Steamed Clams in Herbed Wine Sauce

Budget travel need not be an endless repetition of stale motels and dubious road food. One of the great pleasures of learning how to forage is finding a noteworthy meal far from home and for little expense. Earlier this month I reported on the White Bass Tacos to be had near Fayetteville, Arkansas. Last summer, in Utah's Dinosaur National Monument, we doctored ham and cheese sandwiches with wild watercress from a patch that very well may have fed outlaw Butch Cassidy while on the run.

A commercial forager once told me that wherever he goes, he always pays for his gas. What he meant is that he always brings home a wild delicacy that makes the trip, no matter how banal, worthwhile—and in his case it literally pays for the gas when he sells it.



The other day found me on the Olympic Peninsula, where I gave a talk to the OP Mycological Society, a spirited group of foragers if there ever was one. The next day I took my time driving back to the ferry. I had driven this road before but I wouldn't call it familiar territory. Just the same, wild foods announced themselves at every turn. While I could have loaded up on any number of wild greens, it was the shellfish I wanted most of all. The tide was right so I pulled into a public tidelands.



The place was lousy with food. I could have nabbed rock crabs, horse clams, oysters, or any number of seaweed varieties. Since I had my three-clawed garden scratcher in the car, I decided to dig a quick limit of cockles and littleneck clams. I ate the littlenecks that night with Ruby, who knows a thing or two about clams. I've made all kinds of meals with steamed littlenecks: Linguini alle Vongole, in Red Thai Curry, with Black Bean Sauce. This time I decided on a very traditional approach: wine, aromatics, and a touch of cream.

2 dozen littleneck clams, in the shell
1-2 tbsp butter
1/2 cup yellow onion, chopped
1-2 cloves garlic, chopped
scant 1/4 cup thinly sliced fennel
1 bay leaf
1/2 cup white wine
handful mixed fresh herbs, chopped (e.g. thyme, oregano, parsley, chives, tarragon)
1/4 cup cream

1. Scrub clams thoroughly.
2. Melt butter in skillet over medium heat. Saute onion until soft. Stir in garlic, fennel, and bay leaf; cook for a few minutes.
3. De-glaze with wine. Raise heat to high and add clams and herbs. Cover and steam until clams open.
4. Stir in cream, remove from heat, and serve immediately with good bread.

Serves 2 as small meal or appetizers.

Perhaps more pleasurable than the clams themselves was the sight of my daughter chowing down on a wild fruit of the sea that most kids turn up their noses at.

Fiddlehead Frittata

On the trail the other day I came upon an elderly Korean couple with full bags of fiddleheads and devil's club buds. They looked a little guilty clutching their haul, probably because the rules about foraging in state parks are ambiguous and rarely posted, and my interest might have struck them as of a vaguely law enforcement nature. Then I emptied my pockets and revealed my own small stash of fiddleheads gleaned along the way.

Big smiles now. The Koreans were surprised that someone of my age and ethnicity knew about the hidden delicacies in the woods. It's true that most of the foragers I encounter tend to be older first-generation immigrants. As I say in the book in the squid-jigging chapter, foraging comes natural to such folks. They foraged in their native countries and see no reason not to forage in their new adoptive homes. In many cases they find far less competition, as Americans are too busy porking out at the usual fast food drive-thrus.

You can read more about foraging and cooking fiddleheads here.

I decided on the Fiddlehead Frittata mainly because I like the alliterative sound of it. If you had asked me yesterday what I thought about frittatas in general, I would not have put myself in the camp that is absolutely nuts for this Italian staple, though I might have given an appreciative nod to its simplicity as well as the long-standing tradition of saving a few wedges for later. But now, after chowing down on today's Fiddlehead Frittata for lunch, I can safely say it's a thing of awe-inspiring beauty. I also got lucky in the choices I made: the slight bitterness of the fiddleheads was balanced nicely by the sweetness of the caramelized onions and the bright flavors of the herbs, in particular the sage.

Like so much of the cooking I do, the frittata is rustic country fare—peasant food, as they say. It fits right in with my love of chowders and stews and casseroles. I'll be making more in the future.

