Bivalve Bash 2010

If you haven’t been to the Bivalve Bash at the Taylor Shellfish Farm on Samish Bay, you’re missing out on one of the best summer parties around. We went last year, but I didn’t do a post as my camera battery died halfway through. This year we took some shellfish-loving friends and a camera with a fresh battery and had a fabulous time.

We saw the kids’ Mud Run.

We toured the Oyster Shell Sculpture Contest.

Jon entered the Oyster Shucking Contest, and placed third (and got to keep a rather nice oyster knife). And the rest of us got to eat the oysters.

simple squid

We discovered that we can get big bags of frozen pre-cleaned squid rings and tentacles at the local fish market, and are preparing to embark on some serious experimentation with it. I know how to clean a squid in theory, but I’d really rather not, so this stuff is great. The one thing I’ve cooked with it so far, based on a recipe in James Peterson’s Fish & Shellfish, was incredibly simple and very, very successful: I sauteed chopped garlic and red pepper flakes in olive oil, added the squid and sauteed for 1 minute, then added chopped parsley and cooked another 30 seconds or so, then scraped it all out onto a pile of Israeli couscous with some roasted asparagus on the side. The ultimate fast dinner, and tasty too.

Any suggestions for our next foray into squid cookery?

caribou

How about something sweet ? This confection, which I’ve known about as long as I’ve known my husband (that would be…19 years or so, yikes), is no longer something I can eat, as it has almonds – but I remember it fondly from our college days (when he made it recently for a work potluck he got roundly scolded for making something his wife couldn’t eat). It’s been handwritten in the back of our old Moosewood Cookbook forever, along with the Sour Cream Coffeecake and the Red Bell Pepper Pesto. I hadn’t realized the story behind the recipe’s name until recently, so I asked him to write a little about it: 

It’s amazing how one rarely questions the things with which one has grown up. Take this dessert. Chocolatey and creamy, it’s almost a mousse, but then there are the ground almonds, giving it a firmer texture and a little bit of gritty crunch before it dissolves. That’s not a mousse; it’s caribou. Or at least that’s what we called it in my family.

Only when I got into cooking and baking in college and begged the recipe from my mother did I discover that it had another name – La Reine de Saba (the Queen of Sheba). Once again, I didn’t question the name. I had suspected that caribou was not the actual name, and La Reine de Saba sounded reasonable.

Except that this dessert isn’t like any of the other versions of La Reine de Saba that I have found. Those versions all have eggs, and most have at least a little bit of flour, yielding a dense, fudgy cakelike product. My family’s version is definitely not fudgy or cakelike. But it is mighty tasty.

oyster anniversary

Last Friday was our anniversary, so to celebrate we packed a few key items and headed out on Chuckanut Drive.

First we took a walk at Larabee. The weather has been gorgeous, once the morning fog burns off, and the woods were filled with dappled light.

Then we headed down to Taylor Shellfish. Usually we just come here to pick up oysters or mussels to take home, and of course for the Bivalve Bash (which happens to be next weekend!), but this was the first time we’ve taken advantage of their picnic area. We bought a bag of Kumamoto oysters, opened some wine, and settled at a table by the water and started shucking. We also brought some ham-and-butter sandwiches, made from Breadfarm baguette and Golden Glen salted butter, as well as some intensely flavored olives, and we alternated bites of these with sweet little oysters as Jon opened them.

This is a good place.

Portland roundup (long)

We got out of town last week and took the train down to Portland for a little vacation, just in time for a massive heat wave. Despite broken-down buses (one overheated and died on the Burnside Bridge – fun!), blisters, short tempers and heat exhaustion, we managed to have a great time and eat quite a lot of food. Also, it was an excellent weekend for sitting in the shade drinking beer, so we made sure to do plenty of that. We started at the Hedge House.

And we had to go to Pok Pok, of course. We have occasionally considered eating here every single night we spend in Portland. One of these trips…

zucchini #5

When a farmer hands you a beautiful fresh summer squash and tells you, “this is only the fifth zucchini I’ve picked so far this year,” you really want to do something nice with it. I made fritters.

Zucchini fritters are something I used to make a lot, but it’s been a while and I can’t find my original recipe, which was from a low-carb book by Fran McCullough and seems to be lost in the mists of time. I made something up, based loosely on my memories and on a recipe in Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, and a bowl of egg yolks in the fridge left over from my grandfather’s birthday cake. Next time I think I’ll actually follow a recipe, but this was still pretty yummy.

birthday cake

We made this cake for my grandfather’s 97th birthday. I’m not going to write down the recipe for it, because you really should just go buy Dorie Greenspan’s book Baking: From My Home to Yours, and make it out of that (it’s the one on the cover, with cake crumbs patted all over the outside). I do recommend our one embellishment, which was to stuff the frosting layers with fresh raspberries, and have lots of additional raspberries available to scatter over the top. Raspberries + chocolate cake + marshmallow creme frosting. Oh, yes.

It was a bit of a messy dessert, as the marshmallow frosting got soft and melty in the sun, and the raspberries were so ripe they turned people’s hands crimson. But it’s not like that was a real problem.

macaroni salad, very al fresco

This week we did our annual car camping trip to Washington Park on Fidalgo Island. It rained. Welcome to a Pacific Northwest summer.

Fortunately the firewood we brought burned well, and we were able to successfully cook our dinner. Hebrew National hot dogs, blistered over the fire and dressed with sweet relish and very hot Dijon mustard, macaroni salad, Bonny Doon grenache, and toasted marshmallows. I tend to think that, if you don’t cook it on a stick over the fire, it’s not real camping food. Except the macaroni salad, which can be scooped directly out of its tupperware in case you don’t feel like washing extra dishes. 

pea and goat cheese ravioli

Ever since our last cooking class with Casey Schanen, I’ve been thinking fondly of his ravioli stuffed with fresh peas and feta, served in a lemon beurre blanc. We received a ravioli making kit for Christmas, and fresh shelling peas just appeared in the market. Our choice for Sunday dinner was clear.

For the filling, I wanted to use Gothberg Farms fresh chevre, because I am still newly in love with this cheese and I want to use it in everything. This particular ball of cheese had a distinctly grassy note entwined with its sweet milkiness. It seemed made to go with peas.

First, we shelled our peas. I blanched them in boiling water for two minutes, then drained and cooled them. I set aside a few peas to go on top of the ravioli, but mashed the rest lightly with a spoon before adding the goat cheese along with some salt and pepper. In retrospect, a little lemon zest would have been nice as well. And perhaps a little chopped fresh mint. Next time…

Brown Lantern

I’m deeply embarrassed that we’ve lived in Skagit County for thirteen years now and have never been to the Brown Lantern Ale House in downtown Anacortes. In my defense, I have to say I’d been mixing it up with the Watertown Pub, which was not thrilling the one time we went, and we’ve usually just ended up going to the Rockfish. But better late than never: we have now rectified the situation. The only question now is how soon we can get back there.

We had gone for a hike in the Anacortes Community Forestlands (a wonderful park full of trails and lakes), and had worked up a good appetite. We thought about driving around the island to try out the Shrimp Shack, but I had just read yet another rave about the Brown Lantern on Chowhound and wanted to try it while I was thinking about it. It was open, there was a free table in the window – perfect.

The Brown Lantern is an old pub – I think the sign said it was started up in the ’30s – and has a comfortably dark and rustic feel, with lots of sports stuff stapled to the ceiling. It also has one of the best stocked bars I’ve seen in this county.