I finally got to see the Iron Chef America episode where Seattle uberchef Tom Douglas challenges Morimoto. For one of Morimoto’s dishes, he cooks a salmon fillet in the style of Peking duck, by repeatedly ladling hot oil over the fish. And when I say repeatedly, I mean he stood there ladling for what looked like twenty minutes, burning himself frequently. But you couldn’t argue with the results, a perfectly medium-rare piece of fish with the ultimate in crispy skin.
I was so inspired by this display of iron cheffery that I’ve decided that from now on I’m going to cook everything this way. There will be a wok full of hot peanut oil on the stove at all times. You’ll come into the kitchen and I’ll be holding a steak in one hand and ladling oil on with the other. Just wait until you see my desserts.
Actually, now that I think about it, maybe it would be better if you didn’t come into the kitchen.
There’s a place here in Berkeley called Vik’s Chaat Corner that does something like this. Overall the place is absurdly overrated, but its signature offering is decent: it’s the #9, a gigantic puri served with a plastic dish of chickpea curry. After you order it, the guy throws a piece of dough into an enormous skillet and ladles hot oil over it until it swells up to the size of an SUV tire. Then you pick it up at the counter, take it to your seat, and stare at it until you finally summon up the courage to stab at it with your spork, unleashing a jet of scalding gas that will send you to the burn ward if you aren’t careful. Eventually you rip it up and dip it in the curry and it’s pretty tasty.
It sounds like the chef got the ultimate in crispy skin as well.
and, eventually, you could scoff at all those poor saps whose houses burn down for such hackneyed, tired reasons as oily rags, space heaters…
“well, lieutenant robert-deniro-in-“backdraft,” actually, i started cooking everything a la peking duck a while ago…”
Ought to make interesting toast…