2 tbsp olive oil
1 cup fiddleheads, cleaned and blanched in boiling water for a few minutes
1 onion, chopped
6 eggs
3 tbsp heavy cream
1 handful fresh herbs, chopped
1/2 cup mozzarella, grated
1/4 cup parmesan, grated
salt and pepper, to taste

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees. On stove top over medium heat add oil to 10-inch non-stick, oven-proof skillet. Saute onions for a few minutes, then add fiddleheads. Cook for several more minutes, until onions begin to caramelize and fiddleheads are tender.

2. Whisk together eggs, cream, and your favorite herbs. I used thyme, oregano, parsley, and sage. Add grated mozzarella to mixture.

3. Reduce stove to medium. Pour egg mixture into skillet, tilting pan slightly to insure even distribution. Cook until eggs have firmly set on the bottom, 5 or 6 minutes.

4. Sprinkle parmesan on top and finish cooking in the oven, several more minutes.

5. Remove skillet from oven, allow to cool for a minute or two, then slide frittata onto large serving dish (or cover pan with dish and invert if easier, but remember to flip frittata back over or cheese will run off). Cut into wedges and serve.

Serves 4.

Salad Days

The salad days are here again. Now is the time to take advantage of all the fresh new growth bursting with the sun's energy. If you're in California, the salad days have been on for a while; in the Great Lakes region you're just off the block. Wherever you are, enjoy those early greens. They were important—sometimes life-saving—for our ancestors and should be just as revered by modern Homo sapiens.

Want to commit a radical act? Step outside your back door and pick some weeds for the table. That's a metaphorical rock through the window of Big Ag and a first step toward putting our hopelessly effed-up food system on notice. As I've mentioned in numerous posts, many of the weeds we spend countless hours and dollars trying to eradicate are actually more nutritious than the stuff we grow on purpose. Think wild, think local, think seasonal. Think for yourself. You don't need some massive head of corporate-sanctioned lettuce from the supermarket to get your greens on.

Today's salad includes a mesclun-like mix of tender young greens: Dandelion, cat's-ear, chickweed, and bittercress. The rest is miner's lettuce, a native plant in my region. All are tasty and nutritious.

Bass Master

Going native is a time-honored tradition. What’s more fun—traveling as a tourist or blending in with the locals? I choose the latter.

Which is why a sweltering spring morning in Goshen, Arkansas, found me hanging around on the limestone banks of the White River with a bunch of good ol' boys and even more first generation immigrants, a cheap spinning rod in my hand. I was there to go bassin’.



Middle American rivers and reservoirs emptying into the Mississippi mark the pan fisherman’s Mecca. You’ve got catfish, crappies, sunfish, perch, and several varieties of bass, all vying for the pan, all tasting exceptional when fried up fresh. In my younger years, when I first discovered the pleasures of trout on a fly and its attendant rituals, I pitied the bassmasters with their jon boats and fish-finders and trucker caps. They struck me as an antediluvian species, as antiquated as the country store.

Well, these days as we drive the endless strip (getting longer every year) waiting for pavement to give way to dirt and for fast food joints to give way to fishing holes, don’t we all yearn for the dusty commerce of the country store once again? And so it is with the bassmaster, who is the backbone of angling in America. McGuane is right: When the trout are lost it's surely time to smash the state. But when there are no more bass and no more bass fishermen we will have finally screwed the pooch once and for all.

Luckily for me my spring break with the in-laws in Fayetteville just happened to coincide with a great annual tradition for bassmasters across the tick and chigger-infested interior: the running of the white bass. There are bigger bass and there are tastier bass; rarely do you encounter a more prolific bass. The limit in Arkansas is 25 per day. Morone chrysops looks like a smaller version of its cousin the striped bass. Males are smaller than females, usually weighing under a pound; females, which follow the males upriver, might push five pounds, though a two-pounder like this one my boy caught is considered large.

