Stuck on you

Okay, we admit its name sounds a little scary, but Activa transglutaminase—dubbed “meat glue” or “food glue” by resourceful chefs who’ve stumbled upon it—really isn’t that freakish. Technically, Activa is a flavorless enzyme that uses amino acids to link proteins via microbial fermentation. Translation: Add a small amount of it to raw meat, seafood or poultry, refrigerate it for a few hours and—presto!—the two proteins fuse together. Created by the Japanese company Ajinomoto to create a meatlike product from soy and as a way to reduce waste, in the hands of creative chefs—Wylie Dufresne of NYC’s wd-50 was one of the first chefs stateside to use it—it becomes much more. Here’s how a handful of Chicago toques are, um, bonding with Activa.

The Gage
(24 S Michigan Ave, 312-372-4243)

Dish Chicken-fried lobster
Details Sure, you’ve probably eaten some variation of surf and turf before but definitely nothing even close to what chef Dirk Flanigan has created at his Michigan Avenue gastropub. “How cool is it to take something as run-of- the-mill as chicken and combine it with a luxury product like lobster?” asks Flanigan. He did just that for this appetizer, taking seasoned chicken skin, sprinkling it with Activa—the only way to get the skin to adhere, otherwise it would slide off, says Flanigan—and wrapping raw Maine lobster pieces inside, forming a tight ball. After poaching, it gets a quick dip in the deep fryer to crisp up the skin then a buffalo wing-like treatment on the plate: a dallop of blue cheese butter and hot sauce vinaigrette with some baby celery, shaved radish and frisee to get a bit of ‘healthy’ balance.

graham elliot
(217 W Huron St, 312-624-9975)

Dish Seafood sticks
Details Graham Elliot Bowles (who just debuted his eponymous restaurant after much success at Avenues) is no stranger to pushing the culinary envelope. Case in point: This creation from his late-night menu binds a mixture of hand-cut wild scallops, halibut and salmon with Activa, then lightly coats the seafood stick in brioche bread crumbs, fries it in butter and serves up a malt-vinegar tartar sauce alongside. “We wanted to find a way to reinterpret a classic item that people have a reference point for,” says Bowles. By using Activa, his “badass fish and chips” doesn’t need excessive binding ingredients, such as eggs or flour.

Blackbird
(619 W Randolph St, 312-715-0708)

Dish “Scotch” quail and egg
Details Chef Michael Sheerin first got a taste of Activa while working at wd-50 a few years back, but at Blackbird, he takes a deboned quail, cuts it in half and places a frozen quail egg inside. He then sprinkles on Activa, rolls it and, after refrigerating, poaches the “meatball” on a low temperature. Just before it’s served, it’s deep-fried, which cooks the bird to medium-rare while the egg is still slightly runny in the center. Fresh bacon, pomelo citrus fruit, Marcona almonds, parsnip puree and American sturgeon caviar finish the plate.

Moto
(945 W Fulton Mkt, 312-491-0058)

Dish Bacon and scallop
Details Wrapping meat and seafood with bacon is nothing new. But when you have bacon inside a scallop, well, that’s another story. To create this dish, Activa is added to finely chopped raw scallop before the scallop pieces are layered with a frozen disc of bacon puree into a mold roughly the size of an actual scallop. When it’s seared, the bacon puree inside melts while the edges of the “scallop” caramelize. The concoction is plated with pickled ramps and cornbread pudding to complete the package.

The Pump Room
(1301 N State Pkwy, 312-266-0360)

Dish Slow-roasted rabbit saddle
Details Chef Nick Sutton had been looking to do a dish with rabbit saddle for some time, but he’s not a big fan of caul fat or wrapping rabbit in prosciutto—“Anybody can do that,” he says. Since he had already tinkered with Activa to fuse small pieces of salmon and filet mignon—separately, not with each other, following the waste-eliminating protocol Activa was originally intended for—he knew its fusion power could work for rabbit as well. Sutton first fills a boned-out saddle (the loin from both sides, minus the bones) with wild mushrooms, Parmesan and ricotta, then uses Activa to glue the cut together and trap the filling in. The stuffed saddle gets slow-roasted then plated with a rabbit rillette, Thumbelina carrots and fava beans.

The Signature Room at the 95th
(875 N Michigan Ave, 312-787-9596)

Dish Veal strip loin
Details Size does matter. Well, at least when it comes to cooking veal strip loin. Chef Patrick Sheerin—brother of Blackbird’s Michael Sheerin—was looking to add veal strip loin to his menu. But because of its thinness, Sheerin had to find a way to create a thicker cut in order to get the desired caramelization without overcooking it. He uses Activa to glue the strips together, one on top of the other, then poaches the Franken-loin before giving it a quick sear. “A lot of people automatically associate products like this with molecular gastronomy, but that’s not the case,” says Sheerin. “It just gives chefs more tools to use.”