Local Food: An experiment goes miserably wrong...

When I called Catalina Offshore Products on Friday morning to place an order, I asked for some halibut and then inquired after their local shellfish. The woman on the other end suggested abalone – about one pound (5-6 pieces) for a two-person meal. It was wickedly expensive ($30 a pound), but I thought it would nice to have a little diversity in our diet every once and while. After all, abalone is a delicacy, right?

I picked up my order several hours later and excitedly opened up the bag of abalone to check out my newest experiment. My only experience with abalone up to this point has been in prepared and expertly presented sushi. As I grabbed one of the shells, I was surprised to feel the resistance, but dismissing it, I turned it over in my hand.

It took me a few seconds to realize,

but there was no doubt.

It was MOVING.

Surely, I thought, my eyes are playing tricks on me. Certainly, these cannot still be alive!

Oh, but they were. And for anyone who has seen a snail (which is really what abalone is), these little guys do not move about in a very attractive fashion, but slip and slide and make a complete mess of things. I hastily dropped it back in the bag, where it attached itself to another.

I must have stood there in the middle of the kitchen, not moving, for some time before I decided to call my husband in a panic. His response was something along the lines of: “Are you out of your MIND?!" and "Didn’t you think to ask if it was alive??” Well, no, I hadn’t actually.

Now, I must warn you, if you are squeamish, you may wish to drop to the last paragraph. What followed was not pretty.

My husband set to work after calling Catalina for some tips, insisting that at $30 a pound, we were not going to let this all go to waste. He placed two abalone on the cutting board, and I watched as the two straightened up and started working their way across the cutting board, twisting their shells this direction and that, seemingly unaware of their coming doom. Bravely, Brian picked one up, grimaced, and forced a knife under the shell to cut it free. He then proceeded to trim off the excess bits – the head, the tentacles, the skin.


Regardless of what everyone says about snails having a very low intelligence, the second abalone – seeing what happened to the first – immediately pulled back into its shell. And the way the others clung to each other in the bag made the whole thing something akin to killing a litter of kittens (not that I have ever done so, but it couldn’t be much worse).

I admit, I stood by and averted my eyes as Brian ended up with abalone goo all over his hands, but I could tell by the look on his face that he was completely disgusted, and the sharp glares I was receiving made it very clear that if I ever placed him in a similar situation again, our marriage would certainly be in peril. He proceeded, more quickly each time, pausing only to send me it’s-a-good-thing-I-love-you looks.

Once the butchering was complete, he dropped the trimmed pieces into the frying pan and cooked them quickly on either side. They are only to be cooked a second or two, but having just seen these guys crawling about on our counter, we left them on longer than we should have.

We sat down at the table. The next few minutes were completely silent, with the exception of our labored chewing. They were rubbery. And tasteless. And, well, gross. Wanting them really dead had been our downfall.

I went back to clean up the carnage in the kitchen a few minutes later. One little abalone head was still moving about, its little antennae/feelers twitching. I repressed a gag and promptly tossed it all into the garbage disposal where it was chopped into mush and sent off into the sewage system.

As you have probably anticipated, we have resolved to leave abalone to the professionals from this point forward. I've also vowed to ask the status of “freshness” before I try any other experiments of this fashion!

Sea bass with a little bit of fabulous!

Dinner was nothing less than wonderful this evening! This recipe is sure to become a favorite. We started from something I found online, but changed it so much that we're claiming it as our own!

Summer Sea Bass

Ingredients
2 Sea bass fillets (about 1 pound)
Salt
Pepper
1/8 c. Pesto
1 Carrot, grated
1/2 Zucchini, grated
1 T. Olive oil (garlic infused)
1/8 c. Sauvignon blanc wine

Heat oven to 450 degrees F. Cut two 12-inch square pieces of aluminum foil. Place a fish fillet on each square and sprinkle with a bit of salt and pepper. Spread pesto over the top of each fillet, and then top with carrots and zucchini. Gather the foil around the fish and drizzle oil and wine over top . Fold the edges of the foil to make a sealed package, and place straight onto the oven rack.

