while trying to make it more flexible to work with.
Begin weaving the strips in one corner and expand from there.
Use those tweezers to assist lifting and weaving the strips. That's trick #2.
When you have a weave that is roughly the size of a slice of bread, stop and trim off the excess. Do not start with the strips pre-trimmed to size. Trim them off after the weave is done.
Keep in mind that this creation is very fragile. You can't just lift it or pick it up. It'll fall apart. We will later put a plate atop the finished basket and flip the whole affair over to transfer it to the meal plate. That's trick #3.
So add the flaked salmon and begin the (bottom) weave.
Hang on a minute! Can't we be clever about this and save some effort and time? Yes. We know that we're going to flip this whole affair over and that it can't be picked up so let's just lay the remaining (bottom) side on there crossing the strips instead of attempting to weave them. That's trick #4. When done, trim off the excess again.
You should then flip and you'll get something like this.
I added the snow peas and sun dried tomato for visual affect and cleverly positioned the plate so that the net would be offset on the plate. The whole net is topped off with cilantro and given a light spray of lemon juice.
There's one last trick that applies to the consumer or diner ...
If you just fork in, things will get unwieldy. You can't cut celery with a fork. So use the fork to hold down the net where the cut is to be made and make the cut with a knife between the tines of the fork. You can quarter it and proceed from there.
Keep in mind that this was part of my multi-course New Years Eve dinner which you can find discussed in the palette cleansing thread. See the link in the first post of this thread.
Enjoy and ... have fun working this up.
I'm ready to photo-document this recipe now. Before I start, let me apologize for posting the recipe in a very simple way without revealing some of the tricky little secrets to pulling this whole affair off. I'll re-edit the original post to direct attention to this post to make sure people don't stumble around and get frustrated. You'll see what I mean by that.
The first thing we need to talk about is sharpening up that cutting knife and having a pair of tweezers among your kitchen utensils. The tweezers are going to be very much helpful to the cause.
The day before the meal, bake the salmon and refrigerate it flaked.
For enough for about two to three people, two small fillets will do the trick.
After baking the salmon, remove the skins and flake with a fork. Then refrigerate so it is cold and ready for preparing the dish on the day of the meal.
Let the fun begin. We start with the celery, tops and bottoms off.
Cut each stick in half down the groove and then begin to make the Julienne cuts. Keep in mind that celery sticks are curved. Begin the slice at one end and drag the knife while using your free hand to straighten the celery as you drag. When you get close to the other end, you can drop the back of the knife to finish the cut.
When you have enough strips to cover a microwavable plate, lay the strips out on the plate to cover it and then we do trick #1.
Trick #1: Microwave the celery strips for about 30 seconds. Check to see if the strips are soft enough to bend and weave. You might need to do this 3 or 5 times. If you do it right, the celery strips will be pliable, but still retain some crispiness. Microwaving the celery will also enhance its flavor. There are several ways to alter the flavor of food: 1) mixing or compositing, 2) pickeling, 3) aging, 4) heating and others. Here, we have heated the celery and altered its composition and so, its flavor. And we did this while trying to make it more flexible to work with.
Begin weaving the strips in one corner and expand from there.
Use those tweezers to assist lifting and weaving the strips. That's trick #2.
When you have a weave that is roughly the size of a slice of bread, stop and trim off the excess. Do not start with the strips pre-trimmed to size. Trim them off after the weave is done.
Keep in mind that this creation is very fragile. You can't just lift it or pick it up. It'll fall apart. We will later put a plate atop the finished basket and flip the whole affair over to transfer it to the meal plate. That's trick #3.
So add the flaked salmon and begin the (bottom) weave.
Hang on a minute! Can't we be clever about this and save some effort and time? Yes. We know that we're going to flip this whole affair over and that it can't be picked up so let's just lay the remaining (bottom) side on there crossing the strips instead of attempting to weave them. That's trick #4. When done, trim off the excess again.
You should then flip and you'll get something like this.
I added the snow peas and sun dried tomato for visual affect and cleverly positioned the plate so that the net would be offset on the plate. The whole net is topped off with cilantro and given a light spray of lemon juice.
There's one last trick that applies to the consumer or diner ...
If you just fork in, things will get unwieldy. You can't cut celery with a fork. So use the fork to hold down the net where the cut is to be made and make the cut with a knife between the tines of the fork. You can quarter it and proceed from there.
Keep in mind that this was part of my multi-course New Years Eve dinner which you can find discussed in the palette cleansing thread. See the link in the first post of this thread.
Enjoy and ... have fun working this up.
Last edited:
ElizabethB
Legendary Member
Last edited by a moderator:
Fantastic! It looks very impressive. 
Sandra
Über Member
I would be really curious to see the effect, it seems very interesting!
flyinglentris
Disabled and Retired Veteran
Sandra, go back a few posts and you'll see that I posted a complete photo documentation on prep for this.