Freezer Burn, or: A Few Good Apps

If you want to get serious about foraged foods, a big ol' freezer is pretty much indispensable. Mine is packed with crabs, clams, nettles, mushrooms, berries, smoked salmon, shad, assorted heads, various stocks, and so on. Such a freezer full of foraged foods comes in handy for a party. Never mind that Marty tried her best to sabotage the whole affair by leaving the freezer door open for 18 hours a few days before. Most of the packages were still frozen, if sweating on the outside, and the clearly defrosted stuff got whipped into shape for the party, including stinging nettle pesto, Columbia river shad, and porcini mushrooms.

Look, Mom, no bones!

The shad in particular was a thing of genius. Several of the vacuum-sealed packages were flimsy, the once frozen shad now thawed and bendy. There was no way those things were going back into the deep freeze. As anyone who's ever processed these largest members of the herring family knows, shad are bony critters fit for deboning by the same jailbirds who punch out New Hampshire's "Live Free or Die" license plates.

Normally I have most of my Columbia River shad catch smoked and canned at Tony's, but I always keep a few fillets on hand to smoke myself or bake in the Low-Country style. This time I wanted a croquette I could serve at the party with a spicy New Orleans remoulade. I baked the shad for 30 minutes, spent 15 minutes picking as many bones as I could, and then buzzed the pile o' fish in the Cuisinart. To this pulverized mass of shad I added sauteed onions and red pepper, Worstcester sauce, lemon juice, an egg, some flour, cayenne pepper, and a bunch of fresh herbs from the garden, including tarragon, basil, chives, and parsley. I added more of the herbs than you might think; the more the better, in fact. Shad is a rich, strong-tasting fish, and the fresh herbs help to brighten the flavor and temper it at the same time. Hank Shaw has posted a similar recipe here, minus the sauteed veggies and lemon.

Once made, you can refrigerate the shad for a few days until party time. It has a consistency similar to well-mixed tuna fish salad. Or you can plow ahead and make the croquettes ahead of time and then freeze. I took the latter path, forming little hockey pucks of about the same diameter as a fifty-cent piece. These I dredged generously in panko and placed on a cookie sheet lined with wax paper. Into the freezer they went for a couple hours until solid enough to be removed to zip-lock bags. An hour before the party I arranged them once again on a cookie sheet to defrost and fried in oil minutes before the guests arrived. The fried shad croquettes were then topped with the red remoulade (although an aioli would be good too).

Porcini Crostini

I took this one from John Sundstrom, the chef/owner of Lark restaurant in Seattle. The prep is really quite simple: chopped porcini mushrooms roasted in olive oil with fresh thyme and rosemary. It's a little depressing to see all that beautiful fresh porcini lose half its volume by the time it comes out of the oven, but that's the nature of this fungal beast. Thinly sliced baguette is lightly toasted, rubbed with garlic, covered with a blanket of good ricotta, and topped with the porcini (and a generous sprinkling of salt).

Slow-roasted Tomatoes with Nettle Pesto Garnish

The last canape escaped the intrusions of paparazzi. Tomatoes were cored, chopped, and placed in a glass dish with olive oil to slowly roast overnight in a 225-degree oven. These got spooned on squares of baked polenta and dabbed with stinging nettle pesto.

Next time Marty better conspire to leave the freezer door open a little longer, 'cause we gotta clean out that sucker once and for all this winter.

Chanties Chanties Everywhere

The chanterelle. Despite its romantic twirl off the tongue, you'd think it was practically domesticated—an off-the-shelf French floozy Halloween costume. Is there an A-list wild mushroom that gets less respect, after all, than the chanty? Like an over-exposed model, it has the faint whiff of "been there done that." Well, I for one wouldn't kick a golden chanterelle out of bed for eating Cheez-Its!

Their fruity nose of apricots is unique in the fungal kingdom, and that fruitiness carries over into taste. Though earthy like other wild mushrooms, the chanterelle's flavor is reminiscent of orchards and vineyards and other more civilized habitats. In my neck of the woods they're without a doubt the most common of the wild mushrooms, gracing even the shelves of the local Safeway.

But don't be fooled. Though common, chanterelles are not always an easy find, and their singular flavor and aroma can transform many a dish from pedestrian to sublime, in particular any dish with bacon in it. Something about the union of fruity chanterelle with the essence of pig is a marriage made in culinary heaven.