Bake the fish until just done (between 12 and 22 minutes depending on thickness). Open up the packages and transfer to plates, pouring the juices over top.

The best part of this recipe? I only used an 1/8 cup of wine, which leaves almost an entire bottle for my drinking pleasure! Lush.

Real Simple

I swear that when I opened my kitchen cupboard this afternoon, I heard a sad sigh eminate from the stack of cookbooks gathering dust in there. Without knowing what vegetables I will be able to find each week (and the somewhat odd combinations that have resulted), I have not been able to use many of my regular recipes, especially those that require more than a couple of ingredients. Instead, I have been forced to be creative and, at the same time, keep it very simple (my imagination only serves me so well).

We finished the other half of the halibut this evening using the recipe below. I changed it a bit from one of the same title that I found on the Better Homes and Gardens website:



Mustard-Glazed Halibut Steaks
Prep: 10 min.
Grill: 8 min.

Ingredients
2 6-ounce fresh halibut steaks, cut 1 inch thick (you can also use frozen if you defrost before cooking)
2 T. butter
2 T. lemon juice
1 T. whole-grain Dijon-style mustard (regular Dijon also works)
2 t. dried Herbs de Provence

Directions
1. In microwave (or small saucepan) heat butter, lemon juice, mustard, and Herbs de Provence until butter is melted. Brush both sides of steaks with mustard mixture.

3. If you're using a grill, grill fish steaks on the greased rack of an uncovered grill directly over medium coals for 8 to 12 minutes or just until fish begins to flake easily when tested with a fork, turning once and brushing occasionally with mustard mixture. (We just dropped it on the Foreman grill for about 8 minutes at 300 degrees)

I then sautéed some summer squash in about a tablespoon of garlic-infused olive oil and seasoned with a bit of salt and pepper. They were wonderfully sweet!



Come by for dinner soon!

Local Food: Essence of Fish

I picked up over 2 ½ lbs of fluke and about 2 lbs of white sea bass yesterday from Catalina Offshore Products. I had called last night and was told that 2 lbs of this local catch was just the right amount for a meal for two. Hmmm, perhaps if we were dolphins. It appears that fish is on the menu for the rest of the week.

The Catalina warehouse is located in a commercial district near the bay and surrounded by other fish suppliers. On entering the office, I was taken right back to Aix-en-Provence, the little town in France where I met my husband (who was living in an apartment directly over the daily fish market). As I loaded the cardboard box of plastic-wrapped fish into the car a few minutes later, I admit to smiling smugly to myself. There's nothing like the satisfaction earned from a purchase well researched!

We prepared about half the halibut last night, and my husband – official meat cooker of the household – pulled out his trusty George Foreman cookbook and grill to cook it up. Here’s the oh-so-easy recipe that we used (I had all the required ingredients!):

Quick & Easy Halibut Fillets

1 t. extra virgin olive oil
2 T. lemon juice
1 clove garlic, finely minced
1 T. fresh parsley, finely minced
1 t. black pepper, coarsely ground
4 6 oz. Halibut fillets

In a small bowl, combine first five ingredients. Warm up the grill (to 300 degrees if you’re using your Foreman) and drizzle the sauce over the fillets. Cook until opaque (4-8 minutes on the Foreman).

Afterwards, our neighbor came up and made mojitos with mint picked from our garden outside. The mint appeared last summer of its own accord and has since been growing with great panache. I’m hesitant to plant any herbs purposely though, for fear of our rather over-zealous gardeners that like to cut back with a weed-wacker. Stay tuned because I have another plan!

