My play with Transglutaminase continues after an intensive week of catering. Here I’ve made a salmon ravioli filled with passion fruit hollandaise. When I used to work the line, the hollandaise was made before service and kept in a warm bath. This didn’t make sense to me and I insisted on making it to order, which pissed everyone off. They backed down when I proved that a perfect sauce could be made in the time that it took them to get their pans hot.
My entry into the world of cooking was through the sweet side. The skills that I have learned from baking have eased my transition to the savory side of the kitchen. I look for the moments when the two worlds collide and the transition feels seamless.
One day, while making a lemon curd, it occurred to me that I was essentially making a sweetened hollandaise. Although the cooking methods and proportions varies slightly between the two, the chemistry is the same in forming these egg-emulsified sauces. They share the same trio of key ingredients: egg yolks, fat in the form of butter, and acid in the form of lemon juice. When isolating these ingredients and considering possible alternatives, it becomes easy to imagine flavor variations on the classic hollandaise. Egg yolks are unique in their protein coagulation, but acid can be introduced in the form of any fruit juice that has a PH of 3.0 or lower so as not to over-dilute the egg yolk. Candidates that fall in this range are: grapefruit, lime, cranberries, gooseberries, wild grapes, verjus, raspberries, rhubarb, pomegranates, tamarind, and passion fruit. These are all flavors that I’ve used to make fruit curds, so why not hollandaise? To bring it back to the savory realm, even the butter can be replaced with solidifying fats such as: foie, bacon, duck fat, serrano fat. Can you see where I’m going? Does this excite you as much as it does me?
For this ravioli, the hollandaise posed a challenge because it needed to solidify in order to glue the thin sheets of salmon around it, then to revert to it’s fluid sauce state when reheated. A traditional hollandaise was not stable enough to endure the freezing and cooking process without curdling. I fiddled with a few additives and techniques before hitting on the simple addition of a small amount of gelatin. This allowed the hollandaise to firm up sufficiently without the need to be frozen, which I suspect had destabilized the emulsification, and to remelt in the sous vide bath.
sous vide salmon ravioli filled with passion fruit hollandaise
crispy salmon skin
asparagus ramp puree
spiced rum beads
Playing with Fire and Water 
Would you share your regular hollandaise magic with us? My wife and I have been making this magic elixir for years, but have recently had a stretch of non-emulsified disasters. A half dozen subsequent attempts at recreating our own magic have failed. We are disillusioned and lost without that wonderful sauce on the weekends (and often in between.) Can you show us the way back to the eggy promised land?
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what was the exact process for incorporating the gelatin into the sauce? Was it added to the acid, or to the finished sauce?
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Mark- Glad to share. Heres how I make a single serving of hollandaise: place 2 oz.(1/2 stick) of butter in a small pan and place over high heat. Set a medium bowl on a flat surface and cradle it with a towel. In the bowl, place 1 large egg yolk (at room temp), 1 tsp acidic juice, and a pinch of salt. Whisk this together for about 5 seconds. When the butter is hot and bubbly, slowly dribble it into the yolk mixture, whisking vigorously. Continue adding the butter in a slow stream while whisking. You should end up with a perfectly emulsified, hot hollandaise. If you prefer it thicker, you can set the bowl over a pan of barely simmering water and continue whisking.
Chad- to incorporate the gelatin, I softened 1/4 tsp of powdered gelatin in 2 Tblsps of water and brought it to a boil, then whisked in 2 tsp. of this hot solution into the finished hollandaise.
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Love the picture of that dish! I’d also love to try to cock it myself and surprise a few friends with what seems to me as a probably very tasty, fun and original creation…
However, obviously you are a serious professional chef whereas i am just an aspiring home-cook and am struggling with a couple of question:
How exactly did you “glue” the thin layers of salmon? Am i mistaken or does the photo show some sort of stitches on the side of salmon ravioli? But how was it then sealed tightly enough so the liquified hollandaise wouldn’t run out once warmed up? Lacking the technical equipment for sous vide preparation, couldn’t i poach the ravioli instead?
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lan- the salmon is literally glued together with Transglutaminase, an enzyme that bonds protein and is referred to as “meat glue”. You can purchase it at http://www.le-sanctuaire.com.
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These pictures are beautiful! What type of mold did you use? And did you need to press it overnight?
Thanks! Great work.
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Jeff-no mold involved–the slices of salmon were glued around the filling and compressed in a vacuum bag overnight, then sous vide.
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The gelatin-fortified hollandaise is awesome… what a rockin’ idea!
Any idea as to the science behind the stablilization? I can’t seem to wrap my brain around exactly why this works.
Thanks…J
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Jeff- The hollandaise needed to be firm (solid) in order to mold and glue the salmon around it. The gelatin was able to change the hollandaise from a liquid to a solid without freezing, which I suspected was destabilizing it. It did not entirely stabilize it–I still had to carefully monitor the cooking time and temp.
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interesting concept. We’re trying to work on a bearnaise filled hard boiled egg (top cut off, yolk removed, filled with sauce, top re-attached (this is the difficult part as we don’t have access to activa) then battered and deep fried) Planned on freezing the egg before breading it (also as the method for re-attaching the egg top), obviously negatively affecting the emulsion…did you happen to try glycerin as your stabilizer when you were trying to freeze the sauce? success?
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do you post the recipes for all of your dishes on this blog? by the way, you’re freakin’ awesome… love you vision and talent to materialize it!
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Thanks, Jason. I don’t always have time to record recipes when cooking for the blog, or sometimes they need further refinement, so they don’t all make it on here.
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AT what Temp and how long in the sous vide?
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I wish I could remember— that was over 2 years ago. I’m guessing it was in the 50-52C range for 10-15 minutes.
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I always use clarified butter for hollandaise. Every time I’ve tried using melted butter, I get either an immediate or a faster emulsion breakdown.
I’m loving the idea of playing with the flavors of hollandaise and it bothers me that I never thought of this myself. Bacon hollandaise just makes sense in my kitchen, I’ll be trying that soon!
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