How do you find chanterelles, you ask? I can't speak for other parts of the country, but in the Pacific Northwest young stands of Douglas fir are your best bet. This means a trip to logging country, where you'll pass miles of unsightly clearcuts before finding that perfect stand of 10 to 40-year-old tree farm Doug-firs where chanties thrive. This is not my favorite sort of mushroom hunting. The forest is dense, damp, and dark—and usually a boring monoculture. But if you can manage to find a patch of woods that hasn't been visited by a commercial forager you'll find the green moss carpeted with golden fungal goblets. These are the classic Pacific golden chanterelles, Cantharellus formosus. There are other varieties.

A strikingly hued species associated with spruce—Sitka on the coast and Engelmann in the inland West—goes by the name Cantharellus cibarius var. roseocanus. I find these chanterelles, known to commercial pickers as "peach chants" or "fluorescent chants," in the high huckleberry meadows of the Cascades, where they hug the ground in a most unchanterelle-like demureness, their dullish yellow caps with a surprisingly flat topography peeking out of the duff. But slice one off at the ankles and turn it over and you'll see the most blazing hue of neon orange underneath the cap.

And let's not forget the humble white chanterelle (Cantharellus subalbidus), which is often less expensive at the market than its golden cousin yet is my favorite for its meatiness and strong flavor. White chanties hide beneath the duff, often requiring an eagle eye and careful excavation. The result is a chanterelle that is dirtier than its golden counterparts but worth the effort to root out and clean up.

Fig & Chanterelle Crostini

For this post I tried to stay away from heavy cream, an effort of Dr. Strangelove proportions. The photo at top is my favorite new canape, a simple dollop of chopped chanterelles sauteed with shallots and fresh sage in butter topped with a thin slice of fig and a sprinkle of parsley. Admittedly, I wasn't too keen on the fig when a few of us first concocted this simple crostini; I thought the addition of fresh fig would take the fruitiness factor too far, but in fact it merely drives home the fact that chanterelles are a woodsy treat.

The photo at bottom shows a chanterelle succotash of sorts: Balsamic Glazed Pork Loin over Chanterelles, Corn & Apple. I'd say this is still a work in progress. I sauteed the chanties in bacon fat (with the diced bacon left in) along with chopped shallots, then added corn scraped off the cob, a diced Granny Smith apple, and a handful of baby arugula. The sweet and tart flavors still need some balancing, so I won't bother with the full recipe.

The other dinner shot is a recipe taken from Suzanne Goin's Sunday Suppers at Lucques, Scallops with Chanterelles, Sherry, and Parsley Breadcrumbs. This was a meal that encouraged third helpings and I can't recommend Goin's book enough.

Chanties offer endless possibilities for brightening a meal with fall color and the tastes and smells of the harvest season. To borrow from Bull Durham, when you speak of the chanterelle, speak well.

The Herding of the Pinks

Every other year at the end of August a bunch of friends get together to fish, laugh, and fish some more. We know each other through that most post-post modern of mediums, the Internet chat group, in this case a fly-fishing forum. Too bad Marshall McLuhan isn't around to witness and comment on the forging of such connections. If I could pull an Alvy Singer I would.

Our rallying site adds to the post modern twist: the industrial port of Seattle where the Duwamish River empties into Elliott Bay. Yet this isn't meant to be an ironic sort of fish slumming. As my friend Nope puts it, this is the most democratic of fisheries. Recent immigrants line the riprap, factory workers come out to throw a line during lunch break, and well-heeled anglers in yachts patrol the shipping channels. It's not a scenic place to wet a fly in the traditional sense—it's no Montana as portrayed in A River Runs Through It—but it has its own beauty. This is the grittiest of urban foraging, complete with container ships, trash compactors, big-bellied planes taking off and landing at nearby Boeing Field, cranes swiveling overhead, barges blowing their bullhorns, and a silhouette of stilettoed skyscrapers in the distance. Oh, and the place is a Superfund site.

With pontoons, kickboats, even sketchy rubber rafts, we take to the water armed with flyrods and round up our quarry, the pink salmon. Also known as humpies for the pronounced hunchbacks developed by males in the spawning phase, pink salmon have a two-year life cycle and return to local rivers every other year. Not nearly as esteemed as their bretheren the kings, silvers, and sockeyes, their flesh is less deep red and oil-saturated, so commerically they're mostly used by the canneries. But pinks are good biters, especially on a fly, and their meat smokes up very nicely.

