Kiss My Geoduck

This spring's shellfish classes have been more fun than I could have imagined. Any day playing at the shore is a day well spent, but when you add in a mix of interesting folks and the promise of fresh seafood cooked on site, the bonhomie is nearly boundless.

Those of us who have been digging clams for years sometimes forget there's a learning curve to seafood foraging—from understanding the different habitats and species to knowing what tools to use. Even the processing and cooking of shellfish can be intimidating to a first-timer.

I should know. Despite having been a  regular digger of littlenecks, razors, cockles, and a variety of other bivalves, it was only in the last couple years that I started going after geoducks. Why the wait? I suppose it was a variety of things—their size, the fact that they're available only during the lowest tides of the year, the specialized cooking techniques, and so on. Geoducks are the big time.

When Jeff Ozimek at Bainbridge Island Parks & Rec (pictured below holding a 'duck and a small horse clam) proposed a geoduck class, I was admittedly skeptical. Even a seasoned geoducker doesn't always get his 'duck. Instead, we initiated the foraging curriculum with some introductory classes that tackled the basics, gathering limits of littlenecks and oysters and then cooking them up at a picnic shelter. But the interest in a geoduck class was high, so we took the plunge.

Despite a late start (the Hood Canal Bridge closed for nuclear submarine traffic) and a somewhat chaotic beginning, during which a few 'ducks escaped our furious digging efforts as an insurmountable tide flooded in, the class regrouped farther up the beach and managed to dig two geoducks. Everyone had the chance to reach deep into a hole to feel the rubbery neck of a geoduck and then contemplate what it would take to excavate around its shell and wrestle the thing out. Some of us got good and muddy, too.

The biggest letdown was tussling with a huge clam only to find out it was a horse and not a 'duck, a mistake that can usually be prevented by seeing (or feeling) the tip of the siphon before digging. (The geoduck's siphon tip is relatively smooth.) But with clam shows all around us and a posse of hungry diggers, it was catch as catch can—and no surprise we rode a few ponies.

Digging 'ducks (or any clams, for that matter) will give you an appetite. Back at the picnic shelter everyone pitched in to make sashimi and ceviche with the geoduck's raw neck meat and stir-fried body meat with snap peas, carrots, and onions. Most of the students had never tasted geoduck before. They were just as taken as I was upon first bite by its sweetness and satisfying crunch. The finish on a bite of geoduck sashimi is akin to another local delicacy, the Olympia oyster: that initial sweet clam flavor leads to a slightly coppery or metallic aftertaste that mingles nicely with a drink of white wine or a beer.

Two geoducks fed about a dozen people in all. Not a bad ratio of clam to digger.

Salmon with Pinot Noir Sauce & Morels

Columbia River spring chinook and many of the Alaskan salmon stocks happen to be running when the land fish—morels—are spawning...err...sporing. No surprise that a fatty, omega 3-laden fish happens to pair very nicely with an earthy mushroom that is equally fleeting in this life.

And that pairing would be fine if we stopped right there, but a red wine reduction—in particular, a Pinot Noir reduction—is just the thing to tie these two spring delicacies together in a dance of earth and water.

I used a Copper River sockeye for this purpose along with morels foraged in Washington's central Cascades. The wine was nothing special, though one is always told to not cook with anything that you wouldn't drink, and the rule holds here.

This recipe is adapted from my friend Becky Selengut's new cookbook, Good Fish. Becky is always razzing me for using too much butter and cream (and she's right!) but I notice that she's rather liberal with the butter on this one. In fact, incredibly, I pared the butter back a skosh. The original recipe is for four servings; this is for two. You can get away with a half-stick of butter, though you may choose to add a bit more. Hey, it's your arteries.


Sauce
2 tbsp shallot, minced
1/2 star anise
1/2 tsp fennel seeds, lightly crushed
1 tsp honey
2 cups chicken stock
2 cups Pinot Noir
4 tbsp cold unsalted butter

1/2 lb wild salmon fillet
olive oil
salt & pepper
1/4 lb morels, halved
butter

1. To make sauce, combine sauce ingredients in large pan and bring to boil. Reduce heat and simmer until reduced to 1/4 cup, about 30 minutes. Strain through fine wire mesh and return to pan. Whisk in butter over medium heat until sauce is syrupy.

