Peter the eater
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Posts posted by Peter the eater
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Hey! I was wondering if any of you wonderful eGulleters have any input or opinion about these great legs. I've been selling King Crab(Red and Golden), Snow Crab, and Dungeness Crab for years, and I wonder if there are any good recipes or preparation methods you guys would like to share. I'm a little wary of trying them, as frequently as I have to steam (microwave) them for my customers. Thank you in advance
I bought a cluster of King Crab legs recently and was quite excited to experiment with clever preparations and adulterations. I started taking a few pictures . . . cracking a few open . . . before too long all that sweet, sweet marine flesh was gone!
To answer your question SeafoodSuzy, I'm partial to the smash and suck.
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Last night I went to what I think was a rather nice Japanese restaurant here in Halifax and asked about the bonito nigiri.
I'm not sure I fully understood the answer I got, but the gist of it was "not raw".
I thought bonito was the skipjack tuna, smaller relative of the bluefin of toro fame and major ingredient of dashi (my new favourite Japanese ingredient, bumping tonkatsu and teriyaki off the podium). The woman suggested raw bonito was not appropriate for human consumption and was somehow heat-treated.
Does this make sense, expert colleagues?
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Ideas for fancy cowboy fare for the appetizers?
Remember that the key is I'm making food that has to be served at room temp to people standing up at a cocktail party environment, but its outside.
Meat on sticks, maybe spicy peanut beef on small skewers. And shot glasses with gazpacho, that could work.
This story keeps getting better Doctor Robert!
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While I haven't set a timeline for blogging, I will be going as long as their is interest. I think the unique angle on this is that I'm essentially eGullet taught. And I can tell you that my recipes are eGullet driven. And no, I'm not sending eGullet a check unless I make my millions
I'm sure you've noticed the 700 hits per day you're getting - there is plenty of interest.
I'll bet there's a sizable Society subset (which includes me) that's largely eG taught, with eG driven recipes and would happily pay some back if this knowledge could be made into lucre. Godspeed to Rob!
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A few years ago I went to the Cumberland Pencil Museum in England’s Lake District and watched fifteen minutes of an interpretive film that detailed the 350 year history of the pencil. I’m a visual kinda guy, a prolific sketcher and overall pencil-lover but I have to say it was a mind-numbing quarter hour that I will never get back. Chad’s book is the opposite.
In the wrong hands, a comprehensive kitchen knife book could actually push someone over the edge. This book has passion and a mandate to set things right and I’m grateful.
My question: what’s the future of good kitchen knives? Will it be ceramics in every home? Will the ubersteel get more uberer?
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Shaya, that meal looks and sounds magical.
Where did you get your quail eggs? I've been searching and not finding, although I now go to the Dartmouth market for duck eggs.
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Hodge podge is a hot vegetable dish that I had never heard of until I moved to Nova Scotia. Its the kind of thing you can get at church suppers or in the kitchens of fifth or sixth generation blue nosers. There are many opinions as to what goes in and when it should be made but the fundamentals are always the same: ultra fresh veggies served with cream . . .
I went searching at the farm market in Wolfville, NS on Saturday morning and came home with new potatoes, snow peas, sweet peas and carrots. Onion and chives are softened in butter and the cooked veggies are dumped in with some cream to make it all come together. Purists might insist on salt pork instead of butter to get things going but since I had none butter was more than fine. Other traditional ingredients may include cauliflower, turnips or broccoli.
I'm not clear on the etymology for hodge podge, the non-culinary word I know means a mixture or a random collection of things. There's a French verb that I can't remember but it means to cook with a shaking motion, like you're doing popcorn on the stove.
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Lobsterpolooza in Nova Scotia occurs each year in the early summer.
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Englishtown is the place along the scenic Cabot Trail where you catch the cable ferry across St. Anne's Harbour, and it's the home town of Angus MacAskill. During the mid 1800's he was known for his remarkable size: 7'-10" and 580 lbs. He traveled with P.T. Barnum's circus and you'll find his picture in Ripley's Believe It Or Not as well as The Guinness Book of World Records. Apparently he would jog down the street with a 300 lb barrel of pork - under each arm.
Some clarification:
After the big mussel festival we walked down the street to the Giant MacAskill Museum. It's a small shrine run by the big man's descendants and what I was reminded of there is that you can't rely on Wikipedia for accuracy. The MacAskill family says he probably was 7'-10" but never reached 500lbs, and he may not have traveled with PT Barnum. He did however make a fortune using his unique size in the entertainment world and returned to Englishtown to buy land for his family, and many are there today. And so is this unsettling wood likeness:
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Although John Cabot visited Cape Breton in 1497 . . . .
