SEA SCALLOP. Pear | Tomatillo | Nasturtium.
CHEF RYAN CARBONE.
For those of you that know me and have graciously followed my food journey over the years, you know that I eat a lot of raw fish and and a lot crudo dishes. I’ve always thought that creating a successful crudo plate, even though sometimes nothing on the plate is actually cooked, requires just as much skill and technique if not more, than actually cooking a piece of fish, where you’re sometimes able to hide its imperfections or a subtle mistake. The fish has to be ultra premium and handled with care as knife skills definitely get showcased here.
Just as important as the fish itself, are all of the ingredients on the plate, coming together in a way that hopefully proves that the sum of all of the parts are greater than the individual parts themselves. This is where a Chef needs to understand the balance between flavors, textures, and temperatures that are all working either together or competing against each other. If it’s the latter, then being able to bring them back into balance, which is not an easy skill.
When I scope out a restaurant and a menu, the first thing that I look for and gravitate towards is any type of raw fish/crudo dish. It says a lot without having to say anything at all in my opinion. I’ve definitely had my share of crudo dishes that weren’t successful and missed the mark for whatever reason it may have been, but I’ve also eaten a great number of dishes that were wildly successful.
My most recent just such dish, comes from Chef Ryan Carbone of Ore Hill & Swyft in Kent, CT. Last week I had the extraordinary pleasure of meeting him to discuss his recent nomination for ‘Chef of the Year’ and ‘Restaurant of the Year’ by the CRA for this years CRAZIES awards, to be featured in my ‘Chef Talks’ section of this blog. He graciously served me a few of his favorite dishes on the menu after we talked. While every dish he served me could honestly be featured in this section of my blog, it was the Scallop Crudo that literally left my speechless and in wonderment at how amazing it was. Below is Ryan’s full description of the dish:
‘I really love the scallops we're getting from Maine right now, and I really love this vinaigrette that we make for the scallops. It's a black pear vinaigrette. I'm not sure if you've had any black fruits before, but it's a preservation process where we take the fruits, and we store them in an airtight environment, vacuum seal them, and we store them at about 105 degrees in a dehydrator for about 3 months. Last year's pears we bagged and put in a dehydrator for months. Eventually it turns it into this really deep, almost roasted rich flavor. It’s kind of similar to a fresh fig, or a fig Newton. It's just so deep and so awesome. So we take the black pears and we blend it into a paste, and then we blend that with homemade pear vinegar, which we make the hard way by juicing pears. Next we pitch it with saison beer yeast. We make a pear mead, and then we stop the fermentation process. We have a mother vinegar, and then with that we make our own vinegar. That took about 6 months to do, so the entire vinaigrette itself was started last fall. We also Make the black pears. We took the pears, made a vinaigrette out of it and then this year we have the vinegar and the pears. We put them all together into a dressing. Then we pair that with pickled pears from this year by doing a nice classic pickle on them. We pair all this with tomatillos that we get exclusively from the farm. We do a raw tomatillo preparation, and then we do a frozen tomatillo granita, which in my opinion is really fun to pair with raw fish.’
This dish truly was special and my description wouldn’t have been as accurate. It evoked a wonderful umami that I have only ever experienced a very few times and is why this dish is undoubtedly one of the best I’ve had not only this year, but ever. Well Done Chef! Get it at Ore Hill in Kent, CT before its gone! You won’t be disappointed.