What I Ate in Hawaii, Part 1

I really don't know where to start, so I'll just say this: Hawaii is a culinary wonderland, and I hope you get to go there.

I have lots of dewy observations about Hawaiian cuisine that have probably been made by countless others before me (why, it's East meets West!) so I'll spare you those. If you want the real deal, check out Rachel Laudan's The Food of Paradise. If you just want to know what I ate during my trip there last week, read on. I'll try not to use the words "lush," "exotic," and "better" too often.

I'll start by introducing you to the first Hawaiian food that I was introduced to. Reader, meet poke. Looks amazing, doesn't it?



It is! Poke, pronounced poh-kay, is a raw fish dish that consists of super-fresh seafood and ample seasoning. It's tempting to compare it to ceviche or sashimi, but poke is its own beast, it is absolutely scrumptious, and I miss it dearly. And I can't say that about too many beasts.

Depending on the variety, poke will also contain slivers of raw onion, seaweed, or even kimchi. Though poke is a traditional dish, like most Hawaiian foods its modern incarnation folds in elements that originated with other cultures. But some of my favorite "flavors" included Polynesian ingredients like the kukui nuts you see sprinkled on the ahi poke above.



Elise's favorite was, hands down, the smoked marlin, which in texture was close to jerky. Smoked marlin poke was sweet, salty, spicy, and of course smokey and marliny. It went very well with the baby soft white rice that we always ate with our poke, which usually came from the Tamura's in Honolulu. Not necessarily what you'd expect from a liquor store, but it was probably the best thing you could buy there.

With its high protein content, cool temperature and oceanic flavors, poke is the perfect post-beach food. I ate some after surfing, which I also tried for the first time. Hard to say which I liked better.

News Flash: Filet-o-Fish Not Sustainable

I can't say that I'm shocked that the tasteless fish served in anonymous, fried patties by McDonald's, Denny's, and Long John Silvers is not being harvested sustainably:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/10/science/10fish.html?_r=1&no_interstitial

Lobster Bolognese, Revealed

I'm sure you all think about The Best Thing I've Had All Year as much as I do, but you may not have realized that we received the recipe for it in a comment.

I'm also sure that you all comb through the comments as obsessively as I do, but just in case this one slipped past you, I thought I'd showcase it here. Thanks to Rick Rodgers for sending it along. He wrote:

This recipe was popularized by Alfred Portale at Gotham Bar and Grill in NYC, and is in his first cookbook. You are right--cream, stock, and veggies are the ingredients. I have the recipe in my computer because I worked on the book as the recipe tester and writer.

Recipe: Fettuccine with Lobster Bolognese
makes 4 to 6 main course servings

Lobster Bolognese Sauce:

l/4 cup distilled white vinegar
3 (l to l l/4 pounds) live lobsters
2 tablespoons olive oil
l medium onion, chopped
l/2 cup chopped carrot (about l/2 medium carrot)
l/3 cup chopped celery (about l/2 small celery rib)
4 garlic cloves, sliced
5 sprigs flat-leaf parsley
5 sprigs tarragon
5 sprigs basil
l dried bay leaf
3 tablespoons tomato paste
l/4 cup Cognac or brandy
l/2 cup dry white wine
6 cups white chicken stock, or as needed
1 cup heavy cream
Coarse salt and cayenne pepper

Bring a large stockpot of 10 quarts salted water and the vinegar to a boil over high heat. In batches, if necessary, add the lobsters and cover. Cook for 5 minutes. (The lobsters will only be partially cooked.)

Drain the lobsters, place in a bowl, and set aside until cool enough to handle.

Working over a bowl to catch the juices, twist the lobster bodies away from the tails; reserve the bodies. Saving as much of the juices as possible while working, crack the lobster tails and claws. Remove the meat and cut into 3/4-inch dice. Transfer to a bowl, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate. Coarsely chop the lobster shells.

In a large stockpot, heat the oil over medium heat. Add the onion, carrot, celery, garlic, and parsley sprigs and cover. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the vegetables soften, about l0 minutes. Stir in the tomato paste. Add the lobster shells and bodies and cook, stirring often, for 2 minutes. Add the cognac and reduce by half, about 2 minutes. Add the wine and reduce by half, about 3 minutes. Add the reserved juices and enough stock to barely cover the ingredients. Bring to a boil over high heat, skimming off any foam that rises to the surface. Reduce the heat to low and simmer until well-flavored, about 45 minutes.

Strain into a large bowl, pressing hard on the solids to extract as much flavor as possible, then discard the solids. (If making in advance, cool, cover, and refrigerate.)

In a large saucepan, bring the stock to a boil over high heat and reduce to l cup, about 30 minutes. Add the cream, return to a boil, and cook until the sauce thickens slightly, about 5 minutes. Taste and season carefully with salt and cayenne pepper.

