Serves 6
Before Moto opened in 2004, I spent about nine months playing around with food. This dish came from that period. Up until that point, I had been working in kitchens since I was twelve, often holding two or three jobs at once, which taught me a lot about efficiency but didn’t leave a lot of time for exploration.
I had just left the kitchen at Charlie Trotter’s, and was inspired by Chef Trotter’s “A Study in Apricot” from his first cookbook. It takes one ingredient, the apricot, and expresses it in a variety of ways in a single dish. It led me to wonder: What if instead of changing the way we prepared the ingredient—which you might call the “software” of the dish—we changed the “hardware” instead? Could we manipulate the physical objects on which food is served to enhance the dining experience?
“A Study in Utensils” begins by winding fresh herbs around the handles of forks and spoons. Their aromas provide pleasurable nuance to what you’re eating. If you stop to think about what’s happening in your mouth as you consume the food—savoring the texture, acids, salts, and other flavors—you’ll realize that you’re experiencing the flavor of the herbs without actually consuming them. That takes the experience to a new level.
I went to a German spring maker to create spiral-handled utensils, shaped so I could wind herbs around the handle to complement bites of sashimi and caviar. I like the combination of their rich, subtle flavors, combined with the aroma of the herbs and the bouncy texture of the caviar on your tongue, slowly releasing small bursts of flavor as you chew the fish. The herbs are very strong; if I put them in each bite they could overpower the other ingredients. Adding only their aromas creates a more ethereal experience, gently enhancing the flavor of the seafood and adding to the overall effect of the dish.
Once I discovered what we could achieve by adding aromas to a dish in this way, my imagination went wild. What other parts of the meal could we change, while keeping the food wholesome, fresh, and delicious? This “Study in Utensils” was the first step along the creative path that drove Moto as a restaurant.
70 grams maple syrup
7.5 grams kosher salt
90 grams raw unseasoned trout roe
6 live bay scallops, in their shells
170 grams hamachi fillet
170 grams toro fillet
100 grams dill sprigs
100 grams fresh chives
85 grams ossetra caviar
100 grams thyme sprigs
85 grams paddlefish roe
100 fresh chervil
85 grams flying fish roe
Put the maple syrup and kosher salt in a small bowl and mix until the salt dissolves. Put the trout roe in a small container with a lid. Pour the marinade over the trout roe, cover, and refrigerate for 2 hours.
Remove the trout roe from the refrigerator and transfer to a sieve. Rinse gently with cold water to remove the marinade from the cured roe. Drain well, then return to the lidded container and store in the refrigerator over a bowl of ice until ready to serve.
Put the bay scallops in a stainless-steel bowl set over a bowl of ice in the refrigerator for a couple of hours before cleaning. This will numb their muscles and make them easier to remove from their shells. They may open slightly. To clean the scallops, take the first shell and stand it up on a cutting board so that it is resting on the smaller, hinged base. Looking at the scallop you will notice that one side of the shell is flat and one is rounded. Take a paring knife, insert it into the shell on the flat side, and run it along the inside of the shell, severing the muscle and releasing the scallop. Flip it around and do the same thing on the other side. The scallop is surrounded by its innards. Locate the firm adductor muscle along one side of the scallop and peel it away from the tender scallop. All of the innards should peel away with it, leaving the edible part of the bay scallop intact. Discard the adductor muscle and the innards and reserve the edible scallop. Repeat with the 5 remaining scallops. Rinse the scallops, if necessary, and pat them dry with a paper towel. Slice each scallop horizontally into 4 equal circles. Put them in a covered container and reserve, on ice, until ready to serve.
Just before serving, take the hamachi out of the refrigerator and slice it into 6 equal pieces, cutting against the grain of the muscle. Reserve. Take the toro out of the refrigerator and slice it into 6 equal pieces, cutting against the grain of the muscle.
Gather 6 sets of spiral-handled utensils, with 2 spoons and 2 forks in each set, for a total of 24 utensils. Set out 6 rectangular serving plates. Take the first 6 spoons and wrap 1 sprig of dill around each handle. If you don’t have access to spiral-handled utensils, wind the herbs around the handles of normal utensils and secure them at the top and bottom with butcher’s twine or pipe cleaners. Put 15 grams of Marinated Trout Roe in the bowl of each spoon and set the spoon on the left side of each serving plate. Take 6 forks and wrap 4 chives around each handle, Put 1 slice of hamachi on the tines of each fork and top each with 14 grams of ossetra caviar. Set 1 fork on each serving plate, next to the spoon with the trout roe. Take the next 6 forks and wrap 1 sprig of thyme around each handle. Put 1 slice of toro along the tines of each fork and top with 14 grams of paddlefish roe. Set 1 fork on each serving plate, to the right of the fork with the hamachi. Finally take the last 6 spoons and wrap 2 or 3 sprigs of chervil around each handle. Put 1 sliced scallop in each spoon and top with 14 grams of flying fish roe. Place 1 spoon on each serving plate to the right of the toro. You should have 6 plates with 4 utensils on each plate. Serve immediately, savoring the aroma of the herbs as you enjoy each bite of fish.