Oregon Oysters are Delicious

A few years ago I learned about Oregon oysters and decided that I must learn to eat oysters.  I'd never had an oyster before. Although I really like clams, I avoid mussels because I don't like a big gush of mushy guts in my mouth when I'm eating.  Remember Tidal Wave Bubble gum?  That juicy center?  Disgusting. No thank you.

But if you are going to eat local, then a part of that is eating what grows well here, not just what you can get to grow here.  Acceptance, not imposition.

Oysters grow well in Oregon (and the PNW in general), so I tried to eat oysters.  Tried is the main word, because whatever I did was absolutely disgusting.  I tried frying them.  I tried breading them.  I tried raw.  And then I was done.  Oysters were something that I caulked up to a long term objective and an acquired taste--something I'd have to work at over time and eventually learn to tolerate.  But at the time, all I could do was gag.

Fast forward a couple years.  The desire to learn to eat oysters is still there, and I have not made any progress. Then I find a place on N. Williams called Eat, An Oyster Bar.  The only reason I went into this place is because I heart Cajun food.  And with oysters so close, how could I not try them again.  This time different.  The server even offered to give me a couple for free just to give it a shot.

So I did.

I ordered their Oysters Rockefeller.  Baked oysters with creamed spinach and cheese melted over the top.  Browned under the broiler.  My life changed.  They were delicious.  The oysters were petite.  The spinach was mild and the cheese just sharp enough and browned enough to bring texture and substance.  It was a revelation.  Finally. Finally. Finally, after several years of hopes and disappointment I'd found the key to a truly local treasure.

Then the server brought me a couple raw oysters.  The smallest Tillamook Sweets they had.  On the house.  Just to try.

With great trepidation I poured one into my mouth and braced for the disgusting gush of shellfish mush I'd experienced with dread so many times before.  But this time was different.  The oyster was soft, but not an exploding shit bomb of guts in my mouth.  It was briny, and sweet.  It was something I did not need to fear.  In fact, I wanted some more of them. They were delicious, and I was amazed.

All of this is a big lead up to the actual point of this blog post, which is that I am making oysters as an appetizer for this year's solstice dinner. Normally, for the appetizer, I put together a charcuterie and fromage plate.  But this year I'm trying to increase the amount of seafood in my diet.  Plus solstice dinner always has a local focus.  Plus I have finally found the path to the mysterious Oregon oyster, and it is delicious.

So this weekend I tested some recipes.  Next Saturday (6 days away! Yikes!) we will be doing solstice dinner, and I need to know if the oysters will work.  After reading far too many recipes and opinions, I narrowed it down to two finalists.  Here they are.

Oysters Rockefeller

Based on a recipe from The Best of Gourmet.  I've written about this splendid cookbook before and I'll do it again here.  Here is my version of the recipe in a nutshell:

• Saute spinach, parsley, watercress, and scallions in butter. Chill.
• Shuck your oysters,then set in salt.
• Sprinkle bacon over the top of the oysters.
• Put some of the spinach mix over the top, sprinkle shredded  and bake.

Now, I changed their recipe a bit because I didn't use Pernod and bread crumbs in the spinach mix.  Instead I kept it to greens and then added a layer of Parmesan over the top. This is how Eat does it, and that's good enough for me.  It was good.  And very attractive.  But next time I think I'll add some cream to the greens.





Baked Oysters with Leaks and White Wine Cream Sauce

Based on a recipe from Fish and Shellfish by James Peterson.  James Peterson just writes the best cook books.  This was a much more mild recipe than the Rockefeller.  It was luxurious and buttery.  It was delicious.

Saute fine julienne leaks in butter.
Shuck your oysters.
Put the leaks in the shells, then oysters on top.
Spoon the white wine and cream reduction over the top.
Bake and then broil to finish.

I left out all the details of Mr. Peterson's instructions on how to cook the oysters.  There were a few steps involved.

These were very tasty. Rich and buttery.  Not as picturesque as the Rockefeller oysters though.

Not sure what way I'll go for Solstice dinner next weekend but its outstanding to finally be able to do oysters.