2. Meanwhile pre-heat oven on broil. Brush salmon fillets with olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Place salmon skin side down on aluminum foil on baking sheet, within 6 inches or so of heating element. The rule of thumb is 10 minutes of broiling per inch of thickness; I usually cook salmon less than the rule of thumb.

3. Saute morels separately in a small pan with butter.

4. Spoon sauce onto warm plate, place salmon over sauce, and shower with morels.

Spring Mushroom Camp, Sisters, OR

Pickers and buyers at the Jack Creek commercial mushroom camp, Deschutes National Forest, Oregon, June 1 - 2, 2011.

Oyster Bánh Mì

With the warm weather we bid adieu to oysters. For the next few months they'll be on the spawn as the water approaches temperatures fit for reproduction. Hence the old adage about not eating oysters in months without an "R": May, June, July, August.

Like most adages, there's some truth at the heart of the matter, though in this age of carefully farmed shellfish, not a month goes by that you can't eat a tasty oyster. When oysters put their energy and fat reserves into sexual reproduction, however, their flesh becomes thin, watery, or even milky as the the reproductive organs take center stage. The milkiness is particularly off-putting to someone looking to slurp a raw oyster.

While spawning oysters are not choice, they're not poisonous either, and sometimes in late spring you can find habitat where oysters will still be suitable for the table even as their brethren in other nearby locales are beginning to spawn. Such habitat will be at the lowest tide levels where the oysters aren't exposed to sun and tepid tide pools for lengths of time, and on beaches where colder water currents flush through the shellfish beds. Oysters in such areas have a shorter spawning window. Even so, I usually prefer to cook these oysters in the warm months.

Here's a recipe for just such an oyster: a Vietnamese-style Bánh Mì sandwich. This hybrid of traditional southeast Asian and French cuisines dates to the French occupation of Indochina. In American cities with large Vietnamese populations, the Bánh Mì is known as a delicious—and cheap!—lunch option for those on the go. Various meats are arranged on a baguette along with fixings such as fresh cilantro, pickled carrot, cucumber, daikon radish, and so on, and usually glued together with a sauce of some kind, often mayo-based. Ideally the baguette is crusty with just enough of a soft interior to cradle the meat.

I've never seen an Oyster Bánh Mì at my usual Vietnamese haunts. This is one sandwich you'll have to make yourself. Typically a Bánh Mì is scarfed down solo while hurrying to an appointment, but I've written the ingredients below to serve two at home.

2 individual baguettes
1 dozen oysters
1/2 cup panko or breadcrumbs
1/4 cup flour
1 egg, beaten
2 tbsp butter

Sauce
sweet chili sauce, such as Mae Ploy

mayonnaise

hot sauce

Fixings

1 small cucumber, peeled and sliced
1 small carrot, julienne
several lettuce leaves
cilantro

1. To make sauce, mix together equal amounts of sweet chili sauce and mayonnaise. Add hot sauce to taste.

2. Dip oysters in egg, then dredge in mixture of panko and flour.

3. Fry oysters in butter over medium heat. Remove to paper towels.

4. Slice baguettes lengthwise. Slather with sauce. Arrange oysters and fixings.

Chinese Ramps

At the height of my recent Michigan ramp delirium, I found myself at the Marquette airport clutching a duffel bag stuffed with ramps. "Would you like to carry that on?" inquired the checker.

A quick calculus in my ramp-besotted head. "Um, I guess so." I wasn't letting go.

"Don't let me talk you into it. We can check it."

Was this some sort of double-speak? Were they toying with me? More to the point, did my breath stink of contraband? "Yes, I'll carry." I casually chatted up the security personnel as the x-ray attendant scanned my bag.

"Have a good flight."

Phew! In the clear. When I got my booty safely home I already knew what the menu would be. A recipe was waiting in my in-box, compliments of my friends and ramp initiators, Russ and Carol. They like to call this dish Slippery Chicken and Ramps, which strikes me as a good name for a meal that was finessed through various checkpoints. I rounded out the menu with a simple Drunken Clams with Ramps.

Slippery Chicken and Ramps

1 lb chicken breast or thighs, cut into thin 2-inch strips
1 tbsp corn starch
1 tbsp sesame oil
1 tsp dark soy sauce
2 tsp soy sauce
2-3 tbsp peanut oil
1 heaping tbsp diced garlic
1 heaping tbsp diced ginger
1 tbsp fermented black beans
1 thick handful fresh ramps
splash Chinese cooking wine

1. Mix corn starch, sesame oil, and soy sauces together into marinade. Stir in chicken pieces and set aside for at least an hour.