Assembly:

l pound fresh fettuccine
l tablespoon finely chopped flat-leaf parsley
2 teaspoons finely chopped tarragon
l0 basil leaves, cut into chiffonade
Sprigs of chervil for garnish

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil over high heat. Add the fettuccine and cook until al dente, 2 to 3 minutes. Drain and return the pasta to the pot.

If necessary, reheat the lobster sauce over low heat. Add the lobster meat and cook just to heat the lobster meat through, about 2 minutes. Stir in the parsley, tarragon, and basil. Add the warm lobster sauce to the pasta and toss well.

Serve in warmed pasta bowls, garnishing each serving with the chervil leaves.

Cape Cod Grub

I had two excellent eating experiences on a recent trip to Cape Cod. The first was the soup pictured above, made with tons of mushrooms, a few handfuls of wild greens and a splash of goat milk.

In case you can't tell, the soup was entirely the product of necessity. But by just using what we had on hand I managed to produce a vast quantity, and it was a real crowd-pleaser to boot. I started by browning onions and garlic and then sweating all of the stems. With salt and water, these cooked for quite a while longer, yielding a hasty stock. I then added more water, the sliced caps, and some greens and herbs that happened to be growing around the property where we were staying. These included sheep sorrel, garlic mustard, and feral oregano.

It was even vegan until I added a few cups of the goat milk at the end, which made the broth almost bisquey and gave it the slightest twang. We slurped mugful after mugful all day, even once it had gone cold.

The second excellent eating experience occurred when I was asked to pitch some spent lobster shells off the dock. I had arrived too late to actually eat the lobster, but I picked a meal's worth of meat off the carapaces. It was dark, so I couldn't very easily tell coral from tomalley, but it was divine. Someone even left me a claw!

Squatting on a dock in the dark and sucking second hand lobster gook out of shells that were supposed to be thrown away may not be for everyone, but I guess that's what makes me a gourmet.

Weighty Issues

In my class at the Boston Center for Adult Ed, my students have been tackling a different genre of food writing each session. Last week they tried their hand at the fastest and newest: blogging.

The following is the first ever blog post by Jeanine Slater, one of the class. Let her know what you think!

I used to think that healthy food couldn’t taste good too. Brown rice? Sorry, no. Steamed vegetables? Again, no.

I’m a Yankee with southern roots and I love all kinds of food, so you might say I have equal parts clam chowder and fried chicken running through my veins. In high school I joined the track team and ran 10 miles a day, played tennis, ate whatever I pleased and until I was 18 never weighed more than 110 pounds. Then I went to college. You’ve heard of the freshman 10? Try the freshman 30. So began my on-going battle with my weight.

A few years ago, with the assistance of a Health Coach, I lost 55 pounds and have continued to maintain a healthy weight. The basic formula is very simple: calories in, calories out, but of course we all know it isn’t quite that easy. Finding time to exercise and prepare healthy meals can be very challenging. To help me stay on track, I began creating lighter versions of my favorite foods using both fresh and prepared ingredients.

You’ve heard of Sandra Lee? Oh, please. I was creating semi-homemade meals long before blondie appeared on the Food Network - she just got there before I did.

But you would be amazed by what you can eat while still maintaining a healthy lifestyle. Now that Spring has arrived I am experimenting with grilled chicken & fish (thank you George Foreman!) and preparing tasty and filling salads. I rarely use recipes but have created one for the shrimp salad below. It is simple, tasty and a crowd pleaser at large or small gatherings. Feel free to use the reduced calorie dressings or herbs of your choice

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Recipe: Peppery Shrimp Salad

1-2 lbs cooked or raw shrimp
1-2 fresh lemons
Herbs - Sweet basil, thyme, oregano (or whatever you have on hand)
1/4 Cup Ken’s Reduced Calorie Creamy Parmesan with Cracked Peppercorn Dressing (this is my favorite)
1/8 Cup Hellman’s Low Fat Mayonnaise (optional)
Lettuce or other greens

Step 1: If using cooked shrimp, remove tails, rinse & drain thoroughly. Proceed to step 3

Step 2: If using raw shrimp, peel and de-vein (if desired); add shrimp to a large pot of simmering water to which a few lemon slices and herbs have been added. Shrimp will immediately begin to turn pink ; stir & cook for 1-2 minutes depending on the size of the shrimp; remove 1 or 2 & taste for doneness; shrimp should be pink & firm but not mushy (undercooked) or tough (overcooked). When done, empty into a strainer and rinse with cold water to stop the cooking process.

Step 3: Drain shrimp thoroughly (pat dry with paper towels if necessary); place in a strainer and refrigerate overnight if you are not in a hurry.

