Roasted Cauliflower & Meat Glue Experiment

Latest food experiment: "meat glue" known more correctly as transglutaminase. This enzyme (trade name Activa) was developed in the 1990s by the Japanese company Ajinomoto to improve surimi, e.g. "crab legs" made from pollock paste. It works by binding proteins in food. To quell your curiosity, more specifically, it does so by creating chemical cross-links between the amino acids glutamine and lysine by forming a strong covalent bond between them.

It has a number of uses in food production, and you have almost certainly eaten some of these foods. Here I bonded two steelhead fillets (an anadromous rainbow trout). You can see the seam where I didn't really clean the skinned side all that well. I then formed a roulade by wrapping in plastic wrap which was then cooked sous vide. To finish, the roulade was cut into individual rounds an pan seared on one side and served with a piccata sauce.

The cauliflower was roasted on a bed of coffee beans, a variation on Chef Danial Patterson's "Carrots/Coffee" served at his 2 Michelin starred restaurant Coi in San Francisco. Instead of carrots I have used cauliflower which was served with a carrot puree and drizzled with a little honey and EVOO. Even without the honey, the carrots I found to be quite sweet, but it did complement the cauliflower.