Lonia Cabansag
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Michigan Public Schools
Director of the United States Mercedes Mejia tastes chef Ken Miller's walleye and fennel dish.
Even after more than 15 years working in some of the best kitchens in the country, Ken Miller still gets nervous when someone tries his food for the first time.
“But it also comes from caring about what you do, right? You want people to enjoy it, but you also put a little bit of yourself into each dish…” Miller says. “It's also like a creative version of putting your personality on a plate. So it's a sense of vulnerability.”
Miller attended culinary school at Le Cordon Bleu in Chicago and then worked at a two-star Michelin restaurant in the city before returning to Michigan to hone his skills as sous chef at the Apparatus Room in Detroit and then executive chef at Toasted Oak in Novi.
Miller's latest projects have him experimenting with fermentation, preservation and waste reduction.
“I think… behind every successful dish, there are probably half a dozen failures,” Miller says. “The key is to respect the process and learn from the mistakes and learn something new. And often it's about what not to do.”
Dish got to know Miller through one of his recent successes: poached Lake Erie walleye with cucumber and dill, and a garnish of sautéed fennel with white onion cream sauce.
A wide variety of projects
Today, Miller and his wife, Ashley, co-own a food and beverage consultancy called Yarrow. The couple helps clients develop and execute menu concepts and other culinary projects, as well as host their own pop-ups and events.
The duo is preparing for a seven-week internship at Host, a restaurant in Utica, Michigan, where chef-entrepreneurs are invited to showcase their culinary styles, and their menu will be inspired in part by the Scandinavian izakaya concept they pitched at their Hazel Park pop-up space, Frame.
Jody Westrick
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Michigan Public Schools
Miller thickens the sauce with charred cucumber, fennel vinegar and dill oil with a bit of spinach puree.
“We'll have oysters with elderberry mignonette, fish crudo, or croûte, with sea buckthorn juice fortified with fermented carrots and honey,” Miller said, “and then there's the dish we're working on today, which is hosting, which is lake trout.”
The walleye dish highlights Miller's breadth of talent and attention to detail. He marinates the delicate filet in salt and vinegar, then cooks it sous vide. He tops it with a layer of thinly sliced cucumber and brushes it with Ken's special Everything Bagel Miso, diluted with charred cucumber juice. He plates the filet dipped in a vibrant green sauce made with charred cucumber, fennel vinegar and a touch of dill oil, which he thickens slightly with spinach puree.
“There's a little bit of discovery in the cuisine, especially the Everything Bagel Miso,” Miller says, “so we're trying to take the elevated, creative side of cuisine and apply something hyper-local, hyper-seasonal. So we want to introduce people to new discoveries but also provide a balance of comfort.”
Commitment to conservation and waste elimination
Everything Bagel Miso is Miller's own recipe. Miso is typically a paste made from fermented soybeans, grains, and a type of mold called koji. Miller created this miso five years ago using koji and bagels.
“At Toasted Oak in November 2019, we were expecting a big weekend,” Miller recalls. “We accidentally ordered too many bagels, and instead of throwing them out… we thought, 'Hey, why not? I've got a couple of trays of koji that I just finished. Let's see what happens.'”
Miller used water to crush the bagels, mixed them with koji and salt and stored them in a bucket, but then forgot about it when the COVID-19 pandemic shut down much of the industry.
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“There's an astronomical amount of food waste in this industry,” said Miller, whose Everything Bagel Miso uses about $200 worth of bagels that would otherwise be thrown away.
Jodi Westrick / Michigan Public
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“Most people have had miso in at least some form now, so it's not that foreign, but it does create an intrigue factor,” Miller said of using Everything Bagel miso in his poached walleye dish.
Jodi Westrick / Michigan Public
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Miller carefully arranges the sautéed fennel on the plate with dill leaves, lilac flowers, and Dame's rocket flowers.
Jodi Westrick / Michigan Public
“A few months later, when we reopened, I brought some of my gear back to the restaurant and I thought, 'Oh, I have this bucket, let me take a look at this.' So I brought it in, opened it up, and smelled this sweet, fruity scent. It was the scent of the spices that are used to season 'everything.'”
Waste management through preservation and fermentation has become a staple of Miller's work, said Joseph Van Wagner, executive chef at the soon-to-open Echelon Kitchen and Bar in downtown Ann Arbor.
“It's incredible that he can create something like this using ingredients that most chefs would throw in the trash,” Wagner says.
Miller is known for fermenting protein waste, such as beef and seafood waste, using koji and other methods and turning the results into condiments, sauces and garum.
“He can take something as seemingly useless as an octopus head and turn it into a sauce that might taste a little like Worcestershire sauce. He has the ability to do that and he's doing it,” Wagner said. “Not just the waste management, but the impact on food, the impact on flavor is incredible.”
Miller said there are financial incentives to lean toward more sustainable methods, too: He estimates that his Everything Bagel Miso, for example, has saved about $200 in bagels that would have otherwise ended up in the trash.
“we, [the miso]”It's a value-added product,” Miller says, “that you can use to elevate other things. It not only saves you money, it adds value to the food you put in front of your guests.”
A love of seasonality, locality and the wild
To accompany the walleye, Mr. Miller prepares a dish of lightly cooked, yet still crunchy, diced fennel tossed in an onion cream seasoned with a little white wine, and he sprinkles the dish with lilac flowers he picked from his backyard.
“And then we soak it in apple cider vinegar, which is made from Michigan Gala apples,” Miller says, “so it gives it a bit of a tart flavor as an accompaniment to fish.”
Jody Westrick
/
Michigan Public Schools
The lilac flowers and Dam's Rocket flowers were placed on the tray, ready to be served.
Growing up in Flushing, near Flint, Miller remembers going on nature walks with his grandfather and learning to identify edible plants — knowledge he now applies to his cooking.
Miller has a unique “attunement” with Michigan's native ingredients, Wagner said, and some of his dishes feature local fruits such as Saskatoon berries and pawpaws that don't often appear on fine-dining menus.
“He has a wealth of knowledge about what grows in Michigan,” Wagner said, “which means he can drive anywhere. [Miller] If you grow vegetables by the roadside, they can give you 10 or 12 things that you can eat and use to make tea or sauce.”
!["The fish itself is basically just a lightly cooked fish in a sauce, so [dish] It's very light bodied, and has a richer element to it, adding texture and nice contrast."](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/713852b/2147483647/strip/true/crop/3456x2304+0+0/resize/880x587!/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fa0%2F56%2Fd9e74181494c915a10e5cf9df1f0%2F2024-06-kenmiller-thedish-creditroniacabansag-1.jpg)
Lonia Cabansag
/
Michigan Public Schools
“The fish itself is basically just a lightly cooked fish in a sauce, so [dish] “It's very light-bodied, and then you get some richer elements and more textured elements, which creates a nice contrast,” Miller said of the walleye and fennel pairing.
The rich flavour of fennel pairs perfectly with light fish fillets.
“Instead of putting them together on the same plate, it gives you the opportunity to try them both together,” Miller says, “or if you eat one and then you feel better with the other, I think the flavors of the two dishes go really well together.”
Like all of Miller's culinary creations, this successful combination is the result of tenacity and creativity developed over years in professional kitchens.
“Just because an idea doesn't materialize right away doesn't mean it can't be refined and tweaked,” Miller says, “and at the end of the day, it's about what you can pull from it to realize the essence of the dish 100%.”