Step 4: Place shrimp in a non-metal bowl & add salad dressing, mayonnaise, a few squeezes of fresh lemon juice, and herbs to taste. Refrigerate for 1-2 hours; adjust seasoning & serve on a bed of lettuce or other greens; garnish with lemon twists.

Serves 6-8.

Sustainable Shrimp

See here for my latest post over at the Chefs Collaborative blog. I recently attended their "Shrimp and Sazeracs" meet and greet with the folks behind Four Winds Seafood, a sustainable supplier from outside of New Orleans.

If nothing else it whetted my appetite to return for a full meal at Hungry Mother, a Cambridge restaurant that serves Southern food better than most of the food in the South.

My apologies for the poorly exposed photo - it was after a few Tabasco martinis.

Clam and Celeriac Soup

Doesn't sound good, does it? Well it was.

Like most things I cook, this dish was born out of necessity. I was hungry to the point of headache, needed to use the clams, and had celeriac on hand thanks to my winter CSA.

For those who still struggle with the question of what to do with celeriac, here's my advice. Think of a dish that usually has both celery and potatoes, and just use celeriac instead, thereby killing two birds with one root vegetable. (Hmm, two birds and one root vegetable - that sounds good...)

Hence the pairing with clams, which are often served en chowder with both celery and potato. But the headache prevented me from thinking of any additional steps, so I went with a simple, clear soup.

As you may know by now, I'm a big fan of Mark Bittman, aka "The Minimalist," and this soup couldn't be more in the vein of his stripped down treatments. With only two ingredients, clam and celeriac, it was shockingly good, not to mention local, seasonal, and sustainable.

I sat down fully expecting a mediocre meal birthed from necessity and shellfish on the brink of freshness. What I got instead was one of the absolute best things I've tasted in recent memory. The pairing was unbelievably complementary, and the flavors rich, clean and bright. I slowly slurped spoonful after spoonful, completely absorbed in the marriage of surf and turf, almost in disbelief and how much there was to taste. Clams were clearly meant to release their liquor into soup, thereby creating an instant broth that you can catch every drop of.

And I'm glad I didn't spoil it with milk or other superfluous ingredients. It couldn't have been easier, and it couldn't have been better.

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Recipe: Clam and Celeriac Soup

clams (about a pound)
celeriac (about 1/2 of one)

Dice the celeriac, or celery root, into bite sized pieces.

Simmer in barely salted salted water until almost tender, at which point you add the clams, cover, and continue to simmer until they've opened.

When ready, some of the clams will have slipped out of their shells and some of the celeriac will have ended up in their place, which looks very funny. Garnish with coarsely chopped black pepper.

Serves two, or one with a headache.

Finally, Frank Pepe

The golden pizza fleece of eating Frank Pepe's has eluded me for years. I could never count the times I've driven past New Haven, but for a slew of reasons, I've never been able to stop in for a slice.

Some friends once brought me a white clam pie while in Amherst, but it had been out of the oven for hours, so I didn't consider it a valid test. Then, last month, the stars aligned for a quick dinner in New Haven while traveling from New York to Boston. It being a Monday, FP's was closed.

Flash forward to last week, if it were possible to flash forward backward. Elise and my first stop en route from Boston to St. Louis was none other than that infamous pizzeria. I'd heard about it for years, had been taunted by the sign for exit 2 on 91, and have craved the real thing ever since that cold, soggy tease. With such high expectations, of course I was disappointed.

That's not to say that it wasn't great pizza. It was. In fact, it was probably the best pizza I've ever had. Why, then, didn't I like it? First, pizza has a ceiling. I know this is a departure from my Trillinesque love of all foods, no matter how lowly or unsustainably grown, but the best pizza just isn't as good as the best braised goat stew or Tarte Tatin, like the excellent one I had last night at Dijon in Ithaca. The best pizza can only be so good.

The second reason, to be completely unfair to Frank, is that I wasn't in the mood. We'd hit traffic on the way in, gotten lost, had a hard time finding green space to walk the dog, and were anxious about the 1200 miles that lay before us. Being in such a state, even the gamiest wild persimmon could go unappreciated.

I owe Frank Pepe another chance. I'm going to go back, take my time, drink a beer before puzzling through the spreadsheet-like menu, and enjoy what I know is some fine pie. I just have to work on being the best pizza eater.

Only then can I share in the sentiment of this bathroom graffiti.

Mussel Miso

Continuing on the theme of ridiculously easy miso recipes, this one is simple to make and even more fun to say. Try it: mussel miso, mussel miso, mussel miso!

I used PEI mussels, which have a "best choice" sustainability rating from Monterey Bay Aquarium's Seafood Watch. Presumably the only thing better is not eating.

I steamed the mussels with about a cup of water, and once they'd opened (died), I made the requisite slurry with a little of the broth and the miso paste. I didn't feel like wrestling with the shells and eating at the same time, so I first scraped out the meat. The best way to do so is to separate the shells and use the empty half to make the other half empty. You even get that little scrap of connective tissue that is so frustrating to scrape with your teeth but so sad to leave behind.