I finally made it to the spot:
The spot looked like this last week, it's not hard to visualize the ship appearing from the fog:
Not all scholars agree on the exact landfall spot, but this place has a cool plaque and a statue so that's good enough for me. If you drive another 10 km north to the tip of the province you'll find the Bay St. Lawrence Community Centre and some real good eats. Here's the menu:
We had the fish chowder and the lobster sandwich. The deep fryer was busted so we got potato chips, but $14 for the lobster was worth it:
From the $1 menu with curious spelling, we had two potato bannock, two tea biscuits and a molasses cookie:
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Congratulations, nonetheless! It looks like you had a fun time conceptualizing - and eating!
I love a good saltwater petting zoo. Did they have any octopuses?
No octopi(?) but it seemed like half the tank was trying to eat the other half.
BTW, cream cheese with a bit of green pseudo-wasabi powder is in fact an amazing spread.
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The 4th Annual Englishtown Mussel Festival Seafood Cook-Off has come and gone and I'm a little saddened to report I was shut out of the winner's circle.
I will admit that the winning entry did taste better than mine plus the creator is a scuba-diving marine biologist who harvested the scallops, oysters, lobsters and mussels himself - so I guess he earned it.I called my entry The Englishtown Roll: steamed mussels and cured salmon in a maki-style rice roll with chives and a pearl of wasabi cream cheese. Here's what I did:
Atlantic salmon tail fillets cured overnight in salt and sugar, rinsed and patted dry:
Five pounds of cultivated mussels steamed on a portable butane stove:
This is the meat from 5lbs, I only chucked four or five shells for not opening:
The steaming juice - just water and mussel - is fantastic despite the color:
The roll laid out:
Sliced up on the half shell and loaded onto a Wilton cake caddy:
The big moment . . . me on the right, the winning chowder guy in the center, a guy with smoked mackerel on the left, and the judge below:
It was a lot of fun to participate in such a casual event. Some students from Dalhousie University had a salt water petting zoo full of edible critters: lobsters, three kinds of crabs, urchins, star fish, anenome, abalone, scallops, mussels, sea cucumber, plus other mollusks and echinoderms. I'd never held a sea cucumber before - I can't exactly say it felt appetizing.
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. . . . Garo, a paste made from salted kolios (a type of mackerel) once made on Marmara Island where my Grandfather was from.
That sounds very promising - can you say anything more about garo? What does it look like and how is it used?
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I'm considering putting fruit trees in this year. I'd like to know what to look for when I head to the local nursery. Questions to ask, etc.
Good thread!
I planted twelve apple trees yesterday, all Newtown Pippins. I didn't choose them but the one who did said there are lots in the area, and some are really old.
"What's tried and true around here?" is a good question.
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Are you a charcoal zealot? Gas only? Swing both ways?
I really enjoy the speed and convenience of my Weber gas grill but when there's more time and people are sitting around outside watching me cook I go for the charcoal. I believe there is a flavor difference but I can't articulate what it is from memory alone. Time for another side by side comparison!
My thing is to use hardwood shavings and other bits on the gas grill - fast and smoky.
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Ok my American chums, you're all ready to start celebrating our family breakdown when you left the nest, upset your mother and trashed your bedroom. We forgive you.
So instead of paying all that back income tax you owe HM Treasury, could someone give me an idea of where I can get hold of some of your Wild leeks/Ramps/Allium tricoccum bulbs that could be posted to UK? (anyone got a site that will post international?)
think of it as reparations
As someone who celebrates July 1 not July 4, I feel like I never really moved out and I can still have my old room back if I want.
Are you looking for bulbs to plant for next year?
The only online place for leeks that I know of is Earthy Delights.
Ramps are hard to come by here - you pretty much need to forage, or place an order with someone who does.
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It's actually Rooster Brand Superior Sweet Rice from Thailand. In French it's Riz Glutineux, so I figured I'd be alright sticky-wise, and I was. I've got other types that work better.
Sorry, what I meant was, is it su meshi - rice dressed with vinegar and sugar?
Yes, it's not easy getting all the rice out unless it's sloshing around in soy sauce.I wouldn't find that very easy to eat as finger food. A nigiri sushi-style log would be easier to eat, and you could still present it in the shell. In which case, I would split the mussel in two, lengthwise, and put a hint of wasabi under - like scallops are presented at sushi shops. Although the wasabi pearl looks and sounds nice, I'm not sure I'd want a big hit of wasabi in the mouth like that - especially since it's probably the tube stuff, which is really strong. How about an extremely fine julienne of homemade pickled ginger, in a small rosette in the corner of the shell, (a la Richard in Top Chef, with his rosette of pickled radish on pork belly).