I stumbled upon the white bass fishery by accident while scouting for morels. Crossing the Twin Bridges where Richland Creek empties into the White River I couldn't help but pull over to see why so many trucks and cars lined the road. A guy with a stringer loaded with fish and a big grin clued me in. We walked down to the water's edge to see the commotion. Anglers were hauling in fish up and down the banks. "This ain't nothin'," said one elderly man in a canoe. "At the peak it's every cast." The fish pour out of Beaver Lake impoundment on their spawning run like an angry horde, chasing each other around the riffles, slashing at lures, and putting their fierce dispositions on generous display. I talked to a few knowledgeable bassers with the heftiest stringers. Crawfish, they advised, and rubber minnow jigs. I was back the next day.

Fish Tacos

That night we made fish tacos at my brother-in-law’s place. Filleting out 15 bass was a bit of a chore for this bassmaster-in-training. Bass are bonier than the trout and salmon I’m used to, although the concept is similar. I thought about Mexico while working the fillet knife.

The best fish tacos I ever ate were prepared beachside on the Baja while a bunch of us attempted to surf our hangovers away during a bachelor party weekend. Despite the gulf's promise of renewal, one by one we washed up on the beach feeling more unsteady than when we started, lured by the thought of stable ground and the smell of fish tacos cooked right on the spot over a camp stove. This has been my template ever since. If you try to complicate the matter, you’ll miss the point. Fish tacos should be a perfect blend of white-fleshed fish, warm tortillas, and piquant salsa. Nothing more. The preparation was so simple I’m almost embarrassed to repeat it here, but if you’ve never made your own fish tacos before it’s something you should do—so here are the basics.

1. Make a simple salsa. For instance, chop together 2 large tomatoes, 1 small red onion, 1 clove of garlic, a half-cup of cilantro, and a hot pepper. Adjust amounts to taste. Squeeze in a half lime and season generously with salt. Set aside to marry.
2. Heat flour tortillas wrapped in foil.
3. Dredge fish fillets in seasoned flour and fry in butter over medium heat until flaky.

That’s it. Now make your tacos, garnish with hot sauce, drink a refreshing beer—and think about going native.

Bittercress: A Misnomer

I'm in Arkansas for spring break visiting the inlaws and loving the 70-degree weather down here. This place is a forager's paradise. I'll have more to say about that in future posts, but in the meantime I had a post about eating your weedies queued up minus the photos. Turns out all the shots are safe and sound in my camera...back in Seattle. So without further ado, Plan B.

See that weed at top, growing between the rungs of my ladder in the backyard? It's all over Seattle. Apparently it's all over Fayetteville, Arkansas, too, according to my limited canvassing of this university town in the Ozarks. In fact, various representatives of the genus Cardamine are common across much of North America and the world. And we might consider using that pinch of Latin when we talk about it, even if it makes us feel professorial and a bit much, because the common name is flat out wrong.

Bittercress. Whoever gave it the name bittercress never actually tasted it. According to Arthur Lee Jacobson: "Over 200 years ago, Linnaeus named a related English weed Cardamine amara, meaning bitter. Writers subsequently transferred the inaccurate name Bitter cress to ALL Cardamine species, and it is one of the largest genera in the mustard family."

There are some 200 species of Cardamine. Like many other Brassicas, these little annuals and perennials are high in nutrients and have been used for centuries for medicinal purposes. In my region Cardamine hirsuta is the most common species, although I'm pretty sure the robust one in the photo is a different species, possibly Cardamine flexuosa.

All Cardamines are typically hot and peppery in a pleasant way that brings a simple salad to life. This is a plant to know and enjoy regardless of its misleading common name.

No Ordinary Fish

Rainbow trout first captured my imagination in sixth grade when I filled an aquarium at school with a few dozen fingerlings. Most of them went belly up, but the hardiest survived to become silver streaks of excitement for Middle School boys with their faces pushed up against the glass.

Here in Washington State on the dry, eastern side of the Cascade Mountains, we have a species of trout variously called redside or redband. In fact it is a subspecies of rainbow adapted to live in the desert canyon country of the Pacific Northwest, a harsh environment of fluctuating river flows and oscillating weather extremes. The common names derive from the intense rosy blush coloring the fish's gill plate and flanks. These rainbows, I discovered soon after moving here, flash gorgeous colors and fight like hell.

