Experiment #4- The Island and the Carnage

We cruise the Asian market. Sea cucumber, clams from around the Sound, oysters, mussels, whole rock fish with the wild look of death in their eyes, the large suckers on the amorphous body of an octopus (local), squid clean and white.

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.

Experiment #3- The Invertebrate Salad

Tossed amongst the waves, carried by the currents of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, pushed west and east, north and south, a clear bottle with a small note made its way into the Puget Sound. It washed up on the shore of Alki Beach where the pioneers of Seattle first landed. The cork had done its job; the note within was pristine and dry.

The USS Nordo has set sail. A heartfelt meal of the sea is being prepared. Keep the lookouts on patrol. She will drop anchor in Seattle in early May. Nordo willing.

The laboratory is cooking. Tonight’s experiments promise a breakthrough in the science of oceanic evolution. We descend below the surface, pop open a bottle of dry, white Spanish wine (my personal favorite) and begin our work. On tonight’s menu:

The Invertebrate Salad

The Big Bang (once again)

We tackle the salad- our second course in the evolution of the seas, an homage to the greenery and the spineless of the seas. First, blanch seaweed in salty, as salty as the sea, water. What was once brown becomes a deep, pine forest green. Cucumbers are thinly sliced and pickled in rice wine vinegar (8 oz.), 1/2 cup salt, 1/4 sugar, and thinly sliced ginger. Placed in the fridge for a few hours, it waits while we get our second experiment underway.

We go for another attempt at the Big Bang. If God had this many failed attempts at his Big Bang Amuse Bouche then what grotesque mistakes must be floating about in the matrix of alternative universes. (Shudder) We abandon the previous theories (see experiments #1 and #2) and go for a gelatin. A stock is made from mussels. 1lb scrubbed and bearded. 3 garlic gloves peeled and smashed. 1 large peeled shallot. 4 sprigs of thyme. 3 small bay leaves. 1 1/2 cups of dry white wine. Once boiled (covered) remove the mussels as they open. Strain, add an equal amount of blanching liquid from the seaweed (see above) and 4 grams of squid ink, and bring to a boil. This may be the concoction of the cosmos.

Place in a shot glass half full and cool in an ice bath to set the gelatin. Place remainder of liquid into fridge for now.

Once shot glass gelatin is half set add roe and top with remaining squid ink mixture from the fridge to cover the roe. Cool in fridge. Let sit for some time. We will wait 20-30 minutes before checking. 6:30pm. if this works a thickened substance of the sea will hold the roe in suspension as a surprise.

Back to the Invertebrate Salad. Plant life clings to the ocean floor. Transparen breathe in and out, propelling themselves through the ocean, and the sea cucumber pulls itself along the ocean floor sucking at the detritus. Sound appetizing? I think so.

The salad dressing will be as such- 1/2 cup of rice wine vinegar. 1/4 cup of soy. 1/2 teaspoon of peeled and minced ginger. Cat hair (optional). 1/2 cup of sesame oil. The mixture is placed on 1lb. of seaweed and marinated. On second thought, perhaps the marinade is a bad idea as the seaweed may lose all texture. Too late. It's doused.

Yvette lays out a school of pickled-cucumber-jellyfish upon the plate. A small mound of seaweed is spread atop the jellyfish cucumbers and finally, a sea urchin gonad is laid on top of the mound. The soft orange of the urchin contrasts well with the varying greens of the plate. We sit to taste.

The salad is amazing. The green hues are vibrant in both look and taste, full of bite and tang, while the silky and delicate tongue of the sea urchin provides richness to the whole ordeal. Perhaps the tang of the seaweed (the vinegar) is too strong for the urchin and the two should be separated, but the melting meat with the cucumbers is a match made in heaven. The sesame is a good touch but the vinegar needs to be pulled back. That may be the only adjustment. The first Invertebrate Salad is a wonderful experience- sharp, strong, rich, sexual, full of vitamins. We toast our first success of the wonders of the ocean. The sea urchin is the foi gras of the sea, a smooth tongue of deliciousness.

We end our evening's experiments with The Shot. The Big Bang. The Primordial Ooze. After nearly 3 hours we sit down to sample. The shot glass is briefly warmed in a bowl of nearly boiling water so that the gelatin does not grip the glass. Turned upside down, the two layers separate and one glob of black gelatin falls, then a few roe, then the second layer follows, and it splatters out upon the plate. The squid ink has coagulated and floats about in the gelatin like a Rorschach test, all stringy and randomly coagulated. The roe barely glow. And we taste. The sea. The salt. The sea. The salt. And not so good. We’ve made progress and almost attained the consistency of what we all know to be primordial ooze, but the flavor cannot be just fish. No. We need the flavor of life itself exploding in the mouth, the flavor of innovation and triumph, the flavor of champagne perhaps. We need a surprise so that the trepidation at throwing back a shot of black, gelatinous ooze rewards with a glorious, clean, exhilarating blast of life. We will discover the right flavor and come the time of the show, we will present a great neon menagerie of amino acids and DNA, and we will giggle, and we will prance across the palette. Wait and see. Fingers crossed.