Ari Kolender wraps up a perfect Mother's Day dinner — fish en papillote

Ari Kolender has been shucking shellfish for the last 20 years. He also happens to operate two of Los Angeles's most popular seafood restaurants, Found Oyster in East Hollywood and Queen St. Raw Bar & Grill in Eagle Rock. His inspiration for the home cook comes in the form of How to Cook to the Finest Things From the Sea.

Evan Kleiman: I love how you say that to have success with seafood and fish at home, "Do less." Can you elaborate?

Ari Kolender: The whole idea of writing this book was to make sure that people understood they don't need to do a bunch of crazy things or buy a bunch of crazy ingredients to make good fish and shellfish. You're taking a good product and making sure you don't mess with it too much in the way of handling it as well as how much you need to put on top of it or with it.

Can you talk a little bit about the difference between the flesh of fish and seafood and other land-based proteins?

In regards to "do less," the flesh of fish is much more delicate than a piece of steak or chicken or a pork chop, way less forgiving. So especially if you're taking something that is whole then butchering it down — taking the skin off, taking the pin bones out — you've handled it so much that you just need to be delicate. You need to take your time. Then when you're cooking it, especially in the pan, turning it over multiple times, on a grill or in a pan, it's gonna just start tearing at the flesh. Whereas with a piece of steak, keep on going back and forth to get that nice sear.

Why is cooking method important to consider when you're shopping for your fish or seafood? 

Good question. [In the book], we broke it down in a way that we talk about how you're going to cook something and then decide what you're going to buy. That's all to say that if I know I'm going to go outside, it's a beautiful summer evening, and I'm going to light up the grill, I'm going to look for something that's maybe a little bit more of a stickier texture than a nice, soft white fish per se. 

There's a recipe in the book called Swordfish Hemingway that's built perfectly for that nice summer evening, so you can cook the whole thing on your grill outside. If you just take a little pan out there with you, that flesh will hold up to a nice, high sear. You want to get good grill marks on that kind of fish, but if you take, let's say, a rockfish or a cod and put it on there, you can't grill that at that same high temperature. It's just going to tear at that flesh.

Tell me how the Hemingway happened. What does that mean in terms of the name of that swordfish recipe?

It's a play off of an old recipe from a classic Charleston cookbook, Charleston Receipts. This is a collection of high society folks over time that put their favorite things in there. There's one recipe called Chicken Hemingway, so it's a play on that. The idea for the chicken is that overnight you marinate it in some sherry, butter, garlic, and thyme, and the next day, you stick it in the oven and bake it. So we have taken the flavors from that and made a nice sherry butter sauce with garlic and thyme, some shallots, and we make that sauce on the side while cooking the swordfish.

I think one thing that prevents people from cooking more fish and seafood at home is they worry about how to source it, where to get it. What are three simple ways to be sustainable when we're sourcing fish and shellfish?

You should always be looking to buy something that was caught in American waters, they're the most regulated waters in the world. If you can't find that, then staying in this hemisphere, or this region is best. I think you always want to check to see too, what's caught locally, if you have that option. The other thing is just being conscious of price. I'm not saying that you can't find a good deal on seafood, but usually, if something is really inexpensive, something bad probably happened somewhere to get it to you that way.

Yeah, I really feel that fish and seafood is an example of you get what you pay for.

Yes, the dollar oyster bar is never a good deal long term. 

Let's talk about your Five Layer Crab Dip because it looks like a perfect party trick, and it seems relatively simple. Can you describe it? 

This is one of those things, I like to say that we're giving away some of the secrets here, this has been on Found Oyster's menu since the beginning. It's so good, we haven't bothered changing into another crab dip. We spike Kewpie mayonnaise with, if you can find it, a bitter juice from Japan called kabosu (it kind of tastes like grapefruit and lime; it's very bitter but has great acid) as a trick to circumvent having to find something crazy and fancy. You can achieve the same effect by juicing limes, but also grating some of the zest into the mayonnaise. I like to take the zest a little farther than most people and get that white pith because that bitterness helps in this umami flavor profile with the sweetness of the crab and the spice of the togarashi. And we supreme Meyer lemons and add chives on top. Those are your five components to the dip.