Most of my fishing for redsides has been in the Yakima Canyon, a drainage severely compromised by dams and irrigation which some anglers refer to it as "the ditch." But that ditch's trout mesmerized me from the get-go. I had fished for rainbows all over the country, and though these particular fish rarely attained the size of rainbows I had caught up and down the fertile streams of the Rockies, they seemed to me more beautiful and pound-for-pound better fighters than their compatriots elsewhere.

My suspicions about the Yakima's rainbows were confirmed several years ago after meeting a state fish commissioner around the campfire one night. He told me that contrary to public perception, the Yakima's rainbows are hardly the mutts most people think they are. Years of stocking for a "put-and-take" fishery ended in the early 80's with new selective gear rules that culminated with "catch and release" designation in 1990 (those wanting to keep a fish can do so below Roza Dam). Now the fish are strictly wild—that is, self-sustaining. More than that, DNA tests proved that years of stocking hadn't fundamentally changed the river's native trout. Apparently the natives didn't find the stockers attractive or fit for breeding.

"You're catching 'bows descended from the same fish that Lewis and Clark caught," the commissioner told me.

If only this were true for other watersheds.

As Anders Halverson explains in An Entirely Synthetic Fish, his book tracing the remarkable journey of the rainbow trout, from its origins in one of the nation's first hatchery programs to its subsequent spread around the country and the world, the success of the rainbow has had a greater impact on fish and fishing than anyone could have predicted. Rainbow introductions created fisheries where none previously existed, helped to initiate countless young anglers, and altered ecosystems. With echoes of Michael Pollan's Botany of Desire, Halverson shows that not only have we engineered a fish but that the fish has also engineered us.

The story begins with Livingston Stone, a New Hampshire pastor turned aquaculturist. In 1872, with orders from his boss Spencer Fullerton Baird, head of the newly hatched U.S. Fish Commission, Stone went west on the transcontinental railroad to San Francisco, then traveled north to the upper reaches of the Sacramento Basin in the shadow of Mt. Shasta. Here, within an arrow shot of the Wintu Indians, he set up shop on the McCloud River with hopes of propagating chinook salmon. The salmon hatchery didn't pan out but further upstream he met success with another North Pacific species, the rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss).

By 1886 the U.S. Fish Commission had sent rainbow trout to 33 of the 38 states then in the Union as well as England, France, Germany, Switzerland, Canada, and Mexico. In time the fish would establish populations in South America, Australia, New Zealand, Asia, and Africa. Rainbow trout would become a "global species, both physically and culturally," remarks Halverson. "The range expansion that corn, sheep, dogs, and humans only achieved over thousands of years, rainbow trout have accomplished in little more than a century." The author goes on to examine the concurrent rise of recreational fishing, suggesting that such a rise might not have been possible without the adaptability of rainbow trout, for the sheer numbers of modern anglers require a hardy fish that can be produced—or reproduce on its own—in quantity. Hence the proliferation of hatcheries around the world, for good or ill, and the current debate over wild fish versus man-made fish.

The rainbow's ascension occurred during a time when the control of nature seemed not only possible but preferable. Massive dam projects changed the face of the American West in particular, and where warm, muddy rivers once flowed there were now dam-controlled water courses with clear, cold water—prime trout habitat. Halverson details one of the more unseemly chain of events: the poisoning of the Green River (tributary to the Colorado) and its native "rough fish" to make way for sport fish like the rainbow. The poisoned fish now reside on the Endangered Species list.

As the Green River episode illustrates, the rainbow's success has come at considerable cost. Rainbow trout now compete with native fish on nearly every continent. They're also used as compensation for degraded habitats. Throughout the 20th century it was commonplace to erect a fish hatchery where the assault of pollution, resource extraction, and development made natural fish propagation an impossibility. On the other hand, one wonders how many of today's river stewards were first lured to the joys of fish and fishing by the leaping rainbow.

Anglers and history buffs alike will tie into a good story with An Entirely Synthetic Fish, a story that is both peculiarly American and also global in its lessons. After all, China is the new frontier for trout fishermen.

