We jump to the third course and have no desires to work on the Big Bang. Tonight’s deal: Mollusk Island. The Siege of Land by the Sea Creatures. Clams will scale the ocean floor. Squid will wrap their tentacles about the foliage of the land.
Gibberish crowds our heads. Seafood, Sailors, and Sea Monsters in the Salish Seas. Sea Monsters Ravage the Salish Seas. Seafood and Sailors: The Evolution of Sea Monsters. When will the answer appear, perhaps in a message wrapped in the Styrofoam packing of an Asian delicacy.
Back at the laboratory we dequill the squid and debeard the mussels. Debearding kills the little guy. They fight back a bit and everyone once in a while the tongue extrudes from the shell with the tug at the beard. Brutal. Polenta sits aside waiting to be the sand of the island.
Butter in the pot. Shallots (whole medium) and onions (whole small) swim in the butter. 3 small leaks are added. A fennel bulb follows. We’re going for it. This will be the broth of the sea, a light green that will become the Sargasso seas. 2/3 a cup of white wine gives it a kick. The root vegetables will be the vegetables of the sea, the seaweed landscape hugging the contours of the island. 3 cups of fish stock. One package of squid ink. Ohh. Maybe not so good. A bit grey for an ocean.
Once boiling the squid, the mussels, and the clams are thrown in. Covered. And just like that it’s done. The bivalves are cooked. Seafood is the test for cooking just the right amount of time. Good seafood is all about perfect timing needing just a bit of love on the stove and nothing more.
Now for the staging (plating). The island is placed in a large bowl. The bivalves are beautiful with root vegetables clinging to them. The bivalves and squid bodies are piled around the island, the veritable creatures of the sea crowding the land under the seaweed bed of onions, shallots, and fennel.
We’re not overwhelmed. Again, our attempts at telling the perfect story give only minimal successes in the culinary realm. First, too much squid ink, we don’t need a black/ grey sea, and it was so beautiful before adding the ink. Maybe we’re trying to be too cute. Two, squid bodies are a bit tough. This will take study. The clams and mussels do well, and the polenta is a good island, but somehow the whole thing is unappetizing and just not interesting enough in flavor. And here we run into a tough question. How do we improve upon the fruit of the sea?
We are happy in concept and lacking in execution, but that is the name of the game here in the laboratory, and so we move on to another experiment that proves to be a challenge.
We go for opening a sea urchin. But, there’s a slight problem that brings the whole world of life into focus. It’s alive and still moving. The spines slowly rotate and twitch. It’s trying to live, and yet, we are hoping to cut it in half. We know it can’t scream, but… This is very difficult. We look longingly at each other.
Yvette starts sharpening the knife and we send good will to the urchin. May he go to sea urchin heaven so that we can eat its gonads. This is all very carnal.
A lot of crunching is involved. It crunches. The spines still move. We bisect it and pour out the juices. There’s a lot of strange organs in here. We see the delicious tongues of meat. Oh my god. It smells a bit like a sewer line. This is very surreal. The first thing we pull out looks like the mouth, the extruded stomach inverted into the body. This is all a bit harrowing. Yvette has a concerned look on her face. A killing has occurred.
But oh, it’s delicious. The five loaves of meat are buttery and smooth. A treat. This is the crux of understanding life.
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