Anyway, I'll try and do a sketch and see if I can't upload it later. In the meantime, have fun eating your experiments. Ca Hoa grocery, on the corner of Queen and Victoria in Halifax, often has exotic produce - more reliably than Peet's. When I was home at Christmas, I asked for a green papaya, and the owner pulled one out of the back refrigerator for me.
I seasoned the rice with sweet mirin, it really does make a difference.
My wasabi is the green powder. I realize it's not authentic wasabi, but I like that I can control the paste's thickness - maybe I'll add powder to mayo then pipe a tiny pearl onto the shell.
I've pickled ginger for this purpose before but I've never been fully pleased with the results - I can't bring myself to use food colouring.
I went to Ca Hoa for the first time - what a place! I felt like I was back in Toronto.
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Lets see.. My life list.
1. Beef
2. Chicken
3. Pork
4. Duck
5. Lamb
6. Goat
7. Wild Boar
8. Musk ox
9. Moose
10. Venison
11. Ostrich
12. Emu
13. Porcupine
14. Quail
15. Pheasant
16. Alligator
17. Bison
18. Goose
19. Ants
20. Mealworm
21. cricket
22. rabbit
I would love to try Horse some day. I don't incluse seafood yet. That would make the list way too long.
That's an impressive list. Bugs aside, it' musk ox and porcupine I've not tried. I've been around porcupines almost my whole life - I found a dead one on my lawn last week, poor guy must've been clipped by a car and crawled of to die. I think there's a porcupine recipe in the Joy of Cooking, how did you experience yours? Were you up north in musk ox country?
I had horse meat in Cuba when I was a kid, I didn't leave any impression on me unfortunately.
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I knew I could count on you nakji!As a Nova Scotian currently residing in Japan, I feel especially qualified to critique
It's actually Rooster Brand Superior Sweet Rice from Thailand. In French it's Riz Glutineux, so I figured I'd be alright sticky-wise, and I was. I've got other types that work better.Is that sushi rice in the shell?
Yes, it's not easy getting all the rice out unless it's sloshing around in soy sauce.Huh. I don't know how I feel about that - how easy is it to eat? Do you have to scrape it out with your teeth?
That's the plan.Is it finger food?
Yes, it's untoasted sesame seeds and I agree darker seeds would be better.On the lower roll, are those sesame seeds on the outside? I'm not sure, but I can't tell if you've toasted them or not. I think toasted sesame seeds have a more assertive flavour, and make for a nicer contrast as well.
Maki and Mayo? Another Japan/France fusion element . . . wasabi mayo maybe? I still like the idea of a wasabi pearl inside the shell.The maki rolls look more accessible to me. I would definitely eat one of those if it were put in front of me right now. Why not serve it with a dijon/mayonnaise dipping sauce? Nothing goes with maki like mayonnaise! And dijon mustard has a similar bite to wasabi.
I've tried and failed. Plain dry dulse is very difficult to cut never mind tear with the teeth. I'd need to make a paper first, something like nori.Is there some way you could do hand rolls with dulse?
That sounds promising. The one I made with white seeds on the outside was actually a ball cut in half - one for each shell.Another recipe that comes to mind is a maze gohan - a cooked rice with seasoned mussels mixed in and formed as little rice patties, garnished with black sesame seeds or maybe katsuo bushi. The cookbook I'm working my way through right now, "Harumi's Japanese Cooking" lists a maze gohan recipe with asari clams - basically, you take cooked clams, and saute them with slivered ginger, sake, sugar, soy sauce and mirin, and then mix it into steamed rice. It can then be made into rice balls (onigiri).
I don't know about the shiso, I'll look.I see this looking really cool - the orange of the mussels, contrasting with the white of the rice, then a garnish of black sesame seeds, and maybe serving them on a bit of dulse or something green like a shiso leaf...can you get shiso in Halifax, I can't remember? Wow, I wish I was there to see it and taste it!Thanks so much for the input. I'll definitely post here whatever I do at the event.
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A week from Saturday, on June 28th, I'll be in Englishtown, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia for the annual Mussel Festival.
Englishtown is the place along the scenic Cabot Trail where you catch the cable ferry across St. Anne's Harbour, and it's the home town of Angus MacAskill. During the mid 1800's he was known for his remarkable size: 7'-10" and 580 lbs. He traveled with P.T. Barnum's circus and you'll find his picture in Ripley's Believe It Or Not as well as The Guinness Book of World Records. Apparently he would jog down the street with a 300 lb barrel of pork - under each arm.