2. Cut off ramp bulbs and separate from green leaves. Thinly slice bulbs. Roughly chop leaves.

3. Heat 1 to 2 tbsp peanut oil in wok. Saute chicken over medium-high heat until barely cooked through. Don't overcook. Remove from wok.

4. Heat 1 tbsp peanut oil in wok and saute garlic, ginger, and black beans until fragrant, a minute or so. Add sliced ramp bulbs and cook until translucent.

5. Deglaze wok with a splash of Chinese cooking wine. Add remaining chopped ramps, which will reduce like spinach.

6. Increase heat to high and toss in chicken. Stir quickly to mix, then serve.

The name is apt. Slippery Chicken, thanks to the marinade and careful cooking, should be velvety tender. In fact, you'll most often see it called Velvet Chicken, with some recipes using egg whites to achieve this effect. I found the mixture of oil, corn starch, and soy sauce to be plenty slippery without the use of egg whites. You can spice up this dish with Sichuan peppercorns, chili paste, black vinegar, or other typical Sichuan ingredients.

Drunken Clams with Ramps

40 Manila clams
1 tbsp peanut oil
1 heaping tbsp diced garlic
1 heaping tbsp diced ginger
1 handful fresh ramps
1 cup Chinese rice wine
1 tsp aji-mirin
1 tsp sesame oil

1. Cut off ramp bulbs and separate from green leaves. Thinly slice bulbs. Roughly chop leaves.

2. Heat peanut oil in wok. Over medium heat, saute garlic, ginger, and sliced ramp bulbs, until ramps soften, careful not to burn garlic and ginger, a minute or two.

3. Add rice wine and aji-mirin, raise heat, and bring to boil.

4. Stir in clams and cover.

5. When clams begin to open, stir in chopped ramp leaves and cover again. Cook another minute until clams fully open.

Serve Slippery Chicken and Drunken Clams with rice.

By now it's late in the season even for Northern Michigan ramps. File these recipes away for next year. And speaking of next year's ramp harvest—and hopefully the harvests of many years to come—it's worth remembering that ramps are a wild resource that shouldn't be over-exploited. There's concern in some parts of the country, notably the Smoky Mountains of Southern Appalachia, that ramps are on the decline. The Mushroom Forager blog pointed out this recent article in the New York Times, "When Digging for Ramps Goes Too Far." Choose your patches wisely and exercise restraint.

The Great Boyne City National Morel Festival

To hear five-time national morel hunting champion Tony Williams tell it, the bold idea of calling Boyne City, Michigan's, tribute to everything Morchella a national festival was easy. No one else had one. Certainly not 51 years ago when it was first hatched.

The hunting contest itself was born in a bar.  “Guys were arguing,"explained Tony (pictured with the rustic furniture he builds). "It was a bar fight! A group of about twenty met in the morning to settle it. One of them was a Lion’s Club member. They said, ‘We should organize this for the city. Nobody else is doing it, so let’s call it the National Morel Mushroom Festival.’” 

A half century later, the National Morel Mushroom Festival attracts aficionados, fanatics, and the merely curious to Lake Charlevoix's scenic shore to learn about morels, eat them in quantity, and even—should they be so inclined—purchase a few giant chain-saw replicas to decorate the front lawn.

This is bucolic country, a photogenic trip back to an older, more innocent America, with rolling hills of leafy hardwoods, neat geometric agricultural plots, and farm houses dotting the countryside. The city itself is a small if fairly bustling burg of restaurants, galleries, and shops, a place that does much of its business in the summertime—with a head start in mid-May thanks to the morel fest.

I've been following the festival from afar for a number of years now, and finding myself in the northern woods of Michigan this May to visit friends in Marquette, I just had to make the four-hour trip downstate—as the Yoopers would say—to check it out. I was also hoping to see the sort of morels that are typical in the Midwest but less common where I live.

Like the Pacific Northwest, midwestern morel hunters find natural black morels, which are usually the first true morels to flush in the Great Lakes region each spring. But after the blacks fruit they also find a confusing variety of species commonly called grays, whites, and yellows. Some of these might be the same species at different stages of growth; others look suspiciously similar to what we sometimes call Morchella esculenta.