The pairing was outrageously symbiotic. Miso and mussels are just alike and different enough to make a perfect flavor combination. I imagined a DNA double helix with the A's, C's, T's, U's and G's being shellfish and cultured soybeans.

Yet again, my theory of miso + 1 proved true. Then again, miso + 0 isn't bad, either.

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Recipe: Mussel Miso

Mussels (5-10 per bowl)
Miso paste (1 tbsp)

Steam mussels in a covered pan with 1 cup water. Once open, turn off the heat and mix the miso with about a quarter cup of the mussel broth. Add the slurry back to broth, serve, and keep saying "mussel miso."

Clam and Mushroom Risotto

Risotto is one of those dishes that I like to think I make every week. I don't, but there's no good reason not to. Despite having a non-English name, risotto is extremely easy to make and is a tabula rasa of versatility.

Whatever your diet, be it vegan or meat and potatoes, you can make a great risotto that fits within your framework. Unless you're allergic to rice.

To risk stating the obvious, risotto as we know it is a warm, rich, creamy rice dish typically made with the arborio variety, plus anything else you want. You can add a vegetable purée, like butternut squash or asparagus. You can toss a few mussels or shrimp on top, start it with pancetta or bacon, stir in cream or grated cheese, use stock or water, and so on and so on.

Combinations are infinite, but the best way to make risotto is to keep a supply of the rice around and then use whatever you happen to have on hand whenever you think to make it. People say that for all kinds of recipes, but for this one it's really true.

For this risotto we used a seafood stock that was the byproduct of cooking shrimp for a salad several months ago. (They say stock only keeps in the freezer for about a month, but that's a lie.) To this we added the rice, plain old white button mushrooms, grated parmesan and about a half pound of Maine clams. It rocked.

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Clam and Mushroom Risotto

1/2 pound mushrooms (bought or foraged for)
1/2 pound clams (bought or clammed for)
1 onion
5 cloves garlic
2 cups arborio rice
7 cups (or slightly more or less) seafood stock (or water)
4 tbsp olive oil or butter
salt to taste
pepper to taste

Note: You can steam the clams first, remove, and then start the rice in the broth, but if you're using stock there's no need.

Sauté one onion and several cloves of garlic in butter, olive oil, or a combination of both.

Add the rice, stir thoroughly to coat, allowing the grains to very slightly toast.

Add a half cup of stock (keeping it warm will make things go more quickly). Stir occasionally until the the rice has absorbed the stock.

In a separate pan, sauté the mushrooms in butter, then set aside.

Keep adding liquid to the rice by the half cup and stirring until the rice is cooked through (you may prefer it al dente), or slightly before, at which point you add the goodies.

Stir in cooked mushrooms, cheese, clams, salt and pepper. Cover until clams fully open.

Serves 4 or 2 with ample leftovers.

Eating the Low Country Part III: Oysters and Deep Fried Strawberries

Already full of fajitas, shrimp, grits, and Yuengling, I was undeterred in my quest to eat as much as I could before flying out of the Low Country. And what better way to experience the terroir of coastal South Carolina than with some of its infamous oysters? Answer: deep fried strawberries.

Having just eaten 40 or so excellent oysters at the Legal Seafood tasting in Cambridge, and having had terrible, watery, flavorless oysters in South Carolina on my last trip, I was prepared to be underwhelmed. But while the oysters didn't quite have the chutzpah of a good Wellfleet or Duxbury, they were very flavorful with a nice shift from salt to sweet. In fact, they had all of the elements that I so love in New England oysters, just on a smaller scale. If a Wellfleet is getting drenched by a winter Nor'easter, these were the pleasant drizzle of the outer bands of a tropical depression. I had them raw, except for a few steamers courtesy of a friendly off-duty chef at the next table.

How were the deep fried strawberries? Do I really have to answer that?

From there (Pepper's Porch) we quickly moved on to Choo-Choo barbecue, a small but competent operation set up in an old train car, or at least a fake old train car. I ordered a half rack of their ribs and was thrilled to see that familiar, almost fluorescent splash of orange-yellow mustard and vinegar sauce that dominates South Carolina. If anyone else out there grew up in Boca Raton, you'll remember it from Tom's on Old Dixie.



Tender, smoky and flavorful, they had nothing wrong with them and everything right. Like the fajitas, I ate them from a to-go container on my lap in our rented Corolla. Unlike the fajitas, I wish I was eating them again right now.

At this point you may be wondering how a guy who likes raw tomatillos was able to eat so much Southern food. The answer is beer. I don't know if it's the carbonation, the friendly microorganisms, or the dulling effect on the nervous system, but alcohol definitely makes the ribs go down. With this course I had a Terrapin. Seth imitated the turtle on the label as I ate, which also helped.