By the way, Eat also sells oysters direct. If you are looking for a good place to get local, sustainably farmed Oregon oysters, stop by Eat and see what they have.

Thanks-sharing

No turkey.
No cranberries.
No candied yams.
No green bean casserole.
No cornbread.
No pumpkin pie.

What we did have was one outstanding dinner.  We broke from tradition and made a new meal that was a welcome relief.

This year it was a conglomeration of the best flavors we could come up with.  Instead of sticking to the Thanksgiving script, we decided to make this food holiday about the food that we love rather than the food we are supposed to eat.  Each person brought something different; each person shared a little of themselves in the process.  They were small gifts to each of us, from each of us, enjoyed together.

There were, of course, a lot of meats.  Jamie called it a "meat-fest" and it pretty much was.  Dave laid out an amazing collection of charcuterie and cheeses as an appetizer.  Delicious cured salamis--thin and fat--from Olympic Provisions and imported cheeses from New Seasons--soft and hard--one of which was the best blue cheese I think I've ever eaten.  By the end of the night, I realized that in the hurley-burley of getting dinner ready, we did not spend enough time with this part of the meal.

When dinner did get on the table, it looked like a winter feast of foods.  I brought a sirloin tip roast. Dave brought a full king salmon fillet topped with pesto and laid on a bed of parsley. Tiffany brought her infamous champagne mushroom risotto as well as yams with yogurt.  Jamie provided the beet salad.  I made chard packages filled with sausage stuffing.  There was fruit salad.  There was a lot of wine.

Desert was no different.  Pumpkin pie is wonderful, but custards are more wonderful.  So, pumpkin creme carmels it was.  Pecan pie also showed up, as well as a beautiful apple pie.

Sitting around a table of food made by people who are sharing from themselves, and enjoying that experience with those same people has to be one of the great experiences of life.  We do several big meals a year--birthdays, holidays, etc.--but none is a holiday really devoted to breaking bread together the way Thanksgiving is.  It's a unique time.  It's a wonderful time.  Thank you to all my friends, for sharing.

In the interest of continuing the sharing, here are the recipes for a couple things:

Packing not Stuffing
Stuffing is good stuff.  I actually wish we ate more of it the rest of the year instead of reserving it mainly for holiday times.  With no turkey to stuff, I had to come up with something different.  This worked perfect.

Chard Packages Filled with Sausage Stuffing

Chopping Leaks

This is a cosmetic variation on the recipe from The Best of Gourmet, 20th anniversary edition.  The original calls for the chard leaves to be drawn up into a "purse" shape.  However, I found this impossible to do.  What was much easier--just fold the chard leaf over the stuffing and use the leak strips to tie it closed.

The flavors of the stuffing are simple and down to earth.  The bread is a nice medium for the salty, sage-y sausage and the earthiness of the only 2 vegetables.  Add salt and pepper and it is a nice uncomplicated stuffing.

• Pork breakfast sausage
• Dried bread cubes then soaked in milk
• Red chard stems and leaks chopped and sauteed in the sausage fat.
• Mix together and use egg (to bind)

For the packages use blanched chard leaves.  Plop a half a cup of stuffing in the middle and fold the leaf over.  Use strips of leak to tie it closed.  Bake with a little bit of chickstock to keep them from drying out.

WWROD (What Would Richard Olney Do)
I made a sirloin tip roast, but I knew it would need something to help it. There was a good chance I would mess up the roast (it did come out a little over cooked) and a good sauce can help bring almost anything back to life.  But what kind of sauce?  In these moments of culinary confusion, I frequently turn to The French Menu Cookbook by Richard Olney.  Once again, i found what I needed to find.  As an accompaniment to a formal autumn dinner, he puts Poivrade Sauce with a leg of venison roast.   But does it only go with game?  I checked in with my Larousse Gastronomique and found that no, Poivrade Sauce goes with most red meats but as some well known variations for game meats.

Poivrade Sauce

One thing to know about Poivrade Sauce, is that it is an old school (1700's) french meat sauce. What that means is the flavor profile will be more vinegary.  It also means you will be able to find 100 variations of this sauce because everyone does it differently.  Given those circumstances, you can really bend the flavors of this sauce to be whatever suits you.  Poivrade sauce is in the general family of sauces that use black pepper as a main flavor. I stayed pretty close to Olney's formula.

