Oregon is one of those states where lots of people forage for interesting food. Some forage the forests for wild mushrooms in the fall. Others forage for truffles buried beneath the forest floor, with their truffle-sniffing dogs in tow. Still others forage the many tidal pools at the coast…for what? you might ask. Read on and you’ll discover some tasty edibles.
Being an avid outdoorsman has one drawback: Sometimes I have too much bounty from the activities I enjoy — fishing, clamming and crabbing. To keep the family from getting bored, I draw on another favorite activity — creative cooking.
Fishing, clamming and crabbing at the seashore in Oregon can be a tricky thing. First, you have to [...]
For those of you who don’t get excited by raw seafood, smoked is a refreshing way to serve a variety of seafood that makes an easy and beautiful dinner presentation.
When Charles and I went to Paris many years ago, I remember the displays outside the restaurants, with fish, oysters, clams and shrimp arranged in beautiful [...]
Going shopping for dinner without a set plan can be a dangerous thing — at least for some people. For me, it reminds me of shopping the open-air markets in Bangkok as a child. My mom and I would roam the market to see what was fresh and then decide on the spot what to buy [...]
One of the nice things about living in the Pacific Northwest is the availability of live shellfish at the grocery stores.
Almost any time of the year we can find live oysters, clams, and mussels. The mussels come from mussel farms in Washington State’s Puget Sound, live oysters come from the many Oregon bays as well [...]
Spain … on the road Again came to us in the Fall of 2009 from PBS with weekly installments of an epicurean tour of Spain featuring an unusual cast of Mario Batali, Gwyneth Paltrow, Mark Bittman and Claudia Bassols. With Willie Nelson singing On the Road Again, the carefree quartet was filmed cruising [...]
Sometimes adapting a recipe can be a tricky thing when you start substituting ingredients. And when you adapt a complicated recipe like Julia Child’s Lobster Thermidor, it gets even more daunting, especially when you’re replacing the main ingredient, lobster, with Dungeness crab. It can be one of those kitchen experiences where you feel like you’re [...]
When contemplating what’s for dinner, fish comes to mind often in our household because we’re trying to eat healthy.
One of my favorite childhood memories from living in Singapore is of eating out at seafood restaurants and being served whole fish that had been steamed with pickled plums (the Japanese call them umeboshi) and covered with [...]
Joy
Pronunciation: joi
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Anglo-French joie, from Latin gaudia, plural of gaudium, from gaudēre to rejoice; probably akin to Greek gēthein to rejoice
Date: 13th century
1 a : the emotion evoked by well-being, success, or good fortune or by the prospect of possessing what one desires : delight b : the expression or exhibition [...]
Maybe I’m experiencing a sort of mid-life crisis, but whenever I’m in the kitchen cooking something I love, I experience a warping of the space-time continuum. For instance, recently when I made Dover sole in a coconut curry custard wrapped in banana leaves and steamed, I was transported back to my childhood in Thailand when [...]
Fishing is one of those activities that I’ve come to relish for several reasons. It gets me out in the mountains, streams, rivers and lakes, to the ocean, on the beach to surf fish, or on the many jetties that dot the coast to catch rockfish. It reminds me that nature is constant and, at [...]
Vic and I were served this dish as an appetizer at The Brewer’s Art in Baltimore some years ago. It impressed us so much that we asked for the recipe. No dice! Realizing that steaming these ingredients wouldn’t be too difficult to re-create, we then begged for advice on which ale to use. A Belgian [...]
Simple to Spectacular is the title of one of my well-used cookbooks by Jean-Georges Vongerichten and Mark Bittman. The header on the cover reads, “How to Take One Basic Recipe to Four Levels of Sophistication.” My copy opens naturally to the recipe for Roast Chicken with Truffles which, of course, is the “spectacular” version of [...]
In the wintertime most of the U.S. is gripped by snow, freezing weather, or some combination of the two. In Oregon, we have the winter monsoons. It rains almost daily from November until April.
Most of the time it’s a civilized, spritzing kind of rain, where you don’t need head gear. Sometimes it’s a heavier spritz. [...]
If you read this blog regularly, you know of our love for all things from seas, lakes and rivers. My first encounter with stuffed shrimp came at the Clear Creek Inn in Kemah, Texas. Kemah is on Galveston Bay near Johnson Space Center. Many restaurants in that part of the country are seldom fancy; they’re [...]
Besides Thailand, I’ve lived in Singapore, Houston, Fort Worth, Austin, Baltimore, and now Salem, to name a few, and in each place there has been an abundance of Thai restaurants.
How do I tell the good ones from the not-so-good ones?
There is one dish I order at every new Thai restaurant I encounter so I can [...]
In the great crab race, there are those who believe that Alaska’s King Crabs get the checkered flag and beat all other decapod crustaceans for flavor. When Charles and I lived in Baltimore, Md., and Fort Worth, Tex., we were in the stands cheering on the sleek Blue Crab while the rambunctious Floridians were raising [...]
When you get adventurous with food, sometimes you just want to drag your friends along whether or not they know what they’re getting into. Lately I’ve been having this craving for something from my childhood in Thailand—Periwinkle snails—and I was thrilled to finally find that I could get some at Om Seafood in Portland and [...]
Being a Buddhist, I don’t believe in killing animals for the sake of sport. But that has its drawbacks when you’re angling on the wave-soaked rocks of Garibaldi’s north jetty.
I’m thinking back to the first time that I took Charles jetty fishing with me. I was happy to rig his line and bait his hook [...]
My love for seafood began early. My parents loved seafood and a favorite Sunday outing was lunch at Jay’s Marine Grill on Oak Lawn Avenue in Dallas, Texas. I don’t remember what I ordered or was ordered for me, but I do remember enjoying my first fried oyster and scallop from my mother’s [...]
I thank my lucky stars that my childhood was spent roaming the globe with my family. I think living in different countries and visiting different countries gives you a broader global perspective, and broadens your mind as well as your palate.
As a curious child, I’ve never been afraid of trying different foods during my childhood [...]
Some people crave sweets. Others crave beef. Recently I had an irresistible lust for gravlax. I don’t know what was driving it. I joke with my friends that my lust for wine is because in a past life I tended a beautiful vineyard in Bordeaux. Maybe my lust for gravlax this time was because in [...]
As a child growing up in Bangkok, I remember going to the markets with my mother and seeing tanks teeming with live fish, eels, crabs, snails, clams, and tubs filled with live mudfish, frogs and other sea creatures, and being able to select your dinner live, and take it home so that it’s as fresh [...]