From there it was a mad dash to the Bluffton farmer's market, where I bought two pounds of bright yellow, slow ripening peaches, several varieties of organically grown cucumbers, the afore mentioned Gullah cookbook, a jar of whole, preserved figs made by the author, a tall cup of lemonade and an enormous bowl of gumbo made by an extremely nice couple who call themselves We Island.

Eating the Low Country: Part II

There I was, at the Squat and Gobble with a steaming plate full of fresh, local shrimp and grits in front of me. I don't really eat shrimp these days, ever since I realized how much of it was farm raised and how much of the farm raised stuff was coming from places like Indonesia. There we persuade farmers to trade their native mangrove forests for disease infested pools of heavily concentrated shrimp pumped full of chemicals we've banned in the U.S.

There are even those (like National Geographic) who partly link the devastation of the tsunami of 2004 to the absence of natural buffers like mangroves, many of which had been turned into shrimp aquaculture by the time the wave struck. And having grown up poking around the mangroves of South Florida, I find it hard to exchange old friends for a food I could substitute with chicken.

But the shrimp at the S&Q were pulled out of the water just a few miles away. They were plump, moist, pink and downright bouncy. I adored them, despite the positively raunchy decor.





For those who don't know, the Low Country is a coastal area of Georgia and South Carolina marked by beaches, salt marshes, small islands, inlets, and an at once gothic and comforting mix of Spanish moss and palm trees. The region spans two states and drips with history, from pirates to the Civil War.

The area is also home to many Gullah and Geetchee, some of whom still occupy the oldest free communities of blacks in the U.S. Sadly, much of their culture has been replaced by resorts on the desirable sea islands that had been their homes. Hilton Head, for instance.

But what better way to show your support than spending all your dough at their restaurants and farmers market stands? As I believe Wendell Berry (or was it Morgan Spurlock?) said, and I paraphrase, "every time you eat, you vote."

Low Country cuisine is very much like general Southern cooking, though it leans heavily on seafood and features more of the Caribbean and African influences, not unlike Cajun or Creole cooking in New Orleans. Local specialties include she-crab soup, gumbo, Lowcountry boil, Frogmore stew, oyster roast, and real South Carolina rice. Why we don't hear more about it as a regional eating destination I honestly don't know.

At the end of the day we had another plane to catch, so I knew I had to eat as much of the L.C. as I possibly could before flying back to Boston and wistfully gazing at the shrimp filled waters far below. Given the time crunch, right after the shrimp and grits at the Squat and Gobble, I immediately moved on to oysters.

Eating the Low Country: Part 1

It all started with a perfectly good sandwich at the Sentient Bean in Savannah.



In fact, it was a great sandwich, part of the new wave of hearty, meatless concoctions warming in the panini presses of cafes all across America. I believe it was called "The Taste of Fall," pairing Georgia sweet potatoes with pecans and chèvre. The crust of the bread was so sharp that it could cut the roof of your mouth if you ate it at the wrong angle, while the interior was soft and fluffy. It was here that, with the help of the local A&E rag and free wireless, we planned the next day's eating.

I was in the Low Country for a show at the Beaufort campus of the University of South Carolina, located in the town of Bluffton. Of that area, Gullah restaurateur and cookbook author Jesse Edward Gantt Jr. writes:

"In the days before interstate I-95 made its way down the Atlantic Coast, travelers heading south the Carolinas, Georgia and Florida often drove along highway 17, along rambling roadways that connected hundreds of small towns and hamlets including the region that has become known as Gullah/Geechee country, home of one of the oldest living cultures in the United States."

We were lucky enough to be in Savannah for the Trustees Market, an excellent assembly of local growers and food producers with the occasional restaurant and soap maker thrown in, too. There I bought a loofah gourd to use as a sponge and sprout to grown my own next year, a pound of sweet potatoes, a hunk of gnarly looking backyard ginger, some citrus whose name I couldn't make out but which is supposedly like a cross between an orange and a lime, six excellent grilled jerk chicken wings, a hunk of Georgia made aged goat cheese with a washed, herb covered rind, and some killer muscadines and scuppernongs.



The following day ended up being an edible adventure that would take me back to that world before I-95 described by Gantt.

At 8am I rose from my hotel bed. At 9am I ate an apple and two rice cakes, part of my usual early Fall traveling provisions. Until the "Middle East Prolific" cucumber that I would have for dinner in the Savannah airport, that was the last thing I would eat that day that wasn't meaty and exciting.

At 10:30 I ate three cold fajitas with my bare hands from a styrofoam to-go container on my lap in the driver's seat of our rented Corolla. I didn't like it when I had it for dinner the night before at a fake ale house in a fake part of a fake town, and I liked it even less for breakfast.