One of the festival activities is a seafood cooking competition complete with professional judges and prizes. I missed it last year but did well the year before - a first place finish and a new set of pots. That day I felt as big as the Giant MacAskill himself.
Unfortunately, I don't have any photos of that 2006 entry but I'll look for a concept sketch. I cut cedar shingles into 3" squares and layered on steamed mussels and cured salmon, then "planked" them on the gas grill for a smoky look and taste. There was a sour cream dollop on top with chives and lemon.
This year I'm thinking Japanese, as some members over in that forum will guess since they've graciously answered many questions about mirin, dashi and sashimi. Here's what I'm thinking:
It's steamed mussels maki style, rolled up with carrot and chive. It's placed on a half shell with a wasabi pearl.
The shell makes a nice little vessel for mixing soy and wasabi, which until recently I had no idea was so controversial.
I also tried it this way:
and this way:
Esteemed Society member Hiroyuki tells me sushi chefs in Japan never use mussels simply because they are not native to the region, and that they are basically regarded as a classic French cuisine item. Unlike oysters and even clams, mussels are never eaten raw - as far as I know. I'm pretty sure uncooked mussels would not go over very well.
As the contest is just over a week away, I'm hoping to get some constructive criticism here. . .
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Blue mussels are a clam-like bivalve mollusk that grow profusely in the waters around Nova Scotia. There are actually two discrete species (Mytilus edulis and M. trossulus) that occur together and apart in the wild but from a culinary point of view they're pretty much indistinguishable. It's more important to know if they are farmed or wild, mostly from a preparation point of view.
The wild mussels are more irregular in appearance and often grittier plus you have to collect them yourself or know somebody that does. The aquacultured product is what you'll get at the grocery store - they're much more uniform in size and they generally lack the unpalatable byssus thread that's used for attachment to a substrate.
In the 1970's somebody figured out how to grow your own mussels using the long line technique: place a 500+ foot rope on the ocean's surface, anchor it to the floor with concrete at both ends, place floats every so often to keep it up, and hang mesh collectors for the immature mussel spat to settle on. When the spat are 1/2 inch they're stripped off the collectors into mesh "tube socks" and then taken to the aquafarm where they'll grow to a 2" market size in a year or three (depending on conditions) on another long line.
A traditional way to enjoy mussels would be to go the beach and find some, then boil them over a camp fire. Some beaches and bays have posted warnings not to eat the shellfish - another reason to buy farmed.
A safer way would be to steam your farmed mussels for 5 to 10 minutes or until they've opened up and turned a bit pink/orange. Celery, onions, garlic, beer and wine all help in the steaming:
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If I've understood everything I've taken in from the sous vide thread, the difference between what Chris just explained and Alex's example of a tire having different pressure is the rigid walls of the tire. Since sous vide is done in a flexible bag, the outside pressure equalizes with that of the inside. Since a tire is fairly rigid, it is able to maintain a different pressure than atmospheric pressure, as the inside is more immune to the outside pressure.
That's right, but don't forget about the sv cooking done in a rigid container (like a bell jar) instead of a flaccid plastic bag, where your soufflé gets much larger than normal. Not the stuff of typical home cookery but I'd think it's worth mentioning in a comprehensive book.
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Have you ever tried using your Digby Chicken in something like Salted Fish and Chicken Fried Rice? It looks an awful lot like Chinese salted fish, and I bet it just might be a good substitute. It's used sparingly, though I like to fry up some salted fish, crumble it, and eat it atop freshly cooked rice (kind of like one would eat furikake).
Fish and chicken together in a single dish is unusual for me - but that one looks very good. That frozen salt mackerel looks similar to ours.
Wherever people live near the ocean I think you'll find salted fish. Here it's cod, herring and mackerel at the grocery store - even though everybody's got a fridge at home, it's still so popular.
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Digby Chicken is not chicken at all and doesn't necessarily come from the town of Digby in southwest Nova Scotia. It's herring that has been cured using smoke and salt. The small fillets are dark and oily and extremely flavorful:
They're so powerful - it's a challenge to eat them as is, I'd much rather chop some up for a fish stew or chowder. I will also smash them up with the mortar and pestle along with some salt mackerel to get a potent fish paste that can be used like a Mediterranean anchovy paste:
Roasting a Chicken
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How big is your bird?
If it's nearing turkey-like proportions I'd definitely consider the butterfly/spatchcock/frog approach. Much easier to get perfect light and dark meat, plus the surgery is fun.