CULINARY ADVENTURES

Michael's making dinner. I am apprehensive.

Saturday nights are our nights for kitchen adventures. We hunt down some new ingredient or challenging recipe and then we wreck the kitchen in our efforts to create a culinary master piece. Many of you have read here about the time we murdered live lobsters in our quest to recreate Boston lobster rolls. This is what we do for fun on a Saturday night. The idea for our most recent Saturday culinary adventure started brewing earlier in the week when Michael sent me an email he gets from one of our Asian food markets. Geoducks were on sale. I tentatively replied with “I don’t know.” He then sent me video of some guy preparing one and I quickly responded with a hard NO. He sent me a second video that I did not watch because the image on the screen was too much. I was at work and it was inappropriate.

What is a geoduck?

It’s pronounced ‘gooey duck’ and it is a clam that is too big for its shell. This native West coast clam by all accounts and descriptions is the sweetest, most delicious thing in the ocean. It also looks like a giant porn penis. The soft part of its body cannot retract back into the shell and just hangs out looking inappropriate. If the clam is boiled, the soft part hardens and you get the idea. Eat a dick is the phrase that comes to mind. So I was all ‘nope’ to Michael’s plans for geoduck. We had a long conversation about it and I finally agreed on one condition. I was to have no part in the preparation of Saturday’s meal. My contribution to this particular culinary adventure was to sit on the couch drinking gin. A total win for me and he was making French fries. I would at least have French fries.

Michael prepared the geoduck two ways. The first way he served it was raw, sliced thin and placed on sushi rice. This was okay. It has a weird but not off putting crunch to it and it was kind of chewy. It wasn’t horrible but it wasn’t my favorite. For the rest of the geoduck, he battered it in panko and fried them. The first time I had whole belly fried clams was when Talaura and I went to Maine. I ate one and thought “MY WHOLE LIFE IS SHAM!” because up until then, the only thing I knew of fried clams were the fried clam strips you get at Long John Silver’s. Those are fried rubber bands. A fried clam, a real fried clam, is similar to a fried oyster. It is rich and meaty and sweet. It is delicious. The geoduck, fried in a panko batter, was very very similar to those Maine fried clams. They were delicious and the French fries were stellar.

The geoduck is totally worth eating. The key is to have someone else make it for you. Just sit back, drink some gin and have no part in the preparation.

EAT

Dinner

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I finally got around to reading Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential a couple of months ago. The book has been on my reading list forever and I am almost positive Chris had a copy of it laying around his office at some point. I just never got around to it, but I was finally between books and not to sure what I wanted to read next. I cashed in some Amazon rewards and bought a copy of it for my Kindle app. This was the book I read on the airplane to Portland and I have to admit that at times, it was not an easy read.

I could not read the book without hearing Anthony Bourdain’s voice. It was as clear as if he was reading his words out loud. His voice is so familiar because Chris and I would sit down to watch No Reservations with rapt attention and with the kind of reverence used for listening to the gospel. Anthony Bourdain traveled the globe in a way that Chris and I dreamed of doing ourselves. The destination was not so much about seeing the sights as it was about immersing yourself into the local culture. This baptism came in the form of food in an all senses dunking. You felt the texture of the food as you pinched a bite together between your thumb and forefinger. Your eyes were blinded by the colors of spices filling bowls in a market. You could almost smell the pungent smells of the fish markets. Whenever Chris and I traveled, our adventures centered around food. The question was not “what did we do?” but “what did we eat?” We sought out the obscure. We followed the locals and we avoided the chain commercial places like the plague. Now, I’ve converted Michael to this food travel cult. I think this is why on this last trip to Portland, I found myself falling in love with the city all over again. Michael is notorious for having unsatisfying restaurant experiences. There is always something, from the service, to the atmosphere, to the quality of the food, but in Portland, Michael didn’t have one complaint. On our last breakfast in Portland before heading out to the coast, we ate at Pine State Biscuits. On taking his first bite, Michael pretended to pick up his plate and smash it on the floor in anger. The food was that good.