Supreming the lemon segments is probably the trickiest step.

I would imagine. We put a cute little diagram in there to show people, if they want to give it a shot. But if you can get the skin off of the lemon, you could also cut them into pinwheels and just deseed it, cut it, chop it up as you'd like from there.

I think people should learn how to supreme. It's not that hard. 

That is also a good party trick.

It's really fun once you get into it. I am a huge tinned fish aficionado. I tend to get insane and spend way too much money. So right now, I probably have 30 cans of different kinds in my cupboard. How long does tinned fish last in the pantry?

I've never seen it expire. I've opened stuff after 10 years, and it's been potentially better.

Yeah, there are some people who pride themselves on aging it. I would say occasionally turn it over. 

That's a great tip. 

Ari Kolender didn't grow up eating seafood but he's been cooking it for the past 20 years. Photo by Justin Chung.

Make me lunch using tinned fish. 

This is the easiest thing to do, and honestly, I love to eat tinned fish for breakfast. I make just simple bread, butter, and anchovies all the time. One of my favorite versions of this in the city is at Gjusta. I cannot go there without ordering that dish. But there are so many ways to use tin fish. 

There's one recipe that's in the stovetop section that is some Rancho Gordo beans that have been braised long and soft. We add cans of mussels and escabeche to it at the end. It's kind of one of those things that the flavor from everything else that's in the can, not just the mussels, amps up the beans so much, it's really hard to recreate that. 

That sounds so delicious. 

Back to lunch, there's another recipe in the book that's very simple and easy, and it's just your basic avocado toast but introducing a can of tomato sardines to the top of it, a few olives, and some dill and parsley scattered over as well. 

I love this. This is giving me inspiration, because, to be perfectly honest, sometimes I just eat it over the sink. So tomato pudding is a classic southern dish. How do you doctor yours up?

We bring the anchovies back for this one. This might be one of my favorite recipes in the book. It's very special. It is not really done very often, and I've only seen it in one place growing up, a restaurant called the Hominy Grill, that is no longer around, but they do have a cookbook, and there's a version of this in there. 

I started cooking it during the pandemic, and my wife and I loved it so much that we just always had a cast iron full of it, and we'd make it as a side to dinner, but then bring it back out for breakfast and put an egg on it. Soon enough, the anchovies came out. So this recipe calls for filets of brown anchovies to dot the top of the pudding.

Yum. One of the things I really love about your book is what you call cooking "en papillote," cooking in paper. It's such a great technique for fish cooking, and it makes things super foolproof. What is your spring edition of cooking in paper?

For our spring edition, we're relying on all the things I love — snap peas, asparagus, olives. To give it a little bit of punch, we add some evergreen things like oregano and garlic as well. The best part about this is that you can make it your own. Anything that you can put in there is going to do very well.

It's funny, because this edition is the most cooked thing out of the book right now. I see people doing it every week, including my parents and my in-laws. My father-in-law had us over for dinner a couple weeks ago and surprised us by making his own version of this recipe. And he absolutely crushed it. He did such a good job.

I love that. We're airing this interview on Mother's Day weekend, so if someone listening has a seafood-loving mom, what would you recommend they make for her? 

Oh, yay, mom! Congrats. As much as I hate to be a broken record, I do think the fish in paper is a great choice. I say that too, because the last thing you want to do on Mother's Day is be in the kitchen and not be able to hang with mom. This is something that is just all prep work. It's fast, it's easy. You can make these early in the morning, wrap them up, put them in the fridge, then when mom comes over and you're ready to eat, you put them in your oven for 15 minutes and it's dinner time.

What do you serve with it? How would you set that up as a meal?

My favorite thing to do is a nice, big salad that has nuts and shaved vegetables and a ton of herbs in there, a nice, punchy dressing, and a starch is great, like a rice or a potato, whether it's like a smashed potato or just boiled potatoes. I like to think of anything that's on the table could be put into that package once it's opened up. And you can slide the potatoes or the rice around and catch some of that jus from the fish and the olive oil and the lemon.

"How to Cook the Finest Things From the Sea" is divided into techniques and applications. Kolender suggests you decide on a cooking method before you buy your seafood. Photo courtesy of Artisan Books.