Ricky Martin & other insane ideas

If, like me, you start humming that obnoxious Ricky Martin tune “Livin’ la Vida Loca” when you see the title of this blog, I offer my sincerest apologies. I was never a big fan, and now after two weeks of it running through my mind, I have begun to truly detest it. I stand by my choice though, regardless of the annoyance, not only because I think it wonderfully catchy (ha!), but because replacing the word “loca” (which means “crazy” in Spanish) with the word “local” is a witty little word play for this whole experience that has been—for lack of a better explanation—completely nuts. I am in a constant state of panic as to where our next meal will come from. To ease some of the pressure of finding all my local sources at once (and make sure we don’t eat out three meals a day!), I have allowed myself to buy non-local – yet organic and natural – foods for the things I have not yet found a supplier. In the meantime, I’m frantically making phone calls, sending emails, and searching the internet with the goal of being fairly well provided for by October 1st (three months from the start date of it all).

So far, I have secured regular produce delivery (Be Wise Ranch), found a back-up produce supplier (O.B. People’s Organic Food Market), and located local seafood (Catalina Offshore Products). So, uh, that just leaves me with everything else. Daunting, yes, but not yet worthy of despair. I am pursuing many different leads for dairy products, eggs, and meat and will post as I learn more.

Eat Local: Everywhere water, yet no fish to be found!

“They’re from the U.S.A.,” the Vons seafood manager said to me, her eyebrows raised in an expression akin to alarm. I had simply asked if anything they stocked was local catch. “I mean,” I said as she looked blankly at me, “was it caught here in San Diego?” (and added a small smile of encouragement.) “They’re from the U.S.A.,” she repeated again, though dismissively this time and turned her back to me to restock the shrimp display. “Um, thanks.” Right. I had assumed, but now knew for certain, that my neighborhood Vons was not going to be my source. The entire U.S.A. can hardly be considered local. Sigh.

I had decided to start my search for local seafood at the most conventional, convenient spots and see where it took me. Since seafood caught in the wild cannot be considered organic (only those grown on farms can be certified), I set some broad rules for my seafood purchases: they must be locally caught and they must be caught in a sustainable way. In most cases, that would mean pole-caught or hand-line fished, both methods which eliminate the use of nets. Many dolphins and fish species are caught unnecessarily in nets, contributing to overfishing.

My search continued on to The Fish Market – less a fish market than a sit-down restaurant that serves seafood. Nevertheless, I knew they had a selection of unprepared fish, and since they were close to my home, I tried them next. The 17-year old behind the counter with a bad hair cut (but stylishly layered polos, nevertheless) also gave me a blank stare when I asked him about local catch (this was becoming a pattern), so I asked if he had any ideas. “Try our larger branch downtown.” And then he threw in a comment about how I was going to have a hard time. He didn’t care to explain when I asked for more details.

I dialed the downtown branch with some hesitation. I had begun to lose my sureness, so when the man on the other end told me that they stock halibut and white sea bass (both caught locally), I was relieved. He couldn’t tell me anything about how they’d been caught, however.

Whole Foods was my next try. They have a seafood sustainability statement that seemed pretty solid, but would they stock local catch? Back to the phone I went.

Jared of the seafood department, gave me the same line, “You’re going to have a tough time.” But he followed it up with two suggestions: Point Loma Seafoods and American Tuna. My hopes were revived! He also explained that the reason local seafood is scarce is because, firstly, the halibut industry down here is in steep competition with the halibut industry in Alaska (and not exactly winning), and secondly, the sea bass availability can be sketchy because of the difficulty of catching bass of legal size. He said, in no uncertain terms, if I wanted to eat seafood caught locally, I was going to be eating a LOT of canned tuna. Both Whole Foods and Jimbo’s Naturally stock American Tuna, which is pole caught. I bought one can to try it, but at over $5 for 6 ounces, it clearly is not going to be an economical solution.

I called Point Loma Seafoods after Whole Foods. They had some yellow-tail and some white sea bass available. They also had some Mexican shrimp (caught off Baja) and often stock halibut. Diversity – check. Sustainable fishing practices – unknown.

Catalina Offshore Products, a distributor I found online, was my last try, and there I finally found success. They specialize in local catch which is line-caught (once again saving those dolphins). The company is based here in San Diego. I intend to place an order this week to pick up at their warehouse (a privilege given to locals). I’ll let you know how it goes!