• Carrots and onions and soup bones all sweaty and browned.
• Flour roux for thickening.
• Wine vinegar to deglaze (and some white wine)
• Beef stock, tomatoe juice, herbs and juniper berries simmered for a few hours and reduced.
• Add crushed black peppercorns at the end.
• Add some butter to make it shine.

I also used more flour at the end to thicken it up like a gravy.

Pumpkin in a Cup
Pumpkin pie is delicious, not for the pie, but for the pumpkin.  Custard is delicious, for every reason.  What better time of the year to get two great tastes that taste great together?  I checked in with my buddy Alfred Portale.  In 12 Seasons of Cooking he has a nice recipe for Pumpkin Creme Brulee.  However, I had just eaten creme brulee a couple weeks ago.  So, it had to be creme caramel instead.

Pumpkin Creme Caramels
Of course, for the definitive recipe for custard anything, I have to check in with my other buddy, James Peterson.  In chapter 46 of Glorious French Food, he gives the best overview of each kind of custard and how to make them I have ever read.  Basically one egg will set 2/3 cup of milk.  After that come the variations, and there are a ton of them.  I used his orange creme caramel as the starting place and infused pumpkin flavors instead.  

• whole milk infused with pumpkin puree, cinnamon, nutmeg, and sugar
• whole eggs
• more sugar melted to make the caramel sauce

Epilogue
Here are a few random pictures from the night.

Waiting for Local Tuna

A few weeks ago I wrote about having a more balanced diet.  This mainly included eating more grains, vegetables, fruits, and fish while eating less cheeses, eggs, and animal meats (esp. fatty meats like bacon...sigh, just kill me now).  This doesn't seem like it should be that hard, and technically it isn't.  But there are so many delicious ways to cook up animals that it really involves ignoring a universe of edible delights.  Or it involves making totally unacceptable substitutions (i.e. vegetarian "breakfast sausage").

Getting back to the point, one meat that the Old Ways Mediterranean Diet says we should eat more of is fish.  Not just any fish, but fatty fish full of Omega-3 fatty acids, vitamin D, calcium, and minerals.  Some great examples of these fish are salmon, tuna, halibut, and trout.  Coincidentally ALL of these are available either locally or close by.  Wonderful!  No problem!  Support the local food economy AND eat a more balanced diet.

Yeah, not so easy.  Vegetables are a no brainer.  Go to the farmer's markets.   Go to Pumpkin Patch farm on Sauvie's Island. But finding fresh local sustainably caught fish at a reasonable price is an entirely different story.

Can I Get A Fish Monger Please?
Of the places I went, the guys behind the counter usually had very little knowledge of the fish they were selling.  They knew what kind of fish it was (usually).  They knew where it came from (for the most part).  Mainly they knew when the distributor dropped it off.  Surprisingly, Newman's Fish Market on 21st was the absolute worst even through they are located in upscale City Market NW.  The workers there were clearly  just day labor hired to wrap and tag fish they knew nothing about.  Questions seemed to irritate them and they  didn't even do a good job filleting the whole fish I bought.   On the other hand, the guy at The Flying Fish cart knew a lot about the fish he was selling and where it came from.  Unfortunately, he was out of stock of what I was looking for that day.   I was looking for was fresh tuna.

In the end I went with some nice fresh tuna I bought at Fred Meyer.  Not local fish, but the rest was pretty local.  I'm still working on finding good, sustainable sources for local fish.

Fresh Tuna with Tomato Stew
The recipe I used was from a book I have: Mediterranean, A Taste of the Sun in Over 150 Recipes.  Although this is a kinda cheesy theme book, the recipes inside are actually really good.  In fact, I've used this book many times over the years and never has a recipe turned out bad.  Just remember that an aubergine is an eggplant and a courgette is a zucchini.

This recipe is a pretty simple one.  It's just cubes of tuna cooked in stewed tomatoes and onions with some herbs.  This also makes substitutions easy.  I, personally don't like sun-dried tomatoes, so I left that out.  It had the effect of making the sauce thinner.  Also, since there were no baby onions in the house, I used chunky normal onions and it worked out fine.

