Day 87: Skate Wings

Skate. Yes, the fish that looks like a stingray, and you're eating the wing. Not an easy fish to find at stores in Toronto, and you have to be lucky to find it at a store because it depends on when the fishmonger gets a shipment in, but I was lucky to find it at St. Lawrence Market. The price is about $8 for a 1lb wing and each wing is enough for 2 adults because there is surprisingly a lot of meat there.

The texture is the most curious part - it's firm, sort of slippery and has a noodly sort of feel to it. The skin is fatty and the flavour of the meat is almost like scallops. In fact, sometimes they are marketed as "imitation scallop" You've got cartilage in between the top and bottom of the wing and the meat scrapes easily off of the cartilage with just a fork.

One of my favourite ways to enjoy skate is the Malaysian way, because skate is a common Malaysian hawker food (i.e. from a street vendor), and the flavour comes from banana leaves, chili powder/paste, and plenty of ginger and galangal.  But in the picture above, I basically pan fried it (dry with paper towel, then add salt/pepper, then fry in butter) and finished it in a hot oven. I added caper berries and browned butter on top - browned butter is basically butter which is cooked in a pan to the point that it's brown, giving it a nutty aroma. It may take a bit of practice to get the browned butter just right.

On Skate (from Monterey Bay and Encyclopaedia Britannica)
Skates are cartilaginous bottom-dwelling fish, of the superorder "ray". Previously discarded as "trash fish" and a nuisance fish, skate has become an increasingly important fishery.

According to the Monterey Bay Seafood Watch, Skate is recommended to be avoided from a conservation perspective because several skate species in the Northeast are overfished or in serious decline. Skates, like their close relatives, the sharks, are highly vulnerable to overfishing since they grow slowly and are long-lived.

Day 84: Mussels

A mussel dipped in a bit of butter. Sprinkled with a smoky hot sauce. Some crusty bread on the side. Awesome. What I love most, though, is sipping on wine while eating mussels, because you get that oceany flavour that comes right through.

It's June. So what? When is a good season for mussels? That's a hard question to answer. The received wisdom is that you should eat them in the months with the letter "R" in them (i.e. September - April), but I think that they are good all year round. I don't know how scientific the "R" month strategy is, but one reason is that the mussels spawn in the summer, so the meat is a little bit smaller. Sometimes you'll get  a batch and they are really thin, and that's because they just released all of their "goods". The other reason is safety, because if you're not dealing with a good fisherman, sure,  the water is a bit warmer and so bacteria can grow if they aren't stored and handled properly.

The mussels here were from St. Lawrence Market, and they cost $2.99/lb. Typically, I can eat 1 lb myself for an appetizer, or it's a side dish, half a pound per adult is okay.

The quickest way to cook them at home is just to fry up some onions, garlic, carrot, celery, until soft, then add the mussels and some liquid (e.g. broth, white wine, water, clamato) and cook until the mussels open which is anywhere from 3 to 6 minutes. Save those juices at the bottom of the pan, I call that the nectar, and just add parsley into it at the end and pour it all on top of the mussels.

Throw out the mussels that don't open, because they're dead and you have no idea how long they've been dead.  In the photo above, I made a tomato stew (canned tomatoes, clam juice, onions, garlic, oregano), and then added the mussels at the last minute and I ate it with baguette cut into triangular pieces - that way you get lots of soft surface area to soak up the liquids with. I've heard that you shouldn't serve them to kids under 5.

Sometimes you need to debeard them, but I've found that in Toronto, they generally take out the beards for you. Mussels with beards in seem to be able to be stored alive for longer.

On Mussels (facts come from Wikipedia)
Mussel is the common name used for members of several families of clams or bivalvia mollusca. Most of us are used to seeing the "blue mussel" here in North America. This is interesting - 80% of cultured mussels are produced in Prince Edward Island. When I was in Vancouver, though, I noticed that there was a lot of mussels from Washington states, in fact an estimated 2.9M pounds of mussels were harvested in 2010 valuing roughly $4.3M.

Mussels can be smoked, boiled, steamed, roasted, barbecued or fried in butter or vegetable oil. You can get smoked canned mussels at most grocery stores, in the same area as canned tuna, and you can put them right on crackers.

In Belgium, the Netherlands, and France, mussels are often consumed with french fries ("moules-frites") or bread.

As opposed to the Blue Mussel, New Zealand green lipped mussels can be found in restaurant here in Canada but almost always in their previously frozen form and on the half shell. Why would someone use a frozen mussel? My guess is that they are safer to handle than live mussels, especially if you're not selling a whole lot of them in your restaurant.  The meat is quite large, but chewier, because they were previously frozen.

Mussels are a high protein food source. Their low fat content makes them potentially healthier than other protein sources, such as beef, which can contain a lot of saturated fat. Mussels are also low in calories. Mussels are also an excellent source of vitamin B12 and selenium - Vitamin B12 is important in the functioning of metabolism processes and a deficiency can cause fatigue and depression, as well as other symptoms. Mussels are also good sources of other B vitamins (particularly folate), phosphorus, manganese and zinc. Mussels are a very good source of omega-3 fatty acids and are considered an excellent seafood choice.