Besides, the pink is a scrappy fish that seems to have taken to the scraps left behind in our devastated world. They're our fish, and we love them. Most pinks around Puget Sound average three to five pounds; those heading up the Duwamish to spawning grounds on the Green River run a little larger. We caught several in the six to seven pound range, including especially large dime-bright females.

Fishing the beaches during a large run is productive, but once the fish converge at the tidal mouths of their natal streams the action can get silly. This is the time to lean on the oars. Like fly-fishing for trout, you put the fly in the ring of the rise and WHAM! Fish on. At the peak you can have fish after fish slamming your fly—a notion that runs counter to most of what you hear about fly-fishing for salmon—and each one puts a solid bend in a 6-, 7-, or even 8-weight rod, towing a kickboat in circles before it succumbs to the net. We herders find a likely corner away from the barges and tugs to circle our wagons. Pinks run this gauntlet at their own peril, especially if my friend Bubba is tossing a line. Bubba has dialed in the Seattle pink fishery in the last decade like no one else and watching him fish is a lesson in humility. (A crack photographer as well, he contributed a few of the shots that accompany this post and video.)



BTW, if someone tells you the pink isn't worth keeping for the table, you smile and nod while you stack that limit in your cooler. I catch enough pinks every other year to take care of all my smoked salmon needs, and the brightest ones hit the barbecue the same day.

Smoked Salmon

It's easy to get worked up about all the possibilities for smoked salmon. You can use 101 different spices, juices, aromatics, etc. But if you catch fish in quantity, as we do during the pink run, you also gain a new understanding of what hunter-gatherer cultures were up against. For the two weeks I actively fished—about half the run—I lost more than a lot of sleep. Fish, work, fish some more, clean and fillet, put the kids to bed, brine the fish, go to bed, wake up and rinse off the brined fish, then fish the morning tide, work, fish until dark, clean and fillet, put the kids to bed, stay up late smoking the first batch and brining the next, haul stinky garbage to curb, try to clean kitchen before wife goes ballistic, sleep a few hours, get up and fish...and so on.

Notice how during that entire two-day cycle I only managed to smoke one batch. With limits of 4 to 6 fish daily (depending on area), we were drowning in salmon. Not that I'm objecting. So the point? Stick to basics. A simple brine of brown sugar, salt, and garlic is really all you need, with a dry brine being easier and less messy than a wet brine.

4 cups dark brown sugar
1 cup pickling salt
1 head garlic, cloves peeled & chopped
black pepper to taste

Mix the dry brining ingredients. Generously cover each piece of salmon (I cut pink salmon fillets into thirds), then place skin-up in a non-reactive dish. Refrigerate for 6-8 hours. The brine will have become a soupy mess after water has been leached out of the fish. Gently rinse off each piece and allow to air-dry on paper towels for a couple hours until a pellicle forms—the tacky (not wet) outer layer of flesh that is so loaded with flavor.

For the actual smoking I use a Weber "Bullet," but it's possible to employ a regular gas grill in a pinch. A water pan is essential for keeping the fish from drying out. For wood chips I like to use fruit trees: apple, or cherry if I can get it. Alder is good too. If not green, the chips need to be immersed in a bucket of water for 30 minutes, then tossed on the coals in handfuls. Everyone has their own theories about temperature and smoking duration. Hot smoking will always be quicker than cold smoking. Because pink salmon fillets aren't thick, I usually figure on smoking for about an hour, even with a small amount of coals, maybe an hour and a half at most.

The last step is vacuum-sealing. I've kept properly packaged smoked salmon in the deep freeze for two years without any appreciable loss of flavor or tenderness.

Blackberry Must & Citrus Cured Salmon

Another option is cured salmon. While making blackberry wine with my friend Becky [future post], her chef pal Ashlyn turned me on to a use for the leftover must, the mashed up fruit that settles on the bottom of the barrel during the initial fermentation phase. Once you rack the wine for the first time, the must is discarded. But Ashlyn suggested I use it to cure fresh salmon. So I did.

2 lb salmon fillet(s)
3/4 cup pickling salt
1 cup brown sugar
1 each zest of a lemon, lime & orange
1 teaspoon peppercorns
1 sprig thyme
1 bay leaf
1 cup blackberry must*

* If you happen to have some blackberry must laying around, by all means use it. If not, the rest of the ingredients make an excellent cure on their own.

