Rick Bayless' Grilled Salmon in Peanut Salsa for Father's Day
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Recommended California Pinot Noir FERRARI-CARANO Pinot Noir Anderson Valley 2013 Score: 88 | $36 A solid, direct style, with a complex mix of vibrant red berry, plum and raspberry fruit flavors supported by firm tannins. Should benefit from some bottle time. Drink now through 2020. 5,197 cases made.—JL Christine Dalton Posted: June 10, 2016 Rick Bayless' Grilled Salmon in Peanut Salsa for Father's Day Treat Dad to a crowd-pleasing Mexican dish, plus 14 California Pinot Noirs Photo by: Christopher Hirsheimer Chef Rick Bayless regularly pairs seafood with red wines to match the bold flavors of Mexican cuisine. http://www.winespectator.com/webfeature/show/id/Rick-Bayless-Salmon-Peanut-Sauce- Fathers-Day- 53244?utm_medium=email&utm_source=Health061516A&utm_campaign=Health061516 For chef Rick Bayless, restaurants and family go together, for our purposes, like chips and salsa. The master of Mexican cuisine grew up learning from his family, who owned everything from steak houses to drive-ins. As he built his own restaurant empire, which includes Wine Spectator Award of Excellence–winning Frontera Grill and Topolobampo, Bayless made it a priority to pass this love of food, culture and hospitality to his own daughter, Lanie, as well. "She grew up in our restaurant," the cookbook author and television personality reminisces. He's not exaggerating—Bayless and his wife and business partner, Deann, transformed a storage room at Frontera Grill into a miniature apartment where Lanie spent most of her childhood. Once she started going to school, she would come to the restaurant in the afternoon to do her homework and eat dinner. In high school, she'd bring her friends. And today, she's the manager of the newest Bayless restaurant, Leña Brava. Bayless' fatherly culinary influence also extended beyond the restaurant's walls. He organized yearly family vacations centered around cooking in a new country with a local family. "That was one of the ways to explore another culture, through its cuisine," he explains. "I think you can learn so much about another culture through the food they prepare and how they serve it." He and Lanie then compiled all the recipes and co-wrote a cookbook, Rick & Lanie's Excellent Kitchen Adventures. When he's not travelling or concocting Mexican dishes in his Chicago-based restaurants, Bayless' home cooking is all about experimenting with new recipes and cuisines, while maintaining long-held family traditions. Annually, he invites family and friends over and makes the full menu from his father's now-closed barbecue restaurant. And on Father's Day, his wife and daughter take charge of the meals. "I usually do all of the cooking in our house. But this is a day when I don’t do any of it. They take me out to eat—they always plan some special stuff." If he were to cook for a crowd on Father's Day, he would choose one of Frontera Grill's most popular recipes, Grilled Salmon in Toasty Peanut Salsa, which was featured in his latest cookbook, More Mexican Everyday: Simple, Seasonal, Celebratory. The crowd-pleasing dish is "very friendly for backyard parties and really delicious and simple to prepare," he says. "It's a very easy dish that looks very special when you serve it." Grilled salmon is topped with a peanut and guajillo chile salsa. "A lot of times, Americans think of chiles as the thing that adds a little bit of heat to a dish, but in Mexican cuisine it actually is the main ingredient in the sauce a lot of times," Bayless says. The guajillo is known for its brightness and acidity, and will hold its own paired with the bold peanut flavors, "so it creates a more balanced dish." Bayless is also a self-professed wine lover—he says that if he weren't a chef, he'd be a sommelier—and enjoys experimenting with new grapes and food pairings from his wine director, Jill Gubesch. Gubesch specializes in identifying unique wines to drink alongside Bayless' flavorful cuisine. "People always try to back you into that low-alcohol, off-dry Riesling corner with all spicy cuisine, and I've really never found that to be true with Mexican food," she says of her pairing philosophy. She revels in the unconventional—one of her favorite pairings is a rich California Zinfandel with mole—but with this dish, she recommends a classic coupling, salmon and Pinot Noir. "Pinot Noir with that really juicy acidity would match the brightness of the guajillo chiles and cut through the richness of the toasted peanuts," she says. She recommends choosing a fruit-forward California Pinot, perhaps from Sta. Rita Hills, to complement the dish. Grilled Salmon in Toasty Peanut Salsa (Salmón a la Parilla con Salsa de Cacahuate Tostado) 3 garlic cloves, unpeeled 3 dried guajillo chiles, stemmed, seeded and torn into large pieces 2 chipotle chiles en adobo, stemmed and roughly chopped 1 cup roasted, unsalted peanuts Salt Four 5- to 6-ounce boneless, skinless salmon fillets (preferably from wild-caught salmon) Olive or vegetable oil to taste 2 green (or fresh spring “knob”) onions, or 2 fresh ramps 1. On one side of a large (10-inch) dry skillet, roast the garlic over medium, turning regularly, until soft and blackened in spots, 10 to 15 minutes. On the other side, toast the chiles: Use a metal spatula to press the guajillo chile pieces flat against the hot surface of the pan. When they release their aroma and change color slightly (maybe even give off a faint wisp of smoke), about 10 seconds, flip them over and press down again to toast the other side. Scoop into a bowl and cover with 3/4 cup very hot tap water. Rehydrate the chiles for 10 to 15 minutes. 2. Peel the garlic and scoop into the blender, along with the guajillo chiles (including their soaking liquid), the chipotles and the peanuts. Add a little more water if necessary to give the salsa an easily spoonable consistency. Taste and season with salt, usually about 1/2 a teaspoon. 3. Heat a gas grill to medium-high, or light a charcoal fire and let the coals burn until covered with white ash but still very hot. Smear the salmon fillets and green onions (or ramps) with a little oil and sprinkle with salt. Then, on the coolest place on your grill grate, grill the onion, turning regularly, until soft, about 15 minutes. Lay the salmon fillets, on the side that would have had the skin, on the hottest part of the grill grate. When the grill grates have deeply seared marks into the salmon and the salmon has begun to release itself from the grates, about 3 minutes depending on the heat of your fire, flip them and cook to your desired degree of doneness, usually about 6 minutes total cooking time for a 1-inch-thick fillet. Transfer to warm dinner plates. 4. Chop the green onion (or ramp) into small pieces. Spoon some salsa over each fillet, sprinkle with chopped onion (or ramps) and serve right away. Serves 4. Recipe copyright © 2015 by Rick Bayless and Deann Groen Bayless; Photographs copyright © 2015 by Christopher Hirsheimer .