Bobby Varua: Hi! My name is Bobby Varua, Executive Chef at 701 Restaurant here in Washington D.C., in the beautiful Penn Quarter Navy Memorial Yard. Today we were showing you how to break down a whole salmon. And right now what we are going to do is going to show you how to make a nice, very easy spring summery dish for at home or at the restaurant. So what we are going to do once our salmon is filleted and cleaned, beautifully cleaned, no bones, we are ready to go. We are going to take some salt, we are going to season up our salmon. Remember to season high we don't want to get clumps of salt on our fish. We are going to have a little bit of fresh pepper, make sure the other side is seasoned. Again, make sure that you are seasoning high, if you season too low you are going to start getting clumps and then when you are eating your dish you are going to get little clumps of salt in your mouth and it is not going to be too pleasing. Finish off, a little bit of pepper. Always having a handy little towel here, making sure that you are working neat.

Alright what we have here is a nice little hot pan, we are going to first start off with a little bit of olive oil. You can see right there it is smoking a little bit that is perfect. You can use a nonstick pan, you can use a regular pan, we are going to use a nonstick pan here, make sure we get a nice color. Well that fish is searing nicely off, we are just going to reduce down the heat a little bit, to about medium and we are going to start working on the salad very, very simple alright?

Get yourself a beautiful dish or your beautiful canvas that you are going to work with. Today we are going to make a sauted Atlantic salmon with Georgia peaches, heirloom tomatoes and fresh citrus. Very, very nice and light, its got enough acid from all the citrus. Don't have to manipulate the food so much. We got some beautiful stuff and we have beautiful vegetables and fruits that we are using in the season right now, you don't have to do too much to the food. So well again while that is searing off, we are going to start off with a little bit of Baby Arugula, we have here in the pan, alright?

We have some fresh limes, again lime is going to be a little bit bitter but again it is going to be the natural asset to the dish which is going to be nice versus pickling anything. We have some fresh lemons, fresh oranges. We have some nice, beautiful blood orange that we are going to be doing over here and beautiful coming around May, some beautiful heirloom tomatoes, come in different colors, different sizes, very, very sweet, add a very natural flavor to it. You can use as many tomatoes as you like. We have some green, we have some beautiful red ones. Again you can go up to the local fish market, look for some nice heirloom tomatoes. If you can't find any heirloom tomatoes, regular tomatoes are fine. I just love the beautiful colors that you have in these tomatoes besides the sweetness it is just absolutely gorgeous. Okay so what we have here is some fresh citrus, some heirloom tomatoes, Baby Arugula, we are going to have to add some fresh mints, see this. Okay, we are going to add some nice fresh cilantro to this.

Just absolutely beautiful, just using all the fresh ingredients, all summer and the springs, it is so vibrant, the colors and the sweetness absolutely unbelievable. Alright we are going to add a little bit of salt, quite a little bit of fresh pepper. We are going to use little bit of Chinese plum wine, we are going pour right in here just like so. Plum wine you can get in a grocery store, add to natural sweetness, little bit of olive oil and you are ready to go.

Alright, we are going to mix that up and while we are mixing that up we are just going to check out that salmon, the beautiful salmon that we have. You can probably cook about two minutes, two and a half minutes on each side depending on how big the fish is, beautiful color, beautiful color right there. We are going to just take a little bit of butter. At this point we can really lower down the heat. Put in there a couple of sprigs of thyme. Thyme is just going to give that a nice aroma. What we are going to do here, we are just going to take our palm, crush some nice garlic. If you know my wife, who is Italian, she uses tons of garlic. Alright, what we are going to do here is we are just going to base the fish. All that beautiful garlic and thyme is sent into butter. We are just going to keep on basing that, yeah, very, very nice. Alright, while thats cooking slowly in the butter, we are just going to set up our salad, beautiful. We are going to take some heirloom tomatoes, some of our baby arugula. We have some of our fresh citrus, lime, lemon, orange, the colors are just outstanding here, alright. Just like so, a little bit more of our greens. And just for a little bit of heat, just a little bit of spice right here we have some fresh horseradish, gives off a really, really nice heat, natural, natural flavor, not too overpowering depending on how much you use. We are just going to carve it down just like so, taking the skins off making sure that all the brown spots are off.

What we are going to do right before we pull out the salmon, we are just going to go right here with a Microplane, again you can buy this at any grocery store. We are just going to go right over the salad, just like so, looks like snow flakes but it is going to add up just a little natural heat to the dish. Again you can't get any more spring of summers than this. This is absolutely gorgeous. Alright after our horseradish, we are going to take our salmon, it is beautifully caramelized. We are going to put that right on top of the salad. I always like to finish my fish, with a nice squeeze of lime juice. Really, really easy, you can do it at home, great recipe you can do at the restaurant, we are going to squeeze that right on top, don't go crazy, put the lime back on top of it, squeeze a little bit more olive oil, little bit of -- then you are good to go. Beautiful sauted Atlantic salmon, heirloom tomato and forgot one more piece, we got some beautiful peaches here that I want to use.

Peaches are in season. Beautiful colors here, there you have it. Sauted Atlantic salmon, Georgia peaches, heirloom tomatoes, fresh horseradish, baby arugula fresh mint and cilantro, This is the most important part of the whole entire spiel today that we that we get to enjoy a nice glass of wine with our salmon. I figured it would be nice to pair up a nice wine with our salmon. The salmon is little bit citrusy, we got a lot of fresh citrus in it. We have a nice 2005 Chardonnay Catena. The Chardonnay is not too heavy but again there is a lot of citrus going on in the dish.

So when I have a shot of Chardonnay with a little bit of body will help out the salmon dish to round it out. So smells good to me, we going to pour a little bit of some here, thank you for coming down for 701 and bon apptit, sant.