Making Za'atar Cured Salmon with Chef Michael Mina

Just. Just go. There you go. What's up guys? Leslie Robbins here for Young Hollywood, joined by the man, Chef Michael Mina. Now you have come here from San Francisco. You're here in LA, you joined us. The All-Star Chef Classic. Break it down for me. There's, you know, multiple different chefs, different restaurants, but it's Middle Eastern. And I think it's really exciting.

I was born in Cairo, Egypt. My parents are Egyptian. Grew up in a Middle Eastern household where food, uh, food came first. I love the food because the food is so flavor-forward. It's great, you know, always all the great spices. And now it's really become very popular here in the United States because it's healthy. So we have Za'atar cured salmon. Salmon like you would hear gravlax, but we do it with Za'atar. And then what we did is we fried a crispy zucchini chip. That's kind of the base of the dish. And then we balance it with Labneh, which is, you know, nice and creamy. It's like a crème fraîche. Then you have pickled red onions, we have shaved radishes, edible flowers and dill, and salmon roe. What we're going to do is we're going to start by just breaking the chip in half. Then we're going to have our pickled red onions, and again, balance. So you can't put a whole onion on, you just have to put a little bit of the onion on.

So you're a fan of an of the red onion. Yes?

Radishes. Flowers and dill leaf. And then going to go ahead. Place it onto our chip. And then we're going to finish it with our salmon roe. And we're going to go ahead and dress it with just a touch of.

It's already pretty.

of lemon juice. Okay. And a little bit of olive oil. And a little bit of finishing salt. Well balanced. Nice, rich, acidic. Flavorful textures. We have it all.

True story. I don't really eat salmon, but that is probably some of the best fish I've ever had.

Thank you.

What else are you going to do here today? Is it just this dish?

This is it. 1800 of this dish tonight.

You're doing 1800.

1800. I'm not. This poor man is. He fried 1800 zucchini chips last night. Till 3:00 in the morning.

Wow. Talk about your fond memories of food. What's your earliest memory and what have you taken from that time and it's still with you today?

Well, my earliest memory of food is my mom's bread. And my mom would bake her her pocket bread every at least at least once a day. Sometimes twice a day. We'd always have fresh bread. And I remember because she would bake it right on the grates of the oven. And I would, I remember going and grabbing it and burning myself when I was a little kid. That's the first time I ever put my hand in an oven.

Hey, you're up. Zigzag. Whatever you want to do. I think you did two, but I'm going to do three.

You're going to do three?

I'm going to overpower it. Oh, okay. That's twice as much. That's one and a half times as much. So, is this good? That's good. Some of this, right? Yeah, radish. Can I just dance these on, right? Yeah, there you go. Okay. You're doing great. Okay. You got it. That was the hardest part right there. You always got to be under control. Oh, too much. Oh, see? You let your hands leave your you never let your eyes leave your hands. I'm not going to look at you or talk to you, so I don't mess up this time. Okay. There you go. Perfect. Let's see how you did. Now just think, now you can just go home and make that tonight. You know, what it is, it's the passion and the love that really needs to go into great cooking. There's so many things that my mom taught me. But at the end of the day, it's really about, you know, watching a mother cook or a grandmother cook. That's the most beautiful, um, that's the most beautiful experience you'll have in a kitchen. And, you know, you you you it's priceless and it's because they're doing it from their heart.