Mix all ingredients minus the must in a food processor. Next add the must a little at a time, enough to color the cure but not so much as to make it soggy. Spread a thick layer of cure on bottom of non-reactive dish, up to 1/4 inch. Lay salmon, skin side up, on top of cure, then pack remaining cure on top of the salmon. Cover salmon with plastic wrap and weight down with a few pounds (e.g., cans from the cupboard). Flip salmon in 12 hours. Salmon is finished after 24 hours. Rinse and dry.

The cured salmon will be darker, with an attractive, slightly purple hue from the must, plus there will be a smattering of blackberry seeds that give it extra texture. Slice thinly off the top and eat within a week. I had mine on pumpernickel with a dollop of creme fraiche and chives.

And remember to kiss that first pink salmon of the season. They're the only species of salmon left in the Lower 48 that gives us a hint of what salmon fishing was once like in the not-so-distant past.

Vitamin C-Bomb

Right about this time of year is when the gate-crashing usually starts. My 4-year-old and 8-year-old bring the uninvited guests home from school. First sniffles, then coughs, and finally all-night hacking. The cycle repeats itself through the winter on a seemingly endless loop of crusty noses, balled-up tissue paper, and general grumpiness.

Whoever discovers a cure for the common cold will be richer than Midas, if not richer than the guy who can make hangovers go away, but in the meantime we've got vitamin C. It just so happens that rosehips—the red, globular fruit of the rose—have vitamin C in spades. I picked some the other day with food reporter Leslie Kelly, who writes for the Amazon food blog Aldente among other publications. This was urban foraging at its best, with good views of float planes landing on Lake Union and the Space Needle looming overhead. Leslie even filmed a bit of the action.

They say hips are at their best after first frost but I don't have time to wait until Halloween before visitors scarier than trick-or-treaters start knocking at the door. With about a quart's worth I made syrup. It's pretty simple. First grind the hips in a food processor, then cover with water and simmer for 30 or so minutes before running the mush through a food mill and then straining out the pulp. You can save the pulp for other purposes. The strained juice goes back in the pot with sugar—or better yet, honey—to taste, and any other odds and ends such as cloves, cinnamon, or ginger—and voila: a Vitamin C-Bomb that can be mixed into juice or water for the kids—or used for more gustatory purposes in desserts, sauces, jams, or even cocktails.

So next time you're out and about and you spy some of those bright red vitamin C-bombs, do the hip shake, babe.

Putting Up Porcini

If you want to pick mountain porcini, you best keep your ear to the wall. No one casually gives up their patches of porcini. It's hard enough to predict where and when the buggers will fruit as it is.

Here in the Cascades we get two, possibly three distinct fruitings of porcini: the spring variety, which is now officially known as Boletus rex-veris; and the summer/fall varieties, which might be distinct from each other but get lumped in together as a single species with the famous porcini of Italy, Boletus edulis. All varieties are deserving of their nickname "king bolete." With their firm flesh and nutty flavor, they might be my favorite wild mushrooms of all.

A couple weeks ago while picking huckleberries I got a tip from some hikers that a lot of mushrooms were fruiting to the south. The next day I hopped in the car and made an educated guess about where to go. Mountain porcini like high elevations, and they're picky about tree composition. True firs and spruce are the ticket. After a three-mile hike I started to see them—first some blown-out flags in the sunny areas and then fetching number one buttons emerging out of the duff in more shaded spots.

When picking porcini, always make sure to field dress them right away. I trim the end to check for worm holes, then cut the mushroom in half. Often a pristine looking bolete will show signs of bugs once you slice it open, but the infestations will just as often be local to a small area of the cap or stem that can be trimmed away. Whatever you do, don't simply put a porcino in your basket to trim later at home. I've learned the hard way that a basketful of beautiful buttons can be a worm-ridden mess by the time you get home if you don't deal with the bugs immediately.

By the end of the day I had nearly 10 pounds of mostly perfect porcini buttons (having thrown away twice that amount as too far gone). What a dilemma! I had more porcini than I could use. Some I cooked, some I gave away, and the rest got pickled.

Pia's Pickled Porcini

My friend Cora, who stars in the morel hunting chapter of Fat of the Land the book, passed this recipe along to me from his father's cousin, who lives in Cortemiglia, Italy. She gathers 20 to 50 pounds of porcini annually, so putting up some is a must.

