This is worth it. Really.
Inspiration hit at the farmers market this AM. Lemon basil. Love that stuff, and for a crudo? Yes, please. Not sure what it was but when I smelled that basil the first thing I thought of was crudo. Grabbed some lovely pacific salmon, some ripe tomatoes, purple garlic, and a nice avocado.
The tomatoes get roasted a la Keller(gutted, evoo, s/p, thyme). Except I skip the boiling and let the oven loosen the skin. In this case I also placed some of the lemon basil under the tomato petals(after skinning). I pull them after about an hour and pull skin, but importantly, also drain off all the olive oil/tomato jus that is in the pan. This goes into the vinaigrette.
For a little crunch I shave some very thin yam and fry it very quickly in a vegetable/sesame oil. This tops the crudo. It is intially flat but gets all curly after frying.
Start the plate with very thin avocado slices and tomato petals. Cut some razor thin garlic slices and place them sparsely on both items. Very few, more of a surprise garlic. Next carve some thin salmon crudo slices. Salt and pepper the plate at this point. Add chiffonade of the lemon basil and cilantro. The vinaigrette is 1 ounce of tomato jus, tbsp of pepper balsamic, 4 tbsp of basil evoo. Dress and then sprinkle with the fried yam.
We had the 2001 arcadian gary’s pinot noir with this. Excellent wine.
After looking at the plating, I will probably opt to layer this in one line next time.
