LCooks have a fascinating power: that of succeeding in making us see food differently. To be convinced of this, just spend a few minutes on the Instagram account by Josh Niland, and get lost in the intriguing flow of dishes he presents. Because this Australian chef with 344,000 subscribers is a master in the art of culinary pretenses. His favorite terrain? Seafood charcuterie – named after this still little-known, strangely tempting art, which consists of transforming fish flesh and offal into delicately tied dry hams, sausages, bacon or chorizos. A growing culinary trend, of which he is the spearhead, which is shaking up the codes of traditional gastronomy at its own pace. Precisely because it manages to make us understand seafood from a new angle.
You should therefore see this publication from February, for example, in which the chef, owner of four restaurants between Sydney and Singapore, presents his interpretation of loukanikos (a sausage recipe typical of Greek cuisine) in an iodized version. At the heart of the casing, the pork flesh has been replaced by yellowfin tuna, while pieces of cod fat, cut into cubes and scattered around, provide texture and good chew. A garnish made of orange zest, fennel seeds and thyme helps bind the stuffing.
Cut into slices, the whole gives birth to a trompe l’oeil game which makes the charcuterie illusion absolutely perfect. Elsewhere on the page, we will discover an astonishing slice of head cheese sea bass (served with pickles and mustard) or this thick piece of tuna which, after maturing for fifteen days, has been barbecued on the back bone – and looks, disturbingly, like a very juicy rib of beef.
Great technical mastery
Enough to put in your mouth before witnessing, amazed, the metamorphosis of a swordfish belly into a large and beautiful one piece of smoked bacon. Suspended from two hooks and covered with a thin layer of spices and aromatics, the piece of dried fish fits so well with the carnivorous aesthetic that we would gladly cut it into thin strips, before grilling it in the oven. pan, here, now, right away, to accompany a plate of scrambled eggs. “This bacon has such a crispy texture and such a pleasantly smoky taste that it’s almost impossible to tell that it’s actually fish. It happens that after tasting it some of my pescetarian clients [qui s’abstiennent de consommer de la viande mais mangent des produits de la mer] send him back to the kitchen, thinking he ordered pork by mistake”specifies Josh Niland, a little bravado, in the pages of his latest work, entitled Fish Butchery (“fish butchery”, Hardie Grant Books, 2023, untranslated).
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