Gobo Mojo

Got a tip on a burdock patch in Seattle the other day. Burdock (Arctium sp.) is a Eurasian weed now common across much of North America. It's a biennial and can grow to immense size, with two-foot leaves and flower stalks up to nine feet tall. Like stinging nettles and poison ivy, many of us have memories of encountering burdock as kids—a sweater covered in burrs, say, or the chore of taking a wire brush to Fido after a romp in the patch. Rumor has it the inventor of Velcro™ had burdock stuck on his mind when he came up with his very lucrative invention.

But like so many things, when I actually wanted to find me some burdock...you know, to eat...it suddenly became elusive. Burdock is a weed of fields, margins, and waste areas; the city offers prime habitat for many of our tastiest weeds, but burdock? Not so much. Which is why I followed up on this tip right away. And it proved a good one. Just as the tipster had predicted, there was a tangle of burdock infesting a hillside adjacent to a soccer field in the heart of Seattle. The dead stalks from last year's crop were easy to spot with their clusters of burrs waiting for the unsuspecting.

I located some fresh rosettes of leaves and went to work with my shovel. Burdock roots grow deep, often more than two or three feet beneath the surface, and need to be coaxed out of the ground so as not to break. First-year roots are the ones to target for food; once the plant forms a flower stalk in the second year the root turns woody, though these can be thinly sliced and dried to make tinctures. Today's were mostly younguns and relatively easy to spade out of the ground, but longer roots in compacted soil can be quite an effort. In a matter of minutes I had a bunch of dirt-covered roots in my bag and walked back to the car.

In the parking lot I saw a city parks employee picking up trash with one of those mechanical arms. My shovel and roots were already safely tucked away in the car, but as he came closer he noticed me checking out a patch of bittercress where I was parked. I picked some and nibbled, earning a look of speechless shock from the gentleman that I will not soon forget.

Kinpira Gobo

The Japanese are great lovers of burdock and ascribe many medicinal values to the root. It's reported to be beneficial for your skin and your liver. I'd say it's beneficial for your taste buds too. It's starchy like a potato and has the round, buttery flavor one associates with artichoke heart; there's also a sweetness and even a faint citrusy edge. Kinpira Gobo is a traditional Japanese dish and easy to make. The addition of shichimi togarashi is recommended here and is a good call.

1/2 lb burdock root
1-2 carrots
1 tbsp vegetable oil
1 tbsp sesame oil
1 tbsp sake
1 tbsp mirin
1 tbsp soy
2 tsp sugar
1 tsp toasted sesame seeds
Shichimi togarashi (Japanese 7-spice blend), to taste (optional)

1. Lightly peel the burdock root, then julienne and remove to a bowl of water for 10 minutes.
2. Julienne carrots.
3. Heat oil in a wok or frying pan and stir-fry burdock for a few minutes. Stir in carrots and cook another minute or two before adding the remaining ingredients.
4. Stir-fry until the liquid has evaporated, leaving a glaze on the vegetables.
5. Serve immediately with a sprinkling of sesame seeds and shichimi togarashi.

You can also find commercially grown burdock in many Asian markets. The root will be longer, straighter, and prettier than wild burdock, but a chef I know checked out my recent batch and pronounced it more complex smelling than any of the commercial stuff she had used in the past. Plus, there's the added incentive of freaking out your local groundskeeper.

Green Gold: Miner's Lettuce

The Forty-Niners put San Francisco on the map and explored north into much of California and the Oregon Territory. Most of them didn't strike it rich. Instead they left their mark in the form of claims, place names, settlements—and in some cases environmental degradation that is still with us today.

Life was hard for a gold miner. You had to have your wits about you to survive. One of the many dangers was scurvy, caused by a deficiency of vitamin c. But the smart miner knew there was more than gold in them thar hills. There was green, too—a humble green (recently re-classified in the Claytonia genus) that grew in thick mats, was available much of the year, and packed the necessary nutrients a prospector needed to live in the bush.