So I entered the contest and boarded a yellow school bus on a drizzly Saturday morning. What better way to see for myself? With a flashing police escort, we drove out of town to a predetermined secret spot a half-hour away near Chandler Hill. Each contestant signed a clip board so the bus driver could count heads on the way back. "Two or three people got lost in the woods last year," someone in the front said. On our bus we had morel hunters from Indiana, Wisconsin, Ohio, and even North Carolina. On another bus there was a couple of South Korean women and a mycologist from the Mediterranean island of Cyprus.

I happened to be seated next to a local writer, Mary Ellen Geist, author of Measure of the Heart. Mary Ellen warned me that I better be ready to hit the woods at a full gallop because these hunters were serious. Sure, sure, I said. I'll be ready. My main concern was getting some photos of the action.

With that in mind I tried to identify likely experts—camo clothing, trucker hats, and a sneaking caginess were all part of my criteria—to follow into the woods for a photo-op. But then, moments after stepping off the bus, a bullhorn siren blared and everyone took off in a mad, cutthroat dash for the woods. I was still fiddling with the settings on my camera! Even Mary Ellen, who I figured could be my guide in a pinch, was last seen high-stepping through raspberry brambles on her way out of sight.

I wandered into the forest nearly last, fumbling with the camera and realizing I'd left my compass behind.

First impressions? I was a long way from Cle Elum. These great northern woods aren't like the east slope of the Cascades. Where's the topography? I wondered. How do you pick out landmarks? Without a map and compass I was feeling uncertain about my ability to roam at will. I found some kids and stuck close by, snapping pictures. They were in their mid-teens, from Ontario, and had been allowed to hunt by themselves for the first time this year. "My dad was champion a few years ago," one of them bragged. They weren't really sure where they were. "If we get lost dad's gonna kill us."

As any mushroom hunter knows, morels don't obey the laws of human commerce. This year they were late. The assembled hunters pulled mostly "caps" from the underbrush, the related Verpa bohemica mushrooms (pictured) that look somewhat like morels. Caps are fair game in the contest even if most people don't eat them, and good thing—otherwise most of the contestants would have scored a big goose egg, including me.

Knowing your trees is an important part of morel hunting wherever you are, but especially in the Midwest. Old apple trees, dying or dead elms, and ash trees are good producers. In Northern Michigan the ashes seemed to be the ticket, and I spoke with many experienced hunters who said they'll pick out ash trees from afar and walk—or in the the case of the contest, run—directly toward them. The older the ash the better, with clusters of them being even better yet. Notice the diamond-like patterning of the ash bark at right. Tony Williams can pick out ash trees by the lime-green color of their new leaves from miles away.

This year's contest winner ended up picking something like 342 mushrooms in 90 minutes, of which only 40 or 50 were true morels. The record is held by Tony, with nearly 800 mushrooms picked during two consecutive 90-minute contests in the mid-eighties.

Like almost everyone else in the the hunt, yours truly didn't find a single true morel, just caps. Per usual when I travel, my timing was just a bit off, like maybe 48 hours off. More about that in a moment. After boarding the buses and returning to town, the next eagerly anticipated event was the Taste of Morels, in which local restaurants cook up a bite to eat and compete for top honors. My personal favorites (though I didn't get to taste everything) were Red Mesa Grill's Corn Cakes with Morel Cream Sauce, which placed third, and Cafe Sante's Duck Onion Soup with Morel Duxelles, which took first.

All this morel action was starting to gnaw at me. Was I really going to leave Michigan without finding my own? On my way out of town the next morning I got a call from Mary Ellen. Just that morning she had taken a stroll near her home and found the first "grays" of the season. "Get over here quick!" she advised. Well, I suppose I could be a little late for dinner back in Marquette... Sure enough, a few little morels were just starting to pop around an old apple tree in an overgrown orchard. She held one out for inspection. Whether it was a gray, white, or yellow—or all three—I couldn't be sure, but it definitely had the fetching demeanor of a true morel and I could feel the first twinges of a sickness coming on.

"I've got another spot we need to check," said Mary Ellen. We hurried back to our cars and drove down the road a piece, pulling off on a dirt track a mile or so away. We both had the fever now. Ramps of perfect harvesting size carpeted the ground and Dutchman's breeches bloomed in delicate bunches.

"How will we ever see them with this riot of greenery?"

"Look for the ash."