2 cups white vinegar
2 oz water
2 tsp salt
extra light olive oil
1/2 tsp peppercorns per jar

Clean and quarter porcini buttons. Bring vinegar, water, and salt to boil. Cook porcini in batches, no more than 3 minutes per batch. Drain on paper towels and set aside to dry for at least 8 hours. Pack sterilized jars with porcini and peppercorns, then fill with extra light olive oil (use safflower oil if keeping more than 6 months).

Mind Your Elders: Elderberry Syrup

Okay, we're back to our regular programming.

On the way out of my favorite thimbleberry patch a few weeks ago, armed with a gallon of the hard-won berries—which took the better part of a day to pick and will become Recessionary Christmas presents in the form of jam —I spied a few nice specimens of the Sambucus genus, the Elderberry tree. My feet ached and I needed water, but I just had to have some. Picking the berries of this tree was an exercise in contrasts, with a gallon bag taking about five minutes to fill.

Elderberries are a common sight along the river canyons on the dry side of the Cascades and in many other places across the globe. I'm not sure exactly what species of elderberry these were, but they exhibited the glaucous bloom on the berry—that powdery white dusting visible in the photo at right—that is common in the blue elderberry (Sambucus caerulea), which is apparently the most common species in eastern Washington and Oregon.

While easy to pick, the real work begins at home with the processing. Because the leaves, stems, bark, and roots of elderberries are toxic, you must be sure to remove any non-berry debris before cooking. The stems in particular require attention. As you pull off the berries, try to remove as many of the tag-along stems as possible.

Elderberry Syrup

Family recipes for elderberry syrup abound. I found one that included fresh ginger and another that relied on a healthy dose of vodka. Two of the main considerations are sweetness and viscosity. For thicker syrup, use less water and cook down. Add sugar to taste.

For my syrup I hewed to the simple and direct. I added enough water to the pot of berries so that they were swimming but not entirely covered (in retrospect, I could have used a little less water). After bringing the berry-water mixture to a boil I let it simmer for 30 minutes, periodically working it with a potato masher. This got dumped into a food mill and cranked, removing the skins, and then strained once more to oust the seeds. The resulting 4 cups of juice went back into the pot with 2 1/2 cups of sugar, half a packet of pectin, and the juice of 1 small lemon. I brought it to a boil, killed the heat, and stirred until the foam was gone, then ladled into jars to be processed in a hot water bath for 10 minutes.

Your mileage may vary. My advice is to to tinker until you're happy. Pectin isn't necessary; I used it because I was in a hurry. The resulting syrup was aces over yogurt. Ice cream will be next, then maybe a cocktail of some sort...

The Book Has Landed!

Dear Readers: I'm pleased to announce that my book, Fat of the Land: Adventures of a 21st Century Forager, is now available at a bookseller near you, including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Powell's, and many independent bookstores across the land.

So, what can I tell you about it? The book is 15 chapters, plus an introduction, arranged according to season, with each chapter focusing on a specific group of wild foods and ending with a recipe. Regular readers of this blog might recognize a situation or two, but 99 percent of the content has not appeared here. The book examines the settings, natural history, and culinary lore in greater detail, not to mention the characters doing the foraging. And it's funnier, I've been told.

Here's what the jacket blurbs say:

“Smart, funny, and hugely knowledgeable, Langdon Cook is a walking field guide and a gifted storyteller. Fat of the Land is a welcome kick in the pants to get outside and start foraging for our suppers.” —Molly Wizenberg, author of A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes From My Kitchen Table

“Langdon Cook understands that the goal of hunting and foraging is not just to eat, but to eat well. Any city-eater can grab something at a supermarket, but to feel the thrill of grappling with lingcod or plucking dubious mushrooms gives the reader maximum pleasure—and zero pain. Provided you follow Cook’s recipes to satiate your whetted appetite. As a forager with a well-trained palate, Cook knows best.” —Betty Fussell, author of My Kitchen Wars and Raising Steaks: The Life & Times of American Beef

“Langdon Cook celebrates the bounty of the land and sea through the pleasure of foraging. It’s an inspiration and a reminder that eating your local foods connects you to the land you live on.” —Maria Hines, Chef/Owner, Tilth Restaurant