Hello miner's lettuce. Also called spring beauty, winter purslane, or Indian lettuce, Claytonia perfoliata, native to the western U.S., with particular abundance in the Pacific Northwest, is the best known species of miner's lettuce. As one of the first spring greens to emerge, it's a valuable edible just when it's needed most.

Pictures typically show Claytonia perfoliata with a round leaf from which a flower stalk emerges in the center. Early in the season, however, the leaves are more apt to be spade-shaped. They're tender and succulent, reminiscent of spinach yet with a wild flavor that isn't overpowering.

While I usually find my supply of miner's lettuce when I'm hiking in the Cascades or Olympics, there are also patches right inside the Seattle city limits. I picked this bunch today in a park near Lake Washington and used it in place of spinach in a classic early spring salad with beets, goat cheese, roasted walnuts, and a simple vinaigrette.

Miner's lettuce also has the distinction of being one of the few green foods, along with Stinging Nettle Soup, that my finicky, vegetable-averse boy will eat. If you haven't eaten miner's lettuce before, try a few leaves added to your usual salad. Soon you'll be chucking the domestic greens altogether in favor of this wild treat.



This post was entered into the "Grow Your Own" roundup, created by Andrea's Recipes and hosted this month by House of Annie.

Target Practice

The clay pigeons of the world are mostly safe.

Last night I made my first trip to the shooting range. The range, located north of Seattle, looked as though it had been hanging on in this once-rural neighborhood for years only to have ticky-tacky suburban sprawl grow up around it like unchecked blackberry brambles. We parked in a gravel lot and piled into the clubhouse through an unmarked door carrying all our stuff. I would be borrowing John's 12-gauge while he put his newer 20-gauge to the test.

The place had a smell I recognized right away: coffee, stale cigarette smoke, oil, linoleum. The smell of men doing manly stuff. Twenty or so of these men, mostly older, milled around, many of them wearing their eye protection, ear muffs around their necks. A single woman with fashionably yellow-tinted glasses and long black hair held her own in this company. I would learn soon enough she was a pretty good shot, too.

It felt weird walking around indoors with this big shotgun but everyone had guns, of course. Guns stood in the rack, guns accompanied their owners, guns were in varying states of being put together or taken apart around the clubhouse. In one corner a guy cleaned his gun while several old-timers looked on. Must have been a nice gun. In fact, there were lots of nice guns. Competition trap-shooting guns and the like. Guns that fetched a few thousand dollars apiece.

On the wall were a few reminders of where we were: The text from Article 2 of the Bill of Rights, for instance, and something about the NRA making this all possible. A full kitchen occupied one corner and it looked as though a birthday party had just finished up, with leftover plates of cake for whoever wanted some.



We went into the next room where a man in his sixties with a white mustache worked the counter. For $13 he set me up with a box of shells and a slot in the next group of five. The call to arms came sooner than expected. "Next five, 16 yards, range one." Yikes, we were still putting together the guns—or at least John was. I haven't learned that part yet. We paraded out, guns in hand, and at that moment I couldn't be sure I even knew how to load the thing. We didn't do this sort of stuff during Hunters Ed class!

We took our positions and I fumbled with my first shell, nearly putting it in the chamber backward in my haste. A kid in an orange vest tapped my shoulder: "No loading before your turn." Miraculously I was able to pop the shell back out. Then it was my turn. "Pull," I said, trying not to sound too tentative. Click. The trigger didn't budge. I watched an orange Frisbee fly out to freedom. Ugh, my safety. One more time: "Pull." This pigeon escaped too. On my third try I winged one. It didn't explode into smithereens, but clearly a few pieces of the pigeon splintered off and it dropped to the ground. I ejected my smoking shell triumphantly in my best impression of Dirty Harry. I could definitely get used to this.

That first round would be my best. Eight for 25. My next round I shot seven for 25, and I won't even tell you how round three went. "You might have been over-thinking it," John said later. My question: How does one improve at something that requires a concentrated effort to not think about it? Anyway, the fake pigeons and the real grouse are surely safe. For now.

Go for the Gold

This past Sunday I was faced with a tough choice: catch the last two periods of the gold-medal hockey game between the U.S. and Canada or go for the golden razor clam. I went for the gold. It's almost always better to be a participant rather than an observer, don't you think? Unless we're talking about alligator rasslin' or something.



