Vanessa Barrington

Mendocino Abalone Plus Recipes: Abalone Ceviche with Kumquats and Abalone Chowder with Bacon

I’m not a diver but I’m a cook so I feel fortunate to have been invited on a camping trip with a bunch of abalone divers. I’m always happy to let my imagination run wild in the camp kitchen. And even happier to be able to eat copious amounts of one of the last wild foods available to us.

After my chilly weekend at Van Damme State Park in Mendocino, I have a new appreciation for abalone and the divers who harvest it. Because you know what? It’s not that easy to catch abalone. You may think, “How hard can it be? It’s not like they run away or anything, right?” And though abalone can’t technically move fast enough to flee from divers, they do have other deterrents at the disposal. As does the Calfornia Department of Fish & Game. 

 

First of all, while there are seven of species of abalone in California, the only ones the divers are allowed to take are Red Abalone no smaller than seven inches in diameter. To preserve the population, licensed divers are allowed three abalone per day with a maximum of 24 per season. The season runs from April through November with a closure in July.

 

Regulations also prohibit the use of oxygen tanks, so would-be abalone divers have to be highly skilled.  Imagine diving down to a depth of 20-30 feet in freezing water, while holding your breath. Once you’re down there, you have to find the abalone, make sure they are the proper size and species and then move swiftly to pry them off the rock with a special tool. Tip them off to your presence and they seize onto the rock, making it impossible to remove them. One strike and you’re out. The seas can be rough, and visibility can be low, adding to the difficulty.

For these reasons it’s also dangerous. Emergency responders in Mendocino County rescue about 15 abalone divers each year. Nearly every year, somebody dies while diving for abalone. Last year’s death count was three.

 

Lets say you’re diving and you make it back to the surface with your abalone and head to the campsite to relax. First you have to pry the abalone out of their shells (this sounds nicer than saying you have to kill the live mollusks), and then you must trim out their goopy reproductive and digestive organs, as well as the black edges and the tough bits of the “foot.” Finally you have to pound the hell out of them or they’ll be too tough to eat. Then you can relax while someone else cooks them (if you’re lucky). In reality, most divers do cook. Usually they grill it, poach it, or slice, pound, bread, and pan-fry it. All are perfectly respectable ways to enjoy the sweet, oceany flesh.

On the third meal, something a little different was in order. I’ve made ceviche with abalone at home previously, but I wanted to do something a little different, so I brought along some kumquats to go with the usual ceviche flavors. The chowder was entirely unplanned. It was an incredibly cold weekend and, on one of our frigid hikes, Haven and I were fantasizing about chowder. We had potatoes in the cooler. We thought if only we had cream and bacon, we could make a fabulous abalone chowder. Luckily one of the other campers had both cream and bacon so our dream came true. 

Here are the recipes—proportions are estimated. We cook by feel in the campsite.

Abalone Ceviche with Kumquats

2 abalone, sliced thinly into strips

6-8 kumquats, sliced as thinly as possible

2-3 serrano chiles, finely diced (seeds removed or left in depending on how much heat you want)

1/2 bunch of cilantro, chopped

1/2 of a red onion, cut half, then thirds lengthwise and then thin, half-moon slices

Juice of 5-6 limes

Salt to taste

Toss all of the above in a bowl and let sit for at least 30 minutes or up to 24 hours.

 

Campsite Abalone Chowder

This was truly a camp collaboration incorporating the ideas of many. One of the beautiful things about this chowder was that we were able to use the tough abalone trimmings to make a super flavorful stock. If there had been celery, I definitely would have put some in both the chowder and the stock. I used leftover cooked bacon from breakfast for the chowder, but if you don’t have cooked bacon you could sauté it in its own fat, add the onion and skip the butter if you want (or pour off some of the bacon fat and still use butter for flavor)

Stock:

2 pounds abalone trimmings

1/2 of an onion, roughly chopped

1 slab bacon

Chowder:

1/2 stick butter

1/2 of an onion, diced

2 to 3 russet potatoes, peeled and diced

1 abalone, diced

4 to 5 pieces of cooked bacon, crumbled

Cream to taste (about a cup)

Salt and pepper to taste

Put the abalone trimmings, onion, and bacon in a pot and cover with cold water. Bring to a boil and simmer slowly for 1 to 2 hours, strain. (can be made one day ahead and refrigerated).

In a soup pot, melt the butter, add the onion and sauté until translucent. Add the broth and bring to a boil. Add the potatoes and simmer until tender. (I added water to stretch it here because the broth was super flavorful) Add the abalone, bacon and cream and simmer until the abalone is tender, about 5 minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Serve immediately.