Here is how I did it:

• Tuna
• Tomatoes (I used canned tomatoes but the recipe calls for stewing your own)
• Onions
• Olive Oil
• Garlic
• White wine
• Clam juice 
• Herbs--fresh sage, rosemary, and thyme.

I laid this over some cous-cous with a fresh cherry tomato and lemon cucumber salad on the side.  Overall it was real good.  A nice light summer meal.

Epilogue: Local Fish Ain't Beef
What a pain in the ass it is to find fresh, sustainable, local fish in Portland!  You want grass fed beef or buffalo or "pastured" chickens--no problem.  But you want local fish on a Tuesday night, WTF!

Part of the reason I haven't posted in a while is because I've been looking for local fish to write a very nice and informative post on how to find local, sustainable fish.  But to tell the truth, it's been a huge pain.  There are very few places to get reliably local and sustainable fish in town. This just confounds me because fish, especially salmon, is so iconic in the PNW.

Fred Meyer has fresh tuna.  I went there because if good fish is going to be a normal part of my diet, then it has to be accessible.  I walk up to the fish counter at the Hawthorne location.  There is a wide display of fish and shellfish laid out, everything looking like it just came in that morning.  On the far right are stacks of pink tuna steaks, each one looking exactly like what I was hoping for.  James Peterson gives a great list of items to look for when choosing fish steaks and fillets in Fish and Shellfish on page 3. 

• No slime. Check.
• No off color. Check.
• Should be slightly translucent.  This tuna is mostly opaque.
• Tuna should be big chunks wrapped in plastic.  Big chunks yes, plastic no.
• Tuna should not have a rainbow-like opalescence. Check.
• No spaces between the flakes. Check.

There are other factors but they didn't apply to me this time. 

Then I looked at the tag.  "Product of Indonesia."  Seriously? It's frickin tuna season in Oregon and you can't get a nice piece of tuna from our own home-grown Fred Meyer grocery store.

I have to admit, I didn't check New Seasons. They are just too expensive.  I'm over New Seasons.

Back to Fred Meyers' tuna.  It was wild caught Indonesian tuna. Besides the "not local" factor, is it bad?   According to Seafood Watch, this Tuna had a 50-50 chance of being either something to "avoid" or a "good alternative". Unfortunately, I will probably never know exactly which it was.  Seafood watch lists and grades 29 variations for tuna.  Of these, 17 are not US or Atlantic specific.  Of these, 10 are rated "avoid", 5 are "good alternatives", and 2 are "best choice".  Of these, there were 6 that seemed the most likely category that this fish could be.  I had about a 50-50 chance of destroying the planet with my purchasing decision.   Here's to rolling the dice.

Fishformation Overload

Seafood Watch has a very lovely fish app that you can get for free. This makes it easy to look up the fish you are thinking of buying to see if it is:

• "green" fish (sustainably caught and responsibly harvested)
• "red" fish (avoid--if you buy this fish you are financing the death of the oceans)
• "yellow" fish ("good alternative")

This seems great, but it has some practical usability issues.  Take the tuna example for example.  There are 29 different listings for tuna, and it is a mixed bag of red, yellow, and greens.   Much of the distinction lies in how the fish was caught.  Nets are bad, hooks are good (sometimes).  But the package never says how the fish was caught, and the 22 year old behind the counter usually has no idea either.  So unless you are buying direct from the fisherman, who knows what the heck you are buying?  

One Spot of Fishy Light, Unexpectedly

There was only one time that the Seafood Watch fish-o-matic was actually usable.  I was at Costco, looking over the fish section at stacks of lovely coho salmon and stealhead fillets.  I decided to see how this stuff rated.  I knew these were wild-caught, Alaskan salmon.  This was great, because according to the Seafood Watch app, all the wild caught salmon is either green or yellow.  Only the farmed stuff comes up as red.  At $7.99/lbs, Costco is one of the most affordable places to buy big fillets of responsibly harvested salmon.  This is actually a way to make fatty fish and all it's Omega-3 goodness a normal part of a daily diet.  Big box stores can do somethings right, it seems.