11 hours Ago By Joe Rossiter
Salmon is a favourite of home cooks up and down the country, and now one chef has revealed a common ingredient which could revolutionise recipes. Food writer Kristen Miglore shared a hack she found from chef Marc Matsumoto which she said “will change how you cook salmon ”. Matsumoto is an author of numerous cookbooks, having begun in his mother’s kitchen first in a small fishing village on the southern Japanese island of Kyushu where he was born, and continued in San Francisco, where the family moved when he was just months old.
He said: “By the time I could see over the counter, I was in the kitchen helping her and learning everything I could, from creating umami to the subtle art of kakushiaji (hidden taste). His salmon trick, Miglore wrote, has been “sitting on one of the longest-running food blogs since the early aughts”, but still seems to be relatively unknown among home cooks. In 2009, Matsumoto shared his experience of trying to recreate a “Season-All blend”, a seasoning used by his mother when he was young which combined celery, garlic, onion and other flavour enhancers.
Matsumoto’s mum had used the mix on salmon, but the man himself was struggling to mimic it in his adulthood. He said: “I really loved this stuff growing up and would even sneak into the spice cabinet on occasion and sprinkle some on my hand to eat.” Though he considered using MSG, he remembered shiitake powder and some recent successes he had had using the ingredient in chicken sausage and ragu.
Dried skiitake mushrooms have a concentrated flavour compared to the fresh produce and are known for their savoury umami flavour, which adds depth to soup, stew and stir fries. Filled with umami-enhancing glutamates, the powder forms a crust on the salmon. But while Miglore knows many recipes calling for cooks to soak dried mushrooms, blend them into a powder, or buy them from a speciality store, she found Matsumoto’s recipe far simpler.
He simply grated dried shiitake over the salmon, which Miglore found “yielded obediently” to the grater, “curling away in Parmesan-like tufts”. She said: “The fish turned out delicious, but not perceptibly mushroomy, so I thought I might have just seasoned and cooked it perfectly for once.” To check, she repeated the recipe but this time, covered only half of the fish in its shiitake blanket, finding a significant difference between the seasoned and unseasoned portions.
She continued: “The shiitake half tasted like it had been made by a very intuitive and talented cook. This is the half we all deserve in our lives.”.
