A Fourth of July on Balboa Island

I'm Tom Catrow, known around here as the Orange County Chef. I've spent more than 25 years in fine dining and catering, and I still have moments on a job that remind me exactly why I chose this career.

One of those happened on Balboa Island in Newport Beach on the Fourth of July.

I was standing over a hot grill with cedar smoke drifting through the backyard while the family I was cooking for gathered around to see what was happening. One of the kids kept coming back to ask if the salmon was ready yet.

Not quite. A few minutes later, he was back. Still not quite. And really, that's what I like about cooking this way. Good food has a way of pulling people toward it.

I had been hired for a family gathering, the kind of relaxed, in-home event I do quite a bit as a private chef in Orange County. They weren't looking for anything overly formal. They wanted good food, a menu that felt right for summer, and most importantly, they wanted to enjoy the day with their family.

Cedar plank salmon with fresh dill aioli was an easy choice.

This Dish Works for Orange County Entertaining

When you cook along the Southern California coast, you learn pretty quickly that some of the best meals never make it into a formal dining room.

They're eaten on patios. Around backyard tables. On decks with the doors open. Sometimes you're a few blocks from the water, and sometimes you can see it from where you're standing.

Cedar plank salmon belongs in that kind of setting.

The cedar does something you can't quite duplicate by putting salmon on a sheet pan and sliding it into the oven. As the soaked plank heats up, it protects the fish from the direct heat while releasing that cedar aroma. You get moisture, smoke and just a little sweetness from the wood.

And then there's the smell. Once that cedar starts warming on the grill, people notice. That's usually about the time everyone starts wandering over to see what's cooking.

For a dinner party, holiday gathering or backyard celebration, I also like serving salmon this way because it has some presence when it comes off the grill. Bring the whole plank to the table and you don't need to do much else to make it look impressive.

Of course, the host doesn't need to know how easy I just made that look. That's between us.

A Sauce with Some Miles on It

The fresh dill aioli I serve with the salmon has been with me much longer than this particular recipe.

I first made a version of it years ago at Nicole and Giovanni's, a restaurant I opened in Pleasanton, California. The food there was rooted in Northern Italian technique with a California approach to ingredients and flavor.

The restaurant is gone now. The building isn't. Today, it's home to Baci Bistro and Bar.

But the aioli came with me. That's one of the interesting things about being a chef for this long. Recipes don't necessarily stay attached to the restaurant where they started. You take them with you. Then you change them.

Maybe it needs a little more lemon. Maybe you back off the salt. You find a better oil or start using fresh dill differently. You make the same sauce hundreds of times, and eventually you stop thinking about the recipe because you know what it should look, smell and taste like.

By the time this aioli landed next to a cedar plank salmon on Balboa Island, it had already traveled with me through Utah, Berkeley, Pleasanton and Long Beach. Not bad for a sauce.

Fine Dining Doesn't Have to Mean a Restaurant

After years of working in professional kitchens, I've also come to appreciate something about cooking in people's homes. The experience is different.

Fine dining has traditionally been tied to the restaurant: the dining room, the wine list, the servers, the kitchen behind the swinging doors. But the food doesn't need the building.

As a personal chef in Orange County, I can take the technique and standards I learned in restaurant kitchens and bring them into someone's home. The setting becomes more relaxed, but the attention to the food doesn't disappear.

For some people, that's the best of both worlds. You can have a beautifully prepared meal and still kick your shoes off afterward. You don't have to worry about reservations. Nobody is waiting for your table. The kids can run around. Friends can stay for another glass of wine. And when dinner is finished, you're already home.

That's especially nice for smaller celebrations and dinner parties where the point of the evening is really the people sitting around the table.

What I Try to Bring to Every Job

That Fourth of July on Balboa Island is a good example of what I want my clients to get when they hire me, whether I'm working as a private chef in Orange County, preparing meals for the week, or catering a special event along the Orange County coast.

Yes, the food needs to be good. That's the baseline. But I also pay attention to everything happening around the food.