At 11:30 I sat down to a steaming plate of shrimp and grits at the Squat and Gobble in Bluffton. As soon as I saw the pink, local shrimp lolling in a bath of spicy peppers and onions, I hated New England.

Review: Legal Seafoods Oyster Tasting and Tutorial

On Saturday I attended an oyster tasting at the Legal Seafoods in Harvard Square. Though I believe in paying the real cost of food, which Americans usually don't, the $35 price tag did make me hesitate, since that amount could put me in real food for several days. Also, great Wellfleets on the halfshell are available at the Davis Square Farmer's Market on Wednesdays for only a buck. With these two thoughts in mind, my companions and I decided that to make it worth it, we needed to eat at least an oyster per every dollar spent. In the end we each put down about 40.

After the first ten or so I didn't think I could do it. After two glasses of wine, I did.

Initially the space was way too crowded and the anxiety about making sure you got your fill was palpable. People were finicky about their place in line and there was a fair amount of bumping and jostling for a crowd who looked like the wealthy dupes of Marx Brothers movies.

Besides oysters, you could also have... nothing. Though the oysters were served raw, fried, pickled, baked and stewed, there wasn't a crumb, an oyster cracker even, to be had besides the oysters themselves, which I thought was a little shoddy of Legal. At least put out some bread, and then we'd eat fewer oysters anyway. Neither was wine included in the tab, though I was certainly led to think it would be by the wording of their promo. The folks at Boston.com seem to have had the same impression, having included the following in their listing for the event:

"you will be given wine sips to complement the oyster dishes."

I don't know about you, but if you come to my house for dinner, and I "give" you something, you don't have to pay $7.50.

Between that and being asked to fork over gratuity upon entering, one didn't get the impression that one was being graciously hosted. A not too cheap feeding frenzy it was, a pleasing dining experience it was not. When the shucking demonstrator asked for everyone's attention and spoke extempore about the high quality of Legal's oysters, taking pains to highlight their safety, I suddenly felt as though we'd been tricked into paying for their marketing.

Still you did get a complimentary oyster survival kit, which is really the opposite if you look at it from the oyster's perspective. It contained a DVD on how to shuck (don't need it), a small bottle of Tabasco (don't use it), one of those disposable wooden oyster forks (completely unnecessary), and a moist towelette (would rather have oyster juice on my hands than ethyl alcohol, propylene glycol, USP, benzalkonium chloride, fragrance, polyoxethylene nonphenol, PEG 75, lanolin, and sodium bicarbonate.)

That said, you really could eat all the oysters you wanted, or more. As I grabbed one last Maine pemaquid on my way out, my stomach sloshing with the very recently killed bodies of over three dozen bivalves, the busboys waved the tops of their hands at at me as if to say "take, take!"

The staff was friendly, light footed and informative, though not always correct. One staff member said that the small, ovular lumps on the shells were "barnacles," though I've been told by the oyster farmer at the Davis Market that they are in fact baby oysters. (He asks that you refrigerate your shells and return them to him the following week so that he can use them to re-seed his beds.) As if it wasn't already apparent, this event showed the massive disconnect between food production and consumption, even by the folks at Legal, who purport to know their stuff, though by their sheer volume they drain the ocean of life at an alarming rate per day.

But there's no way that I can pretend that I didn't love eating 40 oysters. There is nothing to help you better understand a food than obsessive indulgence, and I don't think I'd eaten a luxury item in this quantity since the age of fourteen, when my next door neighbor and I each ate 9 grapefruits from the tree in my yard. My lips burned, but I've deeply understood grapefruit ever since. I also have to report that afterwards we all felt a clear sense of euphoria, one not unlike my recent sichuan peppercorn high. Maybe that's the infamous aphrodisiac effect, though all it made me want to do was nap.

And no matter how you look at it, if I pass up buying an oyster the next 40 times, in the end I'll have saved money.

Fried Fish and Fennel

I have a confession. I can't dredge and dip. Oh, I can dredge. And I can dip just fine. But when a recipe calls for coating in flour and egg, the train just can't make it to the station.

First off, why do some recipes say flour first and then egg when others go in the reverse? Maybe that nagging uncertainty is what does me in. When I read Mark Bittman's recipe for Red Fried Fish, in which he dips his fish into a batter including already combined egg and flour, I thought I'd found the answer. Unfortunately, I was out of eggs. And flour.

But the idea of dipping into a batter rather than dredging and dipping sounded like it would work, so I mixed up some blue cornmeal with water and spices, including paprika, cayenne, cinnamon, and a dash of turmeric.

It should here be noted that, if you ever want an incredibly crispy fried fish, a fish almost imprisoned in an impenetrable shell, you should use cornmeal instead of flour. And I've said it before but I'll say it again: blue corn meal, paprika, and turmeric each goes a long way in naturally saturating a dish with color.

