McSalmon?

Look, I get it, okay? Edible foam was kind of kitschy even when it was the Next Big Thing On The Culinary Scene. As it's fallen out of fashion, it's become the butt of jokes all over tv, movies, advertisements, internet videos, books...just all of media, more or less. But still, to me, there's a kind of charm to the concept, especially if it's used judiciously and creatively. Having said that, I decided I wanted to try to make salmon foam, potentially as a dish for my upcoming Irish cooking stream. Unfortunately, what resulted was potentially a crime against humanity, and I'm just waiting for some jackboots from the Hague to kick down my bedroom door some night while I'm plotting new acts of culinary terror.

First off, I didn't actually "research" the concepts of edible foam. I found a few instructional videos, decided it would be too much work to watch them, and opted instead to read the 3 line blurbs about a couple of them the night before I made my attempt. I took a skinless, boneless salmon fillet, salted it, poached it in butter, then let it cool a little bit before smashing it all up with a fork and dumping it into my food processor with an egg and a packet of gelatine. I legitimately thought this might work, okay? After pulverizing it for a while, I tried using my handheld immersion blender I got for $35 at Kroger a year ago. This also failed to produce foam. So I did the best thing I could think of: cover my bowl with plastic wrap and stick it in the fridge for an hour.

What came out of the fridge was some kind of cross between pate and jello. I used a cookie cutter to remove a disc from the middle, then pried it all out with my paring knife since it was stuck to the bowl. I tasted a small piece of it, and the flavor was pretty amazing. I mean, come on. It's butter and salmon. That's always a good start.

Since I didn't want to have some kind of weird salmon hot dog/turd to go with my beautiful disc, I rolled the remainder up into a "flower" or "dog turd" shape. This was when I decided it needed to be seared. I coated the outside in a thin layer of breadcrumbs, then, remembering what I learned from when I made chicken liver pate that throwing a scoop into a hot pan just melts it, I followed some advice from a friend and stuck this monstrosity in the freezer for about half an hour.

This did not help as, instead of searing, the disc just melted into a sad little glob of salmon puree. For the dog shit/flower, I decided instead to just pour some hot, melted butter over the top. This worked a little bit better. "Okay," I thought to myself, "I guess I'm eating the fucking turd for dinner."

I had a pot of rice cooking with salt, thyme, and parsley, and it wasn't finished yet, so I figured I could go ahead and try to polish the turd a little while to see what might happen. A little bit of paprika, a little black pepper, and a few capers in the middle so it would appear more flower-like seemed like a decent plan. And it kind of worked: it almost looked intentional.

As for final plating, I used another of my cookie cutters (just bought a pack at Kroger for, like, $10 a couple weeks ago) to give my rice a nice shape. I've still got my PVC pipes, but I'll be using them less as these bastards are a hell of a lot easier to use.

Then I simply dropped my deuce on top of the rice. See? Almost looks edible. The cool thing was that the heat from the rice did melt the bottom of the jello just enough to start melting it, so that salmon flavor disseminated into the rice a little bit. 

Once again, flavorwise, this was pretty fucking awesome. The concept of salmon jello, on the other hand, is abysmal, and Jesus may send me to hell for half an hour after I die because of that. I wouldn't blame Him. I basically created the prototype for a new "higher-end" menu item at McDonald's. This shit was still better than a McRib, though.