Halibut and Trash

Jeremy Kean

Halibut and Trash, Pork and halibut with chili, orange and flowers. Bowl by Rachel Kean.

Interview by L. Valena
June 1st, 2023

Can you start by describing the prompt that you responded to?

It was a painting of a person. I looked at it and was like, "Whoa." I didn't quite know what I felt about it. I just kept looking at it, and looking at it. And then I'd be cooking, because the restaurant is fucking crazy right now, so I'm just running around crazy, cooking all day. Every time I'd take a moment, I'd look at it amongst the cooking we were doing here. There was so much color and repetition of color in the painting. The picture is repeating itself for me.

What I ended up coming to after looking at it over and over, was I saw the mushrooms, and to me I saw an orange in their mouth, and in their hair. It just repeats for me, that color. And all of a sudden it clicked for me. The whole process was: I didn’t know what the person who made this painting was thinking, and I was trying to figure it out for my process. That didn't work, so I started feeling into the picture and seeing how it made me feel, and then just taking action.

I like to take flavors, and play with them, and then repeat them over and over and create layers with the flavors. That's kind of my style of cooking, and that made sense to me with this. So I decided to think about it in colors, and think about it how I would think anyway. What's the word for deep pleasure?

I don't know!

Oh, ecstasy. Ecstasy and color was what I ended up getting from the piece. That color for me ended up being orange. So I took a bunch of oranges and went from there.

What happened next?

I decided that I didn't want to order a bunch of stuff, I just wanted to work in my little box that I have here with the ingredients I already had. I took oranges and cleaned them. I had pork belly and charcoal. I took some of the juice from the interior of the orange, and I had a can of coconut cream -- that's the shit they make that weird frozen cocktail out of. I cooked that with orange juice, butter, chilis, and brushed that over the pork while it was grilling so it would caramelize and create smoke. That was the first round of orange going over this pork. It was like an hour going like that, until it caramelized. At the end, there were some little orange pieces that still had juice in them, so I squeezed those over for one more layer.

While that pork was grilling, it was creating its own heat source because it was dropping back onto the charcoal. I just put a piece of halibut right in the zone where the wind was blowing that out. It was like caramelized orange and coconut cooking this piece of halibut.

Then I had some funky brine. I was thinking about those mushrooms. I took the rest of the orange juice and added it to this chili brine, which is just like salty water that a bunch of different chilis have been sitting in for like a year. I took some of that brine, and the orange juice, and put that in a bowl with the pork-smoked halibut (I guess you'd call it). Put the caramelized pork over that. I had a bunch of orange zest, so I turned it into a powder for the top of the fish, and then covered it in flowers.

What are these flowers?

Those are chive blossoms. They're so pretty, and they're so tasty. You eat one of those flowers and it's just, like, boom! It's like you ate a whole chive. I don't know why I thought I saw flowers all over the prompt. There aren't any flowers, but for some reason I thought there were.

Our brains just take stuff and run with it, right? It's all about perception. The prompt starts you in a direction, but you end up running with it.

It ended up that way, which was cool. To be honest, I did this all with another dish, and thought about it way too much, and hated it, and completely deleted the whole process.

Wait! You started with something totally different?

I did, yeah.

Do you want to talk about that?

No. [Both laugh] I'm in therapy to talk about my insecurity and doubt.

Me too. [Both laugh] How does this relate to the other food that you make?

It's the same idea, this was just using a smaller box. It was harder to do this process than it is to write the menus and dishes that I do on a regular basis. But it was cool, I enjoyed the challenge. I enjoyed the thinking that went into it. To have to untangle the wires of not overcomplicating things, and finding the confidence in it, which is so hard when creating art sometimes. Especially when it's based on someone else's art, you have to find belief in yourself, and it took a little searching. It was a cool process. I'm really happy for the opportunity.

I'm so glad that it worked out that way!

Yeah, me too!

Do you have any advice for another chef approaching this project for the first time?

Try not to overcomplicate it, and be confident in what you do. You don't have to understand what someone else was thinking in order to think. Just being okay with the action that you take, rather than thinking about whether it could have been better. Just think about how to make it good, and be happy and proud of it.

Call Number: M71VA | M76FD.keaHa

Jeremy Kean is the chef and 1 of 4 partners at Brassica Kitchen in Jamaica Plain, MA. His focus within cuisine is centered around fermentation and utilization of waste.