My eye was getting better. I picked out a cluster of three ash trees and then started poking around. Voila! A small morel tried to hide from me beneath a trillium. And another... Soon I had a dozen from this one cluster of ash trees. We spotted another large ash and made a bee-line. More morels. I was scoring the way the locals did. An hour later, with enough morels to bring to Marquette, I thanked Mary Ellen and reluctantly bid adieu to Boyne City.

That night my old friends Russ and Carol put together a feast of homemade pasta with Lamb and Morel Stew ladled on top and spring asparagus on the side. Local, seasonal, and superb. We walked it off on the beach a few blocks from their home, Lake Superior lapping in the moonlight, and finished the evening with a couple beers at a hotel bar in town. The next day I would be leaving—but not without a fistful of that other local delicacy, ramps...

On Ramp

My friends Russell and Carol left Seattle several years ago when Russ, a Blake scholar and artist, got a teaching gig at Northern Michigan University. Carol, also an artist, had been a cook at the first good restaurant I ever ate at in Seattle, the Dahlia Lounge. If you guessed that I visited their home in Marquette because I missed Carol's food, you wouldn't be far off. But mostly I miss the banter with these two old friends and this trip had been a long time coming.

Now that I've been to the Northern Woods of Michigan, all I can say is I'm going back. I fell hard for the place, with its woods, lakes, and friendly people.

My approach to Marquette on the Upper Peninsula was less than encouraging: fog, drizzle, temps in the forties. Might as well have been back in Seattle! But over a long weekend the state slowly and quietly began to reveal its charms to me. It must be a magical place to strap on the cross-country boards in winter. In spring, after a hard, snow-filled winter, the reawakening of the woods is palpable in a way that nearly overwhelms the senses. Warblers singing, wildflowers blooming, all sorts of trees leafing out against the backdrop of an azure sky.

Those hardwood forests that seem to go on forever are a big part of what attracts me to Michigan. I grew up with hardwoods in New England. Oak, maple, birch, and so on. But there's also a long list of trees I never learned as a kid, and they're still a chore to identify now: beech, gum, hornbeam, hickory, and many more. And beneath the trees grows a crazy-quilt of greenery. I thought we had a monopoly on trilliums here in the Pacific Northwest until stepping foot on Michigan soil. There were Dutchman's breeches and jack-in-the-pulpits and trout lilies (pictured), plus scores of other plants I didn't recognize. Wild raspberry everywhere. And perhaps more ubiquitous than any other plant: wild leeks—a native allium sometimes known by the name ramp (Allium tricoccum). Everywhere you looked, you saw this wild gourmet delicacy, growing in enormous patches that carpeted the woods. You smelled them, too.

The ramps appear as the hardwood forests open their leaves and the first neo-tropical warblers arrive with their splashes of unlikely color and insistent songs. Up and down the Appalachian Mountains, small rural communities honor this edible plant that heralds spring with festivals and feasts, such as the Feast of the Ramson in Richwood, West Virginia, where ramp culture reaches its zenith. In Northern Michigan, the ramp almost seems taken for granted, so common is it—and the locals are busy gearing up for morels anyway.

Hey, no problem. I'll pick a few of your ramps. They're a novelty for me since they don't grow west of the Great Plains. The picking is easy, if a bit tedious. The ramp bulbs are fairly shallow, though firmly rooted. After a soil-loosening rainstorm is a good time to go picking. You can use a shovel or iron to further loosen the dirt or even slide a finger down the stalk and into the ground. Ramps of good cooking size can be snapped by hand where the roots meet the bulb.

Once you get your catch home, wash the ramps under a tap and slide the outer membrane off the bulb. This will remove most of the dirt. Slice off dirt-encrusted roots with a paring knife.

As for flavor, you often hear that ramps are like a cross between garlic and onions, but I prefer to think of them as hillbilly leeks with an earthy twang. Like cultivated leeks, you're wise to use the white and green parts in different ways. Generally speaking, the white bulbs are best chopped and sauteed until at least translucent (like scallion bulbs) while the green leaves can be chopped and added to a dish near the end and cooked down (like spinach). We ate ramps all kinds of ways: simply chopped and sauteed over wild whitefish fillets; with eggs; in a soup of cherrystone clams, vegetables, and chicken stock. We ate ramps like we would never eat them again—which was true, in a way, for me...excepting that batch I smuggled onto the plane... [to be continued]