Is the host able to sit down? Are people relaxed? Is dinner moving at the right pace? Does the menu fit the occasion, or are we trying too hard?

A family Fourth of July doesn't need to feel like a formal restaurant. It should feel like the Fourth of July, only with somebody else worrying about the salmon.

I've cooked for professional athletes, executives, families and plenty of people celebrating important moments. What I've learned is that people don't usually remember every ingredient on a plate.

They remember the night. They remember who was there. They remember laughing around the table. They remember that one dish everyone kept talking about.

And the person hosting remembers whether they actually got to be part of it.

That's a big reason people hire a personal chef in Orange County in the first place. You're not just handing the cooking to somebody else. You're giving yourself back the time you would have spent shopping, prepping, cooking and cleaning while everyone else was having fun.

On this particular afternoon, my job was to make sure nobody in that family had to stand over the grill.

Well, except me.

Cedar Plank Salmon with Fresh Dill Aioli

Prep time: Overnight soak, plus about 15 minutes active prep
Cook time: Approximately 30 minutes
Servings: 4 to 6

Cedar Plank Salmon

Ingredients

• 1 untreated, food-grade cedar plank

• 1 fresh salmon filet

• Sea salt

• White pepper

• Light olive oil

• Fresh lemon

Instructions

1. The night before you plan to cook, completely submerge the cedar plank in water and let it soak overnight. Don't skip this. A dry plank is going to scorch rather than give you the gentle steaming and smoke you're after.

2. The next day, remove the plank from the water and let it air dry for about an hour. You want it damp, not dripping wet.

3. Lightly oil the plank and place the salmon on top, skin side down.

4. Season with sea salt and white pepper, then add a drizzle of olive oil and fresh lemon juice.

5. Put the plank directly on the grill over medium heat and close the lid. Depending on the thickness of your salmon and the temperature of your grill, it should take around 30 minutes.

6. Check the salmon for doneness before removing it from the grill. It should be opaque and flake easily with a fork.

One chef's note here: don't get so attached to the 30-minute mark that you ignore the fish in front of you. Salmon filets aren't manufactured to identical specifications. A thinner piece is going to cook faster than a thick center-cut filet.

Cook the fish, not the clock.

Fresh Dill Aioli

Ingredients

• 1 whole egg

• 1 shallot, peeled and chopped

• 4 cloves garlic, peeled

• Juice and zest of 1 lemon

• 1/4 cup fresh dill

• 1 teaspoon sea salt

• 1/2 teaspoon white pepper

• 2 dashes Tabasco

• 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce

• About 1 1/2 cups light olive oil or avocado oil

Instructions

1. Add the egg, shallot, garlic, lemon juice and zest, dill, sea salt, white pepper, Tabasco and Worcestershire sauce to a food processor. Pulse until everything is well blended.

2. With the food processor running, begin adding the olive or avocado oil in a slow, steady stream. Slow matters here. You're building an emulsion. Pour the oil too quickly and you may end up with a broken, oily sauce instead of a creamy aioli.

3. Continue adding the oil until you've used roughly 1 1/2 cups and the aioli is thick enough to spoon.

4. Taste it. Add a little more salt or lemon if it needs it, then refrigerate until you're ready to serve.

Serve the salmon right on the cedar plank with the chilled dill aioli alongside it.

Let everybody help themselves.

Preferably before that kid comes back to the grill again.

The Orange County Chef for Celebrations

If you're planning a dinner party, family celebration, holiday gathering or special event, you don't necessarily need to take everyone to a restaurant to have a memorable meal.

Sometimes the best table is already in your house.

I provide personal chef, private dining and catering services throughout Orange County and communities along the Southern California coast. Every menu starts with the people I'm cooking for, the occasion we're celebrating and how you want the experience to feel.

Sometimes that means a multi-course fine dining experience. Sometimes it means cedar plank salmon coming off the grill on the Fourth of July.

Both can be pretty memorable.

Connect with Chef Tom
[email protected]
(949) 469-0604

This is the kind of cooking I built my career on, and I am always glad to bring it to someone else's table.