This Ain’t No Chicken Factory: Soul Food Farm Tour

 
On a recent rain-threatening Saturday I set out with a friend and fellow Soul Food Farm CSA member for Soul Food’s first ever farm tour. We weren’t sure what to expect but we were pretty sure we’d like what we saw. I mean they wouldn’t invite people if it weren’t going to be a pleasant experience.

Though the wind came up, roaring through the chicken houses and causing hens to scurry and cluck, the weather held. It was a lovely romp through the different parts of the farm followed by lemonade and chicken salad sandwiches in the kitchen, where we chatted with Alexis and one another between bites. We even made it to the tail end of the Berkeley farmers’ market on the way home. Pretty perfect Saturday if you ask me.

These are the meat birds. Note the clean straw and healthy looking chickens. They take about 10 weeks to grow. These, I believe, are about 7 weeks old.

These are the meat birds inside their house. The modular houses are disassembled and moved around the farm every few months to keep things clean. The birds are never given any drugs to keep them healthy. Sage oil in their water acts as an anti-microbial. 

Sort of like a chicken/or Easter egg hunt but not. Now this is free-range.

3 day old chicks that arrive by US Mail to the post office, where Alexis picks them up cheeping away in their boxes. They look like Peeps don't they?

These are the laying hens outside, but under a shelter. Note how healthy they look. Their beaks have not been clipped, which is commonplace in the egg industry (yep, even the organic, cage free kind).

What a pretty pretty girl!

Comfortably roosting in clean, dry straw.

These were gathered in the hen houses by farm tour participants.

Llamas and chickens are friends. The llamas keep the predators away from the hen houses at night.

Here we are walking up the gentle slope of the farm. This is the site of the devastating fire last fall that nearly killed the farm just before its CSA program was about to launch. Amazing how nature renews. 

What a wonderful opportunity to be able to feel so connected to the eggs and chickens and people who feed me!
 

 

A Healthy, Restorative Meal with Sablefish and Dal

I rarely cook a protein, starch, veg meal anymore. And I rarely eat fish either. Our oceans are just so endangered, that it’s a once-in-awhile treat these days. And it’s gotta be on Seafood Watch’s green list, or I’m not even eating it as a treat.

If you’ve never cooked sablefish, you’ll find that it’s a reasonable substitute for the overfished rockfish and snapper usually used in dishes like fish tacos, and other preparations where you want a mild, white fillet of fish. It has a moist texture that lends itself well to a variety of preparations. I always find myself wishing it were a little flakier and a little less gelatinous, but it works pretty well. You may also see it as Black Cod at the fish counter.

This was a really easy dinner to make with little prep time and few ingredients. Its only down side is the number of pots and pans I used. One for the fish, one for the rice, one for the greens and yet another for the dal. If you cook the dal on a different day, that will make it a little less dish intensive.

For the dal, I use red split lentils and just cook them in water with a little turmeric and salt until tender (takes about 20 minutes) Then I sauté chilies (either fresh green or dried red) with mustard seeds, cumin seeds, garlic, shallots, and whatever else I’m feeling like adding, over high heat in oil or ghee and then quickly add the sizzling hot mixture to the dal, stir in and cover to permeate the dal with flavor. Ratio of lentils to water is about 4 to 1. The rest you’ll have to eyeball.


For the fish, I followed a recipe in Niloufer King’s fabulous James Beard Award winning My Bombay Kitchen for masala seafood. You don’t even need a recipe. It’s basically cayenne, turmeric and salt rubbed into scored fish fillets that are then fried quickly in a very small amount of oil. It’s wonderful and wonderfully easy. The rest of the meal is just sautéed mustard greens and Massa Brown Rice with some sprigs of fresh cilantro.

And Hey! I’m going to Mexico for two weeks so you might not hear from me. I might try to blog from there, but not sure. At any rate, expect some good posts about Mexican food when I return. I’m staying with a family and I hear the Senora is a very good cook and I’ve been assured that I’ll be welcome in her kitchen. Qué Bueno! Feliz Navidad Y Año Nuevo!

Wild Salmon-Potato Cakes

I'm turning into my mother. She used to "do things" with canned salmon. Namely a tasty but disturbingly cat-food textured dip served with Ritz crackers. I never have "done things" with canned salmon other than eating it on salads like tuna. In one of my ongoing battles with odd bits of leftovers and an overfull pantry, I came up with an elegant way to use leftover potatoes and canned wild salmon. Yep, I "did something" with canned salmon.

The impetus consisted of three steamed russet potatoes that never quite made it into Susan’s birthday potato salad with the Yukons, because it hadn’t seemed quite right to mix them.

Those potatoes had been taunting me from the vegetable drawer for a couple of days. Just daring me to use them. I kept thinking of eggs, and breakfast, and hash, but it just never happened. Suddenly it was Monday night and I was faced with a drawer full of fresh vegetables and a mean protein craving, with nary a speck of flesh defrosted.