Day 79: Soft Shell Crab

Doesn't that photo look appetizing? About as appetizing as biting into a fried spider.

Unfortunately, this one was a bit old and had probably been sitting around for too long. So I'll have to try again at a later time. But the meat was tasty - tastes like sweet crab and the shell and little legs are pretty much, soft, which should have contasted with the crunchy batter had my dish been fresh. But loads of mayonnaise pretty much hides everything... oh wait, sorry it doesn't.

On Soft Shell Crabs: Soft-shell crab is a culinary term for crabs which have recently molted their old exoskeleton and are still soft. In the United States, the main species is the "blue crab", which appears in markets from April to September. In Japan, various species are used to make sushi, including the Japanese blue crab or the shore swimming crab. In Italy, the soft-shell of the common Mediterranean crab is a delicacy typical.

Day 61: Soft-shelled clams

World famous Maritime clams. Do you love clams? I do. I love them manila clams, razor clams, savoury clams, cherry clams. All of them very different. All of them taste best when they're in season. All of them need to be prepared well well. And these soft-shelled clams are beautiful fried.

I usually like the smaller ones because they are softer in texture and sweeter in flavour. These ones, pictured, are from the Hilton Garden Inn hotel right outside the Halifax International Airport, and it's a regular stop over the last few years when we go back to Nova Scotia - and I go straight for the clams. I don't know what it is about it there, but they do clams SO well. Maybe they source the small ones? Maybe they have a secret recipe? But it comes out tasting so sweet, and the batter is perfect... not too bready, not too salty, not too hard. Rather it's all still super nice and moist when you eat them. Nothing worse than perfectly good seafood that gets overly salted, then frozen for years, then mummified in bread crumbs, then refrozen, then deep fried and sold to you at an overpriced family restaurant for $20 a plate (including a leaf of kale, just to make it authentic!)

On Soft-shelled clams

Soft-shell clams, scientific name Mya arenaria, popularly called "steamers", "softshells", "longnecks", "piss clams", "Ipswich clams", or "Essex clams" are a species of edible saltwater clam, a marine bivalve mollusk in the family Myidae.

These clams live buried in the mud on tidal mudflats. They are well-known as a food item on the coast of New England in the Western Atlantic Ocean, however the range extends much farther north to Canada and south to the Southern states. They are also found in the Eastern Atlantic Ocean, for example in the UK, as well as in the North Sea's Wadden Sea (where they are the dominant large clam).

Soft-shell clams are edible and can be enjoyed in a variety of dishes. Before cooking, it is generally recommended that clams be stored in saltwater for a few days to facilitate the expulsion of sand from their digestive tracts. Some recommend that cornmeal be added to the water to give the clams something to filter from it.

Soft-shell clams can be eaten steamed, fried, or in clam chowder. "Steamers" (steamed soft-shell clams) are an integral part of the New England clam bake, where they are served steamed whole in the shell, then pulled from the shell at the table and dipped, first in the clam broth in which they were cooked, to rinse away sand, and then in melted butter.

Day 55: Effingham Inlet Oyster

Huge, massive texture, almost like biting into a flan. The flavour of the sea came right through. One of my all-time favourites from my time in BC. Slightly flaky to open though.

On Effingham Oysters (from dianasseafood.com)

Effingham Inlet oysters are grown in a remote deepwater site on the west coast of Vancouver Island, inland from Barkley Sound. They are an intensively cultured product of uniform size with nice deep cups. The waters of Effingham Inlet are salty and nutrient rich, yielding oysters that are salty, plump and sweet, finishing with a mild watermelon aftertaste.

Day 54: Virginica Oyster

A really uber fresh oyster, a milky texture, absolutely full of meat. The flavour held up on its own enough to stand a habanero hot sauce on it. Loved it.

On Virginica Oysters (from dianasseafood.com):

Virginica oysters are raised in two different Washington locations, southern Puget Sound’s Totten Inlet and and northern Puget Sound’s Samish Bay. They are unique in that they are the first eastern oysters to be grown commercially in Washington state since the early 1900’s, when a large quantity were grown in Willapa Bay for the oyster hungry San Francisco market. Virginicas take three to five years to reach three and one half inches, which is the size at which the cup has fully developed. They have an attractive and clean pear shape, and the shells are quite smooth, lacking the sharp flutes common to pacific oysters. Their flavor begins fairly saltly, then goes very sweet for an eastern species, and ends with a mild mineral like finish.

Day 53: French Kiss Oyster

A very salty flavour, with not a whole lot of meat, which could be a seasonal thing. The texture reminded me a bit of a malpeque.

On French Kiss Oysters:

This unique oyster with a sexy name is a special package from Miramichi Bay, New Brunswick. French Kiss oysters have a deep cup and are recognizable by their paisley shaped shell, profound salinity and sweet finish.

Day 52: Takoyaki at Markham Night Market

These guys really didn't know what they were doing and did a real disservice to the food. The texture was too creamy (probably undercooked), the octopus was chewy, the shape of it wasn't even round, the size was too small, there was no crispy outside, and there was a severe lacking of acidity in the flavour.