So far this season I had been shut out of razor clam openings because of scheduling conflicts. My luck was about to change. It was a perfect afternoon for a dig: partly cloudy with sunbursts, not too windy, low tide at 6:30 pm. Really, it doesn't get much better than that, not on the storm-swept shores of the North Pacific. By 4:30 the beaches started crowding with people, though not excessively so. It was still mild outside and some of the bolder clammers wore nothing but shorts and t-shirts. My friends Chris and Lori, who star in the morel hunting chapter of the book, set off down the beach with faithful hound Buddha.



Meanwhile surf clamming specialists collected first dibs as the rest of us waited for the tide to drop. This is something I want to learn, mainly because it looks so ballsy to be out there in the foam and spray digging beneath a foot or two of water. How do they even locate the shows? I don't know but there must be some secret shared by the confederacy of surf diggers. Unfortunately I forgot to get a picture of any of them. Maybe they don't even show up on film.

The rest of us used our clam guns (shovels and tubes) to score a few early clams while waiting for the drop. Then, all of sudden, the out-going tide exposed the honey holes. Shows appeared all around. Crazed digging and lots of "Over there!" and "Right behind you!" exhortations. Limits filled in minutes. It was a good crop, with many decent-sized razors and easy digging. Virtually everyone had a limit before the turn.

As I walked back to the van a line of cars and trucks sped past on the hardpan beach, people hanging out of open windows yelling and hollering and generally whooping it up. "Waaaahhhhoooooo!" a long-haired freak zinged me as his buddies hauled him away from the beach in an old Dodge wagon gone to rust. They probably had a hundred razors between them. I flashed him the thumbs-up as he rolled off down the flats. It bears repeating that human beings enjoy getting their own food from places other than the supermarket. Another gift from the sea had been gladly accepted and it was time to party.

Tempura Razor Clam Sushi



If you've spent any quality time in Jamaica, then rolling sushi ought to be second nature. If not, just practice. A bamboo roller makes it easier. How you cook the rice is key. Make sure you use sushi-grade short-grain rice and rinse it in a few changes of water before cooking. The rice should spread smoothly on a sheet of nori without becoming too gloppy.

While the rice is cooking, prep and arrange your ingredients. I've used all kinds of fish, fresh vegetables, Asian-style pickled vegetables, and other flavors and textures. The following are examples, but experiment on your own. Tempura is fun because it adds a little crunch to your sushi and a hit of that fatty goodness that only fried foods can give.

4-5 razor clams, cut in half lengthwise
tempura batter (here's a recipe)
2 cups sushi rice
seasoned rice vinegar
1 package nori
Dungeness crabmeat or other fish or shellfish*
1 small jar tobiko
1/2 cucumber
1 avocado
pickled ginger
wasabi
soy sauce

* Note: As you can see from the photos, I used fake crab, known as surimi, but subsequent review of the Sustainable Sushi web site reveals that surimi is no longer considered a viable option for the sushi lover. On the other hand, Seafood Watch's Sustainable Fish Guide application for the iPhone calls it a "good alternative." This is confusing and should be sorted out.

1. Make rice. When cooked, mix in a splash of seasoned rice vinegar to taste.
2. Peel and slice cucumber into matchsticks. Cut avocado into thin slices.
3. Batter razor clams and fry in oil. Remove to paper towels.
4. Spread rice evenly on nori wrapper. Repeatedly wetting fingers in a dipping bowl makes this easier.
5. Arrange ingredients and roll. For an inside-out roll, flip rice-covered wrapper onto wax paper, rice side down.

Itadakimas!



Turns out my Canadian friends got to revel in their medal victory. But I had my own gold. We grabbed a few pints at the Porthole Pub in Ocean Shores and then made tracks back to Seattle, Winterland '73 cranked in Cora's hippie van. After enjoying a wonderful dinner recently at West Seattle's Mashiko, one of only a handful of certified sustainable sushi restaurants in the world, I had ideas for my catch: Pacific Gold, a fine rolling sushi if there ever was one.