Resourcefulness kicked in.

Makes 4 small patties

3 medium steamed russet potatoes, peeled
1-7.5 ounce can of wild salmon, skin and bones removed (I snack on them or feed them to the dog) and flaked
About 2 tablespoons freshly chopped herbs such as parsley, tarragon, chives, whatever you have
A dollop of mayonnaise
Harissa paste or a sprinkling of good paprika or Aleppo pepper
Salt and pepper to taste
2 to 3 tablespoons vegetable oil

In a medium bowl, mash the potatoes with a potato masher until they are broken down, but with some texture remaining.

Add the salmon, herbs, a small spoonful of mayonnaise, the harissa or other pepper, and salt and pepper. Mix and check for seasoning. Also check to see if the mixture holds together when you try to form it into a patty. If not, add a little more mayonnaise until it does.

Form the mixture into 4 patties, dividing it evenly. Heat the oil in a cast iron pan over medium high heat until it is shimmering but not smoking. Carefully lower the patties into the pan. Cook on the first side until crisp and brown (2 to 3 minutes) Turn and cook the other side for an additional 2 to 3 minutes until brown. Serve immediately accompanied by seasonal vegetables. In this case it was steamed then sautéed broccoli with red pepper flakes and garlic, along with roasted golden beet and arugula salad.

An unexpectedly great Monday night dinner, and easy too!

Sea Vegetables & Have you heard About the Free & Fun Workshops at The Cog?

I’ve been teaming up with Nishanga Bliss on a series of FREE workshops at The Cog. It’s been fantastic, so I just wanted to share. Nishanga is a wealth of knowledge about sustainability, nutrition, and tasty food. A chef and acupuncturist, she holds a Masters in Chinese Medicine.

We make a great tag-team because we’re both passionate about food and strive to eat and teach others to eat as sustainably and healthily as possible. And Nishanga knows about all the stuff I don’t know about, like sea vegetables, so I love her for that. Plus she’s cool.

Her workshop really opened my eyes. I’ve always enjoyed sea vegetables when I’ve encountered then but I knew next to nothing about them. She talked about how sea vegetables can absorb and flush environmental toxins from our bodies and that they are a super sustainable way to get some of the important nutrients we get from the fish in our dwindling oceans (PS: I’m reading Bottomfeeder great read and—yikes!) But we have to be careful where our sea vegetables are coming from…because they do absorb toxins and heavy metals and we don’t want to eat that stuff. There’s a local brand called Mendocino Seaweed Company that harvests from the clean waters off the Mendocino Coast.

She demonstrated and talked about the different types of seaweeds from strand seaweeds like arame, hijiki, and sea palm, to the strip seaweeds like kombu and wakame to the sheet seaweeds like dulse and wild nori. I went from knowing that kombu was good for cooking beans and that I really liked nori to knowing much more—like the different applications for each seaweed and that dulse is seriously tasty. I even walked away with some good recipes.

We’ll be doing another round of workshops starting in May. We’re thinking of fermented drinks, another kraut/kimchi workshop, homemade body products, main dish salads, and some other ideas. These are free workshops so they are a great way to gain knowledge without shelling out $50-75 for a cooking class. You don’t have to be a member of The Cog, but we’d love it if you join. Then you can run your own workshop on whatever you do well. This is just the beginning of what a community based food system looks like. Check it out! And check out Nishanga’s blog. You’ll learn a ton.

Do you want to drive or eat?

Rush hour is not happy hour  8-08-08 5:15pm

I was going to post a recipe for corn chowder, but then I read this. Sorry about the political break. I’ll post the corn chowder in a couple of days.

Speaking of corn: Is it fuel or food? Well, increasingly it’s fuel, along with a lot of other agricultural crops. Politicians and pundits have been behaving as if biofuels are the answer to our fuel crisis and some of them have been throwing the blame for high food prices on newly prosperous Indians and Chinese who want to eat meat (the same crops that are used in biofuels are used to feed livestock). This always sounded to me like demonization, and now this newly released report says it’s biofuels causing the crisis.

Now I know the question above is a false choice, due to the way our cities and towns have been planned. I also know that we are privileged enough here in the US to not really have to make that choice…yet. And I’m not trying to preach because I realize I’m lucky to live somewhere that makes it easy for me to choose to bike instead of driving. I just want to make the point that we as a society need to seriously think about this question. We cannot continue to live and get around the way we have been indefinitely.

Photo Credit: Susan Fleming

Victory over Bureaucracy = Edible Civic Center Garden

It’s pretty amazing to witness the transformation from grass to edible landscape over at the Civic Center. They’ve torn out the lawn, carted it away, and designed these gorgeous circular beds. Saturday, July 11th was planting day and what a wonderful day! These plants are putting down roots in the same spot where the World War II Civic Center Victory Garden sat. At one point 40% of the produce consumed in the US was grown in Victory Gardens. We can do it again!