“In Fat of the Land, Langdon Cook invites us to share in his enthusiastic, salubrious, wild food foraging quests. Get out of town, breathe in the fresh air, hear the quiet, exercise, feel good, connect with nature and the season—then return to the kitchen to delicious preparations of dandelion greens, squid, fiddleheads, or whatever the quarry. Lively, informative, soul-satisfying narrative.” —Jon Rowley, Contributing Editor, Gourmet

The next few months will be a whirlwind as I hit the road in promotion of the book. Check back here periodically to see what events and readings are on tap and whether I'll be in a town near you. For Seattle and Portland area readers, here's a quick roundup of kick-off events for early September:

• Sept. 8: Puget Sound Mycological Society, monthly membership meeting, Seattle
  
• Sept. 10-11: Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association, Fall Tradeshow, Portland
  
• Sept. 14: Cooks & Books series, Lark Restaurant, Seattle
  
• Sept. 15: Tilikum Cafe, sponsored by Chefs Collaborative, Seattle
  

Thanks for your support and I hope you enjoy the book!

Wild Surf 'n' Turf

After making ceviche with the neck meat of my hard-won geoduck, I was left with a big hunk o' body meat. What to do? Stir-fry seemed like the right approach. Earlier this year I made Kung Pao Chicken for the first time and discovered that Chinese cookery was not magic.

Here's a little secret: Anyone can cook Kung Pao at home, no problem. Just stock up on a few key items at your local Asian market, such as Chinese cooking wine (Shaoxing), rice vinegar, and dried red chilies. Other ingredients—soy sauce, sesame oil, corn starch—you probably have already. Though not traditional, I added wild chicken-of-the-woods mushrooms (Laetiporus conifericola), which are all over the Cascade forests right now, and snap peas.

Kung Pao Geoduck with Wild Mushrooms

1/2 lb geoduck, thinly sliced
1/2 lb chicken of the woods (or shitake)
2 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbsp sesame oil
2 tbsp Chinese cooking wine (Shaoxing)
2 tbsp corn starch dissolved in 2 tbsp water
1 tsp rice vinegar
2 tsp brown sugar
2 handfuls cocktail peanuts
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 thumb ginger, cut into slivers
8-10 dried chile peppers, halved and de-seeded
2 handfuls snap peas
2-3 green onions, chopped
1 tbsp peanut oil

1. For the marinade, combine into a bowl 1 tbsp soy sauce, 1 tbsp sesame oil, 1 tbsp Chinese cooking wine, and 1 tbsp of the corn starch/water mixture. Immerse sliced geoduck and refrigerate 30 minutes.

2. For the sauce, combine into small bowl 1 tbsp soy sauce (note: use dark soy, if you have it), 1 tbsp sesame oil, 1 tbsp Chinese cooking wine, 1 tsp rice vinegar, 2 tsp brown sugar, and 1 tbsp corn starch/water mixture. Stir in garlic, ginger, peanuts, and half the green onion.

3. Heat peanut oil in wok or large skillet on high until nearly smoking. Stir in dried chilies and cook until fragrant, less than a minute. Add mushrooms and cook another minute or two. Add geoduck with marinade and cook a couple minutes, stirring. Add snap peas and sauce and cook another couple minutes, all the while stirring.

4. Ladle over rice and garnish with remaining green onion. Now say a prayer for your local take-out joint, which might have less of your business in the future.

Serves 2.

Duck Hunting

Looking back over the past year and a half of posts, it might seem that here at FOTL headquarters we've managed to run down and sample all manner of wild foods out there for the taking this side of the ungulates. But in reality, we've barely scratched the surface. The rhizome of a buckler fern, for instance, remains an unknown quantity, as do camas bulbs, and unlike some recent gastronauts at the famous Herb Farm, this forager has yet to taste our local slimebag, the banana slug.

A few days ago, however, I filled a major gap in the repertoire. Marty called it my lacuna, and it had been gnawing at me for a while because it's such a Pac Northwest specialty: Geoduck.

Say what? Pronounced gooey-duck, which translates from the Salish into "dig deep," this largest of the world's burrowing clams is a poster child for my region's eccentric character. "Now tell me about those clams again," my dad says to me each time he visits Seattle. Yeah yeah, we've got some big clams with a funny name.