Anytime I eat something fried, I eat something raw to lighten up the meal. Not only is it a balance of texture and temperature, but it shows that something plucked out of the ground and basically unadorned deserves to share a plate with something more meticulously prepared. Hence this gorgeous fennel, simply sliced raw with salt and pepper.



I would have spritzed on some lemon, but I didn't have that either. In a parallel universe, a more prepared Aaron Kagan was enjoying a nice fillet perfectly dipped and fried in flour and egg, his fennel nice and citric. But in this world, I was still happy, and full.

Sautéed Skate Wing

Skate wings originally attracted me because they fit nicely into my ideal food criteria: unusual, inexpensive, and unprocessed. Since then I've gotten them pretty much any time it's occurred to me, and I've never regretted it.

When I first bought one of these watermelon slice shaped pieces of the ray family, the fishmonger regarded me strangely. Finally, he spoke up:

Him: Are you French?
Me: No.
Him: Haitian?
Me: No.
Him: Then what are you? No one else likes to buy these things.

Why, I cannot imagine. Perhaps the shellfishiest fish, skate wings have a texture that it downright lobster-like though the flesh shreds apart like a Jewish mother's brisket. I simply dredge in flour and sauté in oil, or if I'm wise enough, butter. You can deglaze the pan with a splash of balsamic and reduce it, or dribble a little soy sauce over the finished product. That's Chinese broccoli in the background of the photo, but you can also serve it between bread for an extraordinary fish sandwich.

One strange thing about the skate wing: it sometimes leaves a feeling in my mouth not unlike a miniscule dose of menthol. Either it's a mild allergic reaction or just nature's way of letting you know your specimen is slightly past it's prime. Either way, it's pretty weird, but has never stopped me.

However, I just read that many skate are considered "Critically Endangered" by the World Conservation Union and are listed by the Marine Conservation Society as a "fish to avoid." So as much as I've loved eating them over the years, this one will have been my last.

Good luck, little skates.

Mussel Risotto

If you have arborio rice and one other ingredient, really almost anything, you've got a hearty, inexpensive, universally well regarded dish. The basic idea for this version is to steam your mussels, remove them, and then use the liquor to flavor the risotto. Of course at the end, you reintroduce them.

I started the pan with about a bulb's worth of halved garlic cloves, which once browned ended up looking a lot like mussels. I tried to grate in some black pepper, but the cap fell off my mill, so I ended up with whole peppercorns. It's not for everyone, but I liked the element of surprise: you never knew when you were about to bite into a little pepper mine, and what you thought was a mussel might very well turn out to be garlic.

For liquid I used chicken stock made a few days prior. I've been told to warm the liquid so that it's temperature wouldn't arrest the cooking each of the multiple times it was added. But once the stock was warm, I thought "why not keep going and reduce it a little?" Then I thought "why not add the mussel shells to the stock?" Then I thought "what if I have chicken syrup before the risotto's done?" -- in which case I'd have to finish with water. I know, it's a disgusting thought.

In the end it was a race between the two pots, but everyone was a winner. Except the mussels.

Comfort Me With Mackerel

The first time I heard the phrase "comfort food," I was ten years old. My family and I were having lunch at a trendy new South Florida restaurant that served kitschy diner food in metal TV trays. I was not comforted, and it was barely food.

Since then, I've learned what comfort food really means to me: mackerel. Specifically, smoked mackerel, on a bagel, with a schmear and a thin strata of onion. Granted, my photo above features toast and lettuce, as Jay has pointed out.

I would be eating smoked salmon instead except for what I call the "twice dyed" factor. First, farm raised Chilean Salmon are fed food pellets with beta carotene to improve the color of their flesh, which would otherwise be a dull gray. When that meat is then turned into lox, colors with numbers start showing up. Sure you can get the good stuff, but it'll cost you. And they might still be lying.

Conversely, I can get locally caught and smoked mackerel at Pemberton Farms for under four bucks. I've had a soft spot for this greasy little fish ever since one formative summer during college. Living on our own for the first time, mackerel was the only seafood we could afford besides crab with a "k." We ate it "fresh" from the local grocery store in Waltham, as sushi in Maryland, canned during a hike in West Virginia, and caught with a pink, children's fishing pole in Maine.

Historically, salmon isn't the be all and end all de rigueur smoked fish that we think it is anyway. In fact, you may remember that we didn't eat a whole lot of salmon until about eight years ago, when an explosion of information about it's health benefits made it the pomegranate of 2000. Conveniently, that's also when massive amounts of the farmed raised stuff started flooding in, and when I first became aware of twice dyed lox.

Sure, people have been eating smoked salmon for thousands of years, but it was a lot better than the stuff you're getting blended into your cream cheese. And while it's heavily associated with Jewish food, "my people" were just as likely to be smoking and eating whatever finned and scaled fish they could get their hands on while scattered around the world. And when I build my smoker, I'm going to do the same.