Victory Gardens 2008 + partnered with Slow Food Nation and City Slicker Farms to create this garden. On September 21st the garden will be harvested and the harvest donated to the San Francisco Food Bank.

It was a great day and felt historic. This movement has been going on for awhile now, but it’s been pretty easy to ignore for those who don’t pay attention to such things. It’s pretty hard to miss now!

This is a start, but I wish the garden could be permanent.

At the height of planting.

Native foods of the Americas bed

How to Clean Fresh Squid &Thai-inspired Squid Salad

With more types of seafood becoming nearly extinct or too expensive to afford every day, I'm always looking for delicious, healthy, sustainable, affordable, preferably local seafood. Two of my favorites come from the Monterey Bay and fit all the requirements above: Sardines and squid. Unfortunately, both can be daunting to clean. I picked up 3/4 of a pound of nice looking fresh squid at the Berkeley Bowl for something like a buck-fifty. Can't beat that. Don't be tempted to get the already cleaned version. It's more expensive, it was processed in China and caught who knows where, and it won't taste as good.

The best written instructions I've ever seen for cleaning squid come from Andrea Nguyen's book, Into the Vietnamese Kitchen, a stellar book that I highly recommend. This is her method with photos to aid understanding.

Step by step instructions: Position a bowl in the sink below the cutting board.
Pull the head free of the body and get ready to cut the tentacles off just above the eyes.

Make the cut and pull the head and the guts that come with it out. Put the tentacles in a colander and the guts and ink in the bowl.

If you have a dog, she'll go googly eyed over the heads--waste note want not!

With the dull edge of the knife, scrape the squid so that the gunk inside falls into a bowl positioned under the cutting board. Do this several times to get as much gunk as possible and at the same time, scrape off the mottled skin so the squid is clean white. Turn the squid over and do both sides.

Here's what it will look like.

Reach inside the body and pull the bony quill out, making sure to get it all.
Place all the cleaned squid in the colander and rinse thoroughly, letting the water run through the bodies to remove any remaining sliminess.  Drain and cut the squid as your recipe directs.

This salad is a variation on one in Paul Johnson's excellent book, Fish Forever, for which I tested all the recipes. To prepare squid so it is tender, you either have to cook it for 30 seconds or something like 30 minutes. Anything in between produces tough rubber bands. To cook the squid for this salad, all you have to do is bring a large pot of water to a boil and add the cut squid. Once the water returns to a boil, turn the heat off and let sit for 30 seconds. Drain, rinse and immediately toss in a simple, spicy fish sauce-based dressing. Then you add whatever vegetables you're using. I used different ones than Paul's recipe-purple cabbage, lettuce, green onions, herbs, carrot, avocado, and served it over rice noodles. Easy peasy, healthy, no fat, and fantastic.

Got Biological Diversity? Watch "The World According to Monsanto"

If Monsanto has its way, we'll never ever see images like this in future farmers' markets. (this photo was taken at a tiny market in Shreveport LA). Here's a link to another post I wrote (on the blog that pays me) about the film. Not lazy, just being efficient. Please set aside an hour and a half and watch it. It's important that everyone be aware of this stuff. Make sure you scroll down to the second film link in the post under "editor's note"  as the first one doesn't work any longer.

The Healthiest Breakfast on the Planet

Ok, I’m sure you could debate that, but you gotta admit, seaweed, wild salmon, soba noodles and broth beat out a lot of other typical options. We always eat fairly intelligently around here, but the cold weather makes us crave carbs. And however good the Marin Bagel Company Bagels may be, they are not the best way to start the day, if you want to stay awake and in fighting form.

This bowl of nourishment is really easy to throw together and it’s hot, which is important in these days of keeping the thermostat at 61 degrees. After you eat it, you’ll feel light on your feet and quick in your brain, and the fat and protein in the salmon will hold you until lunch. Most important, it tastes really good (As long as you don’t mind eating fish for breakfast). I’ve been into canned salmon lately for salads, pastas, and things like this. It’s really cheap, it’s wild caught (better for your body and the environment) and it’s surprisingly tasty. The brands vary a lot, but a good one will be moist and flaky. At the risk of sounding like a shameless shill for Whole Foods Market, their 365 brand of canned salmon stands out among the brands available.

Make a quick dashi broth with bonita flakes (directions on the package)
Add a few strands of wakame and boil until reconstituted
Add soba noodles and boil until tender
Turn off heat and add salmon
Garnish each serving with nori strips and Goma Shio
Eat

You can make a big batch of dashi broth ahead of time to have on hand.
You can add shredded cabbage, kim chee, sauerkraut, sprouts, avocado…pretty much anything you want to keep it interesting and varied.