How to cook salmon and other chef’s secrets

Roman Karpenko is the chef at the Valo Hotel in Finland. He is 30 years old. In 2004, he left Russia for Finland to study, graduated from the Kuopio Higher Culinary School. He worked at the Lohimaa vip fishing tourist base and at the Valo hotel.

“You can try salmon pastrami everywhere. But only with us it will be prepared exactly as it should. This is not a hot dish, but an appetizer served with basil mayonnaise, fried black bread and arugula in olive sauce. The special secret here is not to overheat the dish and keep the right amount of ground pepper. If there is not enough of it, then the salmon will lose its appearance, and if there is a lot, it will not be so tasty. It should turn out so that the salmon was covered with a light appetizing crust. It is done like this – the salmon is fried with a log in a fraction of a second, it should come up a little so that the pepper sticks to it. But if there is not enough pepper, then fish will be visible from under the pepper, and the pastrami will lose all its appearance.

The secret of tiramisu

I also made my own tiramisu. Although desserts are not my forte. Of course, I know how to make a variety of pastries and cakes, but I do not want to be torn between cooking main dishes and sweets. Nevertheless, everyone admits that I especially succeed in tiramisu. But I won’t give you the recipe, sorry. My secret ingredient is the right cheese, but which one is my professional secret. I learned how to use cheeses from the first chef I worked with. His name was Mark Sabbat and he was French. Perhaps that is why he was well versed in different varieties of cheese – and taught me this. But the main thing, perhaps, in his cuisine were sauces. Real sauces that are not made on a ready-made basis, but are prepared with your own hands from the first to the last ingredient. They give any dish a unique taste. And of course, I learned from him how to cook some special French dishes. So you asked me about the baked potato – it was just from his menu, and, of course, it also had French cheese with seasonings.

Food for yourself

In our hotel, three meals a day, and if any of the guests want something special, you can order dinner in advance, and I will cook it separately. It can be a dinner for one or twenty people. The main principle of my work is not culinary, but psychological: food as for yourself. That is, I cook the way I would cook for my family members or for my friends whom I would like to surprise and please. The second subtlety is how to serve food on the table. In most restaurants, both in Russia and abroad, and here in Finland, the dish is brought to you immediately on a plate. The portion will be the same for a fragile woman who watches her figure, and for a large hungry man. Has it ever seemed strange to you? Everyone is used to it, simply because it is usually done that way. But when you eat at home, you can always take supplements if you want. Therefore, we bring the dish not on a plate, but on a large dish. A dish on a dish, that’s right! First, it looks festive and attractive. When you see a large dish with food that looks beautiful and smells good, your mood is lifted. Secondly, at the same time, you know that no one is going to limit you or, conversely, offer you more than you would like. Everyone puts himself from the dish as much as he wants, and what he likes best. This is what it means – food as for yourself. Of course, at home every day they do not cook from beef or pork tenderloin. So this is not a matter of literal repetition. But I want to keep the taste of good homemade food. Restaurants often cook according to a pattern. There is a certain recipe, and it is followed every day. And I allow myself to deviate from the classic recipes, for the better, of course, side. Some foods I prefer to cook in my own way. For example, meat is supposed to be fried, and then stewed in the oven. I cook it for a couple at a high temperature – so it becomes both softer and tastier. If you know how to use spices and seasonings, you can endlessly vary the taste of the same dish, so that you never say: “Well, this is not interesting, I already tried it” – no, it was completely different at that time. Every time I do what I want to do, and I cook with the desire to cook it.

But if someone needs diet meals, of course, I will do exactly what is required. Our hotel is part of a single complex with a clinic, so some guests are shown a certain diet. Someone follows a weight loss program, someone has an allergy – and here it is already important to strictly follow the recipe. To do this, I have all the necessary diet books and tables.

As for how I cook at home, for myself, well, sometimes I like very simple things. For example, boiled meat: tongue, liver, cut them into slices and dip in salt.

Venison in cranberry sauce on Calvados

Venison tenderloin 200 g

Olive oil*

Pepper

Basil

Calvados

Butter

Onions

fresh cranberries

To do this, we need a venison tenderloin, about 200 grams per serving. We clean the tenderloin from a thin film covering the meat. If the meat is fresh, it is removed very easily. For half an hour we leave the meat in olive oil with pepper and basil. In these half an hour we are engaged in sauce. We melt the butter in a saucepan, finely chop the onion, throw it into the oil, fresh cranberries are sent after it, everything is stewed over low heat until all the cranberries burst. Next, we need to strain the resulting mass to free it from the onion and cranberry peel. After that, add all the spices to taste and water, leaving the sauce on low heat until the meat is ready.

After frying the meat in a dry frying pan on each side of the tenderloin, we send it to the convector cabinet for 10 minutes. At this time, we will prepare the pan, pour calvados into it, for example, LePereJules – in my opinion, it especially emphasizes the taste of venison. We take out the meat from the convector, throw it into a pan with heated Calvados and set it on fire, let the venison burn in the fire until the alcohol is completely burned and pour the sauce. Mix well the rest of the Calvados with the sauce and meat. Here is the amazingly soft venison meat ready, it is desirable to serve it with vegetable puree.

* I do not indicate the exact amount hereinafter – be guided by your instinct and inspiration. R.K.

Learn more

finnomed.ru is a website in Russian with a full list of services, including psychological work, Tibetan medicine and plastic surgery.

heinola.fi – site of the city of Heinola, its history and sights, in three languages: Finnish, Russian, English.

valonaresort.fi – Valona Klinikka website in Finnish, where you can find beautiful photos, useful phone numbers and email addresses.