On Takoyaki:

Takoyaki (literally fried or grilled octopus) is a popular ball-shaped Japanese dumpling or more like a savory pancake made of batter and cooked in a special takoyaki pan. It is typically filled with diced or whole baby octopus, tempura scraps (tenkasu), pickled ginger, and green onion.

In modern days, it became common to be brushed with takoyaki sauce and mayonnaise, and topped with green laver (aonori) and katsuobushi (shavings of dried bonito). There are many variations to the takoyaki recipe. For example, ponzu i.e. soy sauce with dashi and citrus vinegar, goma-dare i.e. sesame-and-vinegar sauce or vinegared dashi.

It was first popularized in Osaka where a street vendor named Tomekichi Endo is credited with its invention in 1935 under the influence of Akashiyaki.

Day 52: Fanny Bay Oysters

Love these oysters and I got them from a food market where they were charging $10 for 8 pieces... shucked, with lemon and cocktail sauce, and including tax, so you're looking at around $8 before tax! And also consider that you have to ship these in by air freight from BC. So all in all, they weren't making a ton of profit per oyster, although they certainly CERTAINLY made it up in volume. I did a quick estimate on their sales based on the number of empty cases of oyster laying around, and I can tell you for a fact that made out pretty well today, and they probably did even better after I left, which was when the crowds really started pouring in. The truck was associated with Diana's Seafood, which is apparently an amazing location to buy your seafood.

Sometimes they say only buy oysters in months containing an "r" (e.g. FebRuaRy is good, and july is bad). I think this rule has more to do with safety, as the summer months don't have the letter "R". These oysters today was proof that that this letter "r" trick has nothing to do with flavour. They were completely filled with meat, the flavour was buttery and like a delicious tasting cucumber, with a soft and milky texture. It was cold on the tongue, it was fresh. A little tabasco on the side would have been nice.

Sometimes oysters will spawn and the meat will be about half the size as the one show above. But that was not at all the case with these puppies, eaten in July.

If I had to criticize these oysters (from this vendor), it is that there were little bits of shell in them which is the result of not washing the oyster after shucking them, especially if the shucker was having trouble opening them and had to pop them from the side rather than form the hinge of the oyster. Not washing them has the benefit of preserving the "nectar" which is where a ton of the flavour comes from, and also has the benefit of speed in processing, which is obvious. But you end up with little nuggets of shell every bite or so. These shell fragments also comes from the fact that some of the oysters were stacked (i.e. the shell of one oyster was touching the meat of another on my plate). This not only cause bits of shell, but it can be dangerous, because the bacteria (e.g. "vibrio") sits on the shell and this can cause sickness in some people. But look, I'm not sick, and these oysters so far as I could tell, were being professionally handled by the crew, so whatever - that's why you have lemon to kill off the bacteria, right?

On Fanny Bay Oysters:

Fanny Bay oysters are cultured near Comox just off of Vancouver Island, British Columbia. They develop their nice cup and thick shells, reaching market size in 18 to 24 months. Water from the Pacific Ocean flows directly through the Strait of Juan de Fuca then up the Strait of Georgia over the site, producing oysters that tend to be quite salty. Their flavor is sweet with an aftertaste similar to that of cucumber.

Day 42: Tuna Poke

Where do you get the best poke in town when in Hawaii? The high end restaurant? The luau? After speaking to a few locals, my co-travelers discovered that the best place to get poke was at the grocery store. Yes, that's where the locals go. And if the locals go there, that's where the most product get moved. And that leads to freshness. Look how they sell it here, in trays, the same way we buy gelato! So many flavours, and the price is $8.99/lb. You can't even buy tuna for $8.99/lb. On the side they have raw marlin too, which I didn't get a chance to try. But avocado poke had a nice balance of textures, spicy poke was delicate enough not to ruin the tuna. The tuna, mind you, was very roughly cut and a little fibrous, but for $8.99/lb, and then served on hot rice. And sitting on the beach. Man, you can't beat that.

On Poke

Modern poke typically consists of cubed ʻahi (yellowfin tuna) sashimi marinated with sea salt, a small amount of soy sauce, inamona (roasted crushed candlenut), sesame oil, limu seaweed, and chopped chili pepper. Other variations' ingredients may include cured heʻe (octopus), other types of raw tuna, raw salmon and other kinds of sashimi, sliced or diced Maui onion, furikake, hot sauce (such as sambal olek), chopped ʻohiʻa (tomato), tobiko (flying fish roe), ogo or other types of seaweed, and garlic. The selection of condiments has been heavily influenced by Japanese and other Asian cuisines.

Native Hawaiians have always eaten poke. The traditional Hawaiian poke consists of fish that has been gutted, skinned, and deboned. It is sliced across the backbone as fillet, then served with traditional condiments such as sea salt, seaweed, and limu.

According the food historian Rachel Laudan, the present form of poke became popular around the 1970s. It used skinned, deboned, and filleted raw fish served with wasabi (Japanese green horseradish) and soy sauce. This form of poke is still common in the Hawaiian islands.