But geoducks are more than that. They're an unusual delicacy appreciated by clam connoisseurs the world over, most of whom seem to live in the Far East. Secreted deep within their sandy lairs, geoducks live long lives (in excess of 100 years) and grow to tremendous size, with reports of 'ducks weighing as much as 14 pounds. Though found up and down the West Coast, it is in Puget Sound where the geoducks reach their apotheosis, accounting for as much as 2 percent of the Sound's total biomass.

The problem is getting at them. A typical geoduck is a couple pounds and buried about three feet beneath the substrate. Most are beyond the intertidal zone, but those that choose to set up house closer to shore are within range of a stealthy clammer during the lowest tides of the year.

This past Thursday was our last minus tide of significance for 2009's daylight hours. I met my friend Jon Rowley that morning on the ferry to Bainbridge Island. He would be my guide. Besides being the man who introduced most of the civilized world to Copper River salmon, Jon is also a big-time evangelizer of geoduck. We drove to a beach near Quilcene owned by Taylor Shellfish, which has an oyster rearing operation on the property. Ed, one of the staff, assured us that geoducks should be exposed on the lowest stretches of beach. In our rubber boots the three of us headed for the clam beds with a couple sections of 30-inch diameter PVC pipe.

PVC pipes? Soon I would understand their role in the proceedings. It didn't take long to find the half-dollar sized shows of a couple geoducks. As instructed, I made an impression in the sand with the pipe, dug out the perimeter, and then fitted the pipe back into the circular trough. This humble section of pipe, I now realized, would be my sole fortification against an incursion of wet sand that continually attempted to reclaim my hole. As I dug out the area inside the pipe I worked the PVC deeper into the sand and eventually placed another section on top. Fifteen minutes later both sections, one on top of the other, had disappeared down into the hole.

That's when we noticed the tide. We were past the turn and now the water was coming up again. Fortunately I had constructed something of a sea wall with my diggings. Waves lapped at the berm. "You better hurry up," Jon said calmly. A few more shovelfuls and I got down on my belly to inspect the hole. An average person will extend his arm past the shoulder before having a shot at a 'duck. One of Ed's colleagues at Taylor would tell me a story later about how his brother held him by the ankles and lowered him into a hole. He was 11 years old at the time and their 'duck weighed in at an appropriate 11 pounds.

About this time I started to get a sinking feeling. The tide waits for no man. Muddy water now filled my hole to the brim. All our effort seemed to be for nought. "Feel around down there again," advised Jon.

"What am I looking for?"

"You'll know when you find it," he said cryptically.

I dug some more, but fatigue was setting in. Despite my PVC bulkhead, each shovelful seemed to be replaced by a steady stream of mud and sand seeping back into the hole. The rising tide was quickly eroding away my berm. We had a few more minutes at most and then the entire operation would be underwater. Already I was composing a blog post in my mind about failure. Out of breath, shoulders and arms aching, I flopped back down on what remained of the beach to take another measurement, if only to get a moment of rest. I had my ear to the water as I reached deep into the hole—and there it was! A rubbery hose-like thing in my grasp. I've got it! I yelled out like a little kid on a treasure hunt. I shook the neck back and forth and worked the clam out of its burrow, finally holding it up in triumph. Every part of me was soaking wet.



Geoduck Ceviche

To clean a live geoduck, immerse it in boiling water for eight seconds. Now you can pull off the thin sheath that protects the siphon. It slips off like a condom, in case you were wondering. Slice off the siphon at the base and nip off the last half-inch or so of the dark tip. This neck meat can be used for sashimi or ceviche. Extract the rest of the clam with a paring knife, cutting the adductor muscles on the inside of the shell. Throw away the bulbous gut and use remaining meat in sauté or stir-fry.

For the ceviche I poked around on the Web a bit. I wanted mine to have kick like Jon's, so a hot pepper would be essential. But I was also looking for some sweetness. Two recipes stood out, Xinh Dwelley's and Bobby Flay's, and so I borrowed bits of each. The ingredient amounts below are rough estimates; adjust to your own taste. I used less than a pound of neck meat.

1 geoduck neck (siphon), about 1 lb, thinly sliced
1/4 cup red onion, diced
1/4 cup sweet red pepper
1/2 cup cucumber, peeled & chopped
1/2 cup papaya, peeled, seeded & chopped
1 serrano pepper, seeded and finely diced
1 clove garlic, minced
1 handful cilantro, stemmed & chopped
1 tbsp fish sauce
1 tbsp brown sugar
1 tbsp toasted sesame seeds
1-2 limes
salt

1. Combine garlic, hot pepper, fish sauce, and brown sugar into small bowl. Stir with juice from half lime.
2. In large bowl, cover sliced geoduck with juice of 1 lime, stir, and let sit for 30 minutes.
3. Add contents of small bowl to large bowl and add onion, pepper, cucumber, papaya, and cilantro. Stir and season with salt.
4. Chill and serve.

