3 Michelin Star Chef Makes Her Most Difficult Dish

Food is movement. It's all about evolving.

Everything is in front of us, we just have to find it.

My name is Dominique Crenn.

This is Signature Dish.

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So the dish I'm making today is cucumber, oyster and wasabi.

In the recipe, there is two part.

There is the cucumber, plankton and oyster in its oil,

and then on the side, I'm gonna recreate,

with the leftover oyster liquor, a frozen oyster shell.

This dish might look overwhelming,

but at the end of the day, it's just three ingredient

with a lot of technique.

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Oyster is one of my favorite ingredient.

They remind me of my dad taking me to the criee

at 3:00 in the morning,

eating the oyster on the beach with him.

They really connect you to what I love, which is the ocean.

All right, so I'm gonna recreate a frozen oyster shell.

We're gonna add a little bit of oyster liquor.

This is, you know, like when you shuck an oyster

and then there's a lot of water there.

That is the best, the umami

that's like, oh my god, this is so good.

Obviously when you have oyster, you drink wine.

We're doing a little wine reduction.

Little bit of lemon juice, salt.

You get to be a little bit of a chemist here.

We have the xantham gum and the methocel.

They are stabilizer, but they also bind things together.

I mean, you can see it's much thicker now.

It's like oyster in your mouth.

This is the canister that's gonna create,

you know, an aeration.

This is the one that they use to make whipped cream.

This beautiful thing's gonna set,

and the next step's gonna be nitrogen.

So I first start working with nitrogen 2011.

My pastry chef, my partner Juan Contreras,

that came out with the great idea to work with this.

All right, so instead of having a mold, we using the shell.

So when you use nitrogen,

you make sure that everything is very cold.

Cocktail.

I'm gonna see if the mousse that I made

with the oyster liquor is stabilized.

Yeah.

We need to build it.

Nitro is used usually in medical area, you know.

We love it. It seal, you know?

It seal the flavor and enhance the flavor.

There you go, you see, look at this, look at this.

Look at this baby.

There is just two people that do this technique at work,

so it's consistency, and they know exactly what to do.

I make about 50 every night.

It's meditating.

It's the way of doing a technique.

There is art to it.

I just love it. It's beautiful.

When I look at a oyster, I just want to eat the shell,

and obviously, it's not possible, so.

That's it.

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I just painted the plate with plankton.

That's one of the most important things

that you can find in the ocean.

There is no plankton, there is no ocean.

The way that we cook is

that we break down all the ingredient, the product,

so we took the cucumber, break that down, compress it.

Compressing it help to bring flavor

back into the ingredient.

Mm.

So we're gonna create flowers.

Flowers have to be always a part of a dish,

because it bring life back to the dish.

So this is a vegetable that has a lot of water,

and we have more juice that were leftover,

and we creating, right now, a gelatin.

Mix it little by little.

You see it's starting to jellify a little bit.

And then we're gonna strain again.

It's gonna bring brightness

and a little bit of acidity to the dish.

I'm gonna put that in the fridge,

and it's gonna set for about 20 minutes.

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I like to bring the flavor of the ocean

with the flavor of the earth.

So what we're gonna do, we're gonna do peas

and wasabi pearl, like the oyster pearl.

Wasabi is a root.

Let's bring some earthy spiciness

to the sweetness of the oyster,

and I think it's an amazing combination.

So we made a pea puree.

Water, and wasabi.

Gonna need to emulsify with some agar agar,

some locust gum to stabilize and to make a gel.

Do not walk away from your pot.

You always make sure that you mix.

As soon it goes to a boil, you take it out.

And then always try, when you use any type of hydrocolloid,

to get a beautiful consistency.

Look at this. So pretty.

We're gonna let it hang out five, six minutes,

it's too hot right now to use it,

and in the meantime,

can go walk the dog again,

have a glass of wine, have a coffee,

call your friend, call your grandmother.

Okay, are you guys ready?

It's really fun.

The first time I saw this technique,

it was my friend's kitchen in San Sebastian.

I thought it was, like, so amazing, you know?

Look how beautiful they are.

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So now I'm gonna plate the dish.

So we have oyster that have been marinated

in gin and oyster liquor.

We made a cream out of the oyster,

we brush it and herbs oil on top of it,

you have the beautiful cucumber flower

that has been set into his own gel,

and then here, different type of flowers.

Some are like peppery, some are more floral.

And we forget something, huh?

Where are the pearls?

They are here.

Look at this.

You get the oil out, and then one by one.

My beautiful oyster shell,

I'm gonna put oyster powder

with mushroom leaves here.

Et voila.

Cucumber, oyster, wasabi.

So you get fat, you get acidity, you get sweetness,

you get brightness, you get the ocean,

and the flower just kind of layer everything together.

A food critic said that my food was too beautiful.

My food is not beautiful.

Nature is beautiful.

We just repainting what is out there.

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