That's a bottle of home brewed kombucha in the background. It imparts that citric tang I crave when I eat bagels and fish, thanks to growing up with ample access to Florida orange juice. Also, it's kind of Russian.

Deep Fried Lobster (In Homemade Lard)

My usual criteria for ordering off of a menu is to find the dish that presents the best ratio of affordable to appetizing to ethical. Other times, it's to order deep fried lobster in homemade lard.

That's what I did at Lydia Shire's Blue Sky on York Beach. How was it? Of course it was good. It was a lobster. And it was deep fried. In homemade lard.

It was fun, but in the future I'd never take it over a plain old steamed lobster. The intense heat of the deep fry made it possible to crunch through the smaller pieces of the arthropod, shell and all, sort of like lobster chicharrones. But it also incinerated the meat in those little places I so love to pick at.

If for some reason you don't like the deep fried lobster in homemade lard, which would be crazy, perhaps you'll enjoy the peace offering of four perfect ribs that it was perched atop, for no particular reason, besides gluttony.

A Meal at the Chez Panisse Cafe

First came the oysters.



My principal taste of the famed Chez Panisse could not have been less impressive. I was shocked at how cold and flavorless these were. While immaculate in their presentation, I couldn't get over how much better the oysters are that I buy in a parking lot behind a post office at a Somerville Farmer's Market. Elise thought they might have been sweet and subtle, but try as I might, I simply couldn't taste them.

Next came a cauliflower puree with black truffle oil.

Musky, savory, and smooth, it was everything the oysters weren't. We experiment with cauliflower puree quite often, but it had never occurred to me to add a flavor as radical as truffles. The vegetal taste of that famously pale brassica was perfectly matched by the dank funk of the oil.

Our third appetizer was a Dungeness crab salad over shaved fennel and blood orange and grapefruit slices.



The fruit reminded me of the high quality backyard citrus I took for granted growing up in South Florida. The shreds of meat was expertly mixed: some sweet, some gamy, implying that the chef had thought to include different "cuts" of crab.

Waiting for the main course, we had time to savor the excellent Acme "Upstairs" sourdough, and the house wine, Green & Red Zinfandel, prepared specially for C.P. by the Chiles Mill Vineyard of Napa.

For the main course, I had a local rock cod blasted in the wood fire oven along with new potatoes, leek, and beets, served with an aioli. I was told by a friend and former C.P. reservationist to get anything cooked in the oven, and was glad that I did.

The fish had a nicely roasted brown top and the vegetables were delicate and simple, especially the tiny potatoes. These contrasted well with the leek, which had become a savory, tubular mush in the intensity of the hearth. Somehow, the aioli was even better than aioli normally is.

I was even impressed by the shape of the fillet, which was not the clean, symmetrical block that every other restaurant is too afraid not to offer. I received that customary piece as well as a scraggly, barely attached secondary hunk. It seemed a metaphor for the restaurant itself. Just because the ingredients are local, it doesn't mean that you're going to miss out on anything. In fact, you'll get more than you're used to. Chez Panisse: it's not just a block - it's a block plus a hunk.



Elise ordered the duck with homemade pasta and mushrooms. I was surprised when her plate came out without a showy, handsome leg. Instead, the three main ingredients came in equal proportions, as though the duck was no more important than the humble pasta. They rested in a shallow pool of rich broth which we were all too happy to sop up when nothing solid remained.

For dessert, Elise ordered the chocolate pave with hazelnut flecked whipped cream. I mean it as a compliment when I say it was the finest brownie you can imagine, topped with an extremely delicate yet crunchy crust.

I had the huckleberry and pear crisp.

My only prior experience with crisps had been when someone who doesn't know how to make a pie wants to put too much sugar on fruit. This dish maintained the rustic personality of the crisp without succumbing to any of its pitfalls: overly sweet, poor quality fruit, homogeneous texture, and limp crumb. The topping actually was crisp, the pear not at all too sweet and with its grainy texture intact, and the huckleberry was almost masculine, spreading its strong flavor and color throughout the filling.

The meal had come a long way since the oysters. I was deeply satisfied, even though I had never spent as much money on any one meal. Nor had I sat at table for two and half hours, eager and alert for every minute of it.

Thanks to Chez Panisse's commitment to local cuisine, we bought more than food with our money. We also made a contribution to the highly visible cornerstone of a culinary movement. One with farmers, communities, and the preservation of food culture and the environment in mind. We also probably bought a little more duck fat than we realized.

We were very happy with our choice of the cafe over the restaurant. Unbound by the prix fixe, we got everything we wanted and experienced twice as many dishes. Next time I'll go for the full dining experience of the downstairs restaurant, and you'll certainly read about it when I do.