For more 'duck entertainment, watch this trailer for the movie Three Feet Under and this cleaning and cooking demonstration from the Discovery Channel's "Dirty Jobs" show.

Pickled Sea Beans

A couple weekends ago I attended an oyster fest on Samish Bay complete with sea kayaks, local beer, midnight skinny-dip, and a bluegrass band that retired fireside to play late-night requests. Good times. In addition to being fed ridiculous quantities of fresh oysters, clams, Dungeness crab, and salmon, the beach boasted a patch of sea beans stretching for hundreds of yards. The property owner, who runs ACME seafood, told me to have at it. We packed my daughter's sand pail the next morning before driving home.

Sea beans (Salicornia sp.) are known by many names: beach asparagus, glasswort, pickleweed, samphire. They're a succulent, salt-tolerant plant that grows along beaches, marshes, and mangroves around the world. In my region we find sea beans near the high tide mark along sandy or pebbly beaches. Fresh, they make a crunchy snack while clamming, and retain that pleasing crunch even after cooking. The flavor, if it can be called that, is subtle, a salty taste of the sea with a hint of wild green. I like sauteed sea beans mostly for the texture, the bright color, and the salt, as in an oyster succotash.

Sea beans also make an excellent garnish. Pickling them means you can have sea beans whenever inspiration strikes. I looked around for pickling recipes, of which there are few, and settled on two styles: Far East and Southwest.

Spicy Pickled Sea Beans

For the Southwest I adapted a fairly standard pickling recipe for spicy green beans:

4 handfuls sea beans
4 red chiles
6 garlic cloves
pinch peppercorns per jar
pinch coriander seeds per jar
pinch mustard seeds per jar
4 sprigs fresh dill
1 1/4 cup water
1 1/4 cup white wine vinegar

1. Sterilize jars and lids in boiling water.

2. When jars are cool enough to handle, add pinches of coriander, mustard, and peppercorns. Pack half full with sea beans. Insert chiles, garlic cloves, and dill around outside edges. Finish packing with sea beans.

3. Bring water and vinegar to a boil. Ladle over the sea beans leaving about 1/2-inch head space. Wipe jar edge clean and screw on sterilized lids.

4. Process in a boiling water bath for 10 minutes. Remove and allow to cool completely at room temperature. Check lids for proper seal. Store for at least one month before using to allow flavors to develop.

Yields 2 pints.

Asian Pickled Sea Beans

For the Far East I used Matt Wright's recipe.

sea beans
rice vinegar
1 tbsp sugar per cup of vinegar
3 1-inch slices ginger per jar
1 star anise per jar

Figure on using at least 1 cup of vinegar for 2 half-pint jars. Oh, and rice vinegar and rice wine vinegar are essentially the same thing, in case you were wondering.

1. Sterilize jars and lids in boiling water.

2. When jars are cool enough to handle, pack with sea beans. Insert ginger slices around edges and a single star anise at top.

3. Bring rice vinegar and sugar to a boil. Ladle over the sea beans leaving about 1/2-inch head space. Wipe jar edge clean and screw on sterilized lids.

4. Process in a boiling water bath for 10 minutes. Remove and allow to cool completely at room temperature. Check lids for proper seal. Store for at least a few days before using to allow flavors to develop.

Word of warning: If you don't own a dedicated canner with a rack (i.e. you use a big 'ol pot instead, like me) be very careful with your jars to avoid breakage. I discovered this the hard way. Because the contents of the jars—the sea beans—are packed cold, your jars can experience a terrible fate called thermal shock and pop their bottoms off. Not pleasant. Keep the jars in the hot sterilization water until ready, pack them, don't overscrew the lids (you know what I mean), then place carefully in the pot before bringing to a boil. In restaurant/software speak, this is called a "soft launch."

And don't forget to use any leftover sea beans post-pickling. They make a salty garnish, or you can saute them in butter and garlic with a drizzle of lemon juice for a side dish. To leech out some of the salt, try blanching and shocking in two changes of water.