No Reservations was more than just a travel show though. It was a gritty, real and beautiful example of how we are all connected to each other through food. Food is the thing that binds us together. It is the reason we all gather in kitchens during social events. Every single one of us can recall a dish that when you smell it, you smell your childhood memories. Every family has their own taco salad (Michael says it is not taco salad and every member of the Graham family tell him that he is wrong). Food brings joy and comfort and this was an emphasis in Kitchen Confidential. Reading Anthony Bourdain’s words describing simple and fresh ingredients made me want to cook. I don’t mean that it made me want to quit my job and become a chef. I mean that it inspired me to want to cook something more elaborate than the easy meals we put together during the week. Saturday evenings have become our night for experimenting in the kitchen. I browse through issues of Bon Apetit and the New York Times food section for ideas, but a lot of times we let what ever happens to be cheap and interesting behind the fish counter inspire that evening’s meal. The meal itself doesn’t even have to be complicated. The goal is to use fresh and unique ingredients and to try something new. It can just as easily be a good stinky chunk of blue cheese crumbled in the salad paired with simple baked fish seasoned with salt, pepper and fresh lemons.

The joy of the experience is all inclusive. It begins with Michael and I browsing through the grocery store and hashing out ideas. We debate about pairing monkfish with roasted potatoes or clams with a linguini in a butter/ white wine sauce. We either take turns cooking or work together in the kitchen, dancing around each other as one chops and the other one sautes. We make huge messes in the kitchen and I love it. The meals are not all hits. It was decided that whole baked red snapper wasn’t good enough to deal with picking out all the bones (I’m pretty sure I swallowed a fish bone). Yet we are still more satisfied with our meals than if we’d gone out.

And no reservations are required.

EASY AS APPLE PIE

Someone had apples at the farmer's market today and I thought "hmmmm....apple pie". So I bought some apples and when we got into the car The Splendid Table was the radio and Melissa Clark was talking about her 20 ingredient pie recipe. I was inspired. OK, I wasn't too keen on the idea of putting 20 different ingredients into my apple pie. I am a purist at heart. But it did make me wonder why I never thought of adding anything like nuts or dried cranberries. My apple pie has always been every one's favorite (remember my gift for crust?). I've used the same recipe from my Mamaw's old Betty Crocker cookbook since I learned to bake. It's a simple recipe of apples, sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg. But today I added walnuts, dried cranberries and cardamom. It was the best idea. Perfect for a crisp day like today and all that was missing was the vanilla ice cream.

The idea of adding something to an old tried and true recipe got me thinking about other things, about how it's so easy to stay inside our little boxes. This seems to be my year for thinking outside the box. It's as simple as adding sauteed veggies to Mac-n-cheese or cranberries to the apple pie.

WHAT'S HAPPENING IN OUR KITCHEN

One of Chris's favorite meals is chicken pot pie. We used to make it with canned chicken, a can of veg-all, a can of cream of something soup and store bought pie crust. Well, we don't eat that way any more so the recipe had to be revised. Even after a bit of revision, I was still using bought pie crust and cream of mushroom soup. The bought pie crust is just silly. If there's one thing I know how to make, it's pie crust. Crust is my super power. Since moving in with Chris's mom, I haven't been all to keen on the idea of baking. I don't have enough counter space (even in the "new" kitchen, I say "new" because it's the exact same, just with new cabinets). My rolling pin is in storage so I have to end up using the giant pestle that goes to his mom's mortar set. These are lame excuses to say that I'm lazy. So on Sunday, I decided to make us a proper pot pie. I chopped up some veggies.

I made pie crust.

I mixed up an organic packet of mushroom sauce to coat all the veggies.

Put the top crust on and baked for about 45 min.

And it was delicious.

The end.