seafood – Riveted

Seafoodie Things in Sitka

Laura Domela — Tue, 07 Jul 2015 19:15:58 +0000

Airship Goes to Alaska

The weather! It's STILL like this here in Sitka!

Since Tiffani and Deke left on Sunday morning, we've mostly been depressed catching up on work and boat cleaning and laundry and stuff like that. We ordered an oil filter that'll be here tomorrow, so we'll do our 250 hour oil change here in Sitka this week. We also ordered a new carburetor for the outboard from Gary's Outboard, which hopefully will lessen the amount of swearing when we go exploring by dinghy.

We went for a walk the other day down to the Sitka Sound Seafoods retail store to pick up some fish. We got two pounds of large spot prawns (frozen), some halibut, some king salmon, and some coho. We figure it'd be good to have some fish up in the freezer for when we aren't catching and still want to eat some fish.

I love these wooden houses across the street from the fish market. They remind me of something from a video game landscape:

The other night I decided to cook up the spot prawns. I found a couple recipes and made up my own from there. First, I put some tomatoes in the oven with olive oil, salt, and pepper to roast them.

I shelled the prawns, and then made a sauce/stock by browning the shells with a chopped shallot in a pan and then adding two cups of white wine to reduce. I reduced that down until I had about a half a cup of liquid and strained it into a bowl for later, discarding the shells and shallot.

I sauteed the prawns for about a minute in the same pan with a little olive oil and then set them aside. Next, I sauteed some garlic and more chopped shallot, adding the saved stock at the end, and some chopped spinach. When the pasta was done, I added it to the pan with the garlic, shallot, roasted tomatoes, some additional chopped fresh tomatoes, stock, and then tossed all that with a bunch of spinach to wilt, then added the spot prawns and a little butter.

I served this topped with a bit of shaved romano cheese and some of the alderwood smoked sea salt I picked up the other day in Sitka from Alaska Pure Sea Salt.

So good!

Spot prawns are so much better than regular shrimp…so sweet and buttery flavorful. Love 'em! Also, did you know that spot prawns start their lives as males and then all of them at some point change into females?

Last night we grilled up some Alaskan Halibut, and tonight we're going to go out to dinner. We tried to get into Ludvig's Bistro up the road (recommended) while Tiffani and Deke were were but they were completely booked on Friday and closed for the holiday weekend after that, so we'll go tonight and toast Tiffani and Deke on their 8th anniversary.

Visitors in Olympia

Laura Domela — Mon, 09 Feb 2015 14:54:45 +0000

Yesterday morning our friend Cari came into town to see the boat and hang out a bit. We all walked up to the fish market (Olympia Seafood Co.) to stock up before she left.

We picked up a dozen Blue Pool oysters (which we ate for lunch), some crab cakes (which we ate for dinner), some smoked salmon spread, some frozen razor clams, and a pound each of fresh Alaskan halibut and king salmon. This market is great! The people are super helpful and friendly and we'll definitely come back here!

After our morning visit with Kari, my mom came up from Kelso with her two white shepherds, Pirate and Journey, for an afternoon visit and to see the boat. (Olympia's about as close as we'll get to her for a while…about an hour's drive.) We cleated the dogs' leashes and got them set up on the aft deck and went for a little cruise in the bay here. Here's Pirate at the aft door, looking very at home:

It was such a fun visit!

After my mom left we headed back over to Swantown Marina for the night, and this morning after we finish up the first round of work, we'll head up to Hartstine Island. Happy Monday!

Seattle Public Market

Laura Domela — Tue, 27 Jan 2015 22:40:28 +0000

This afternoon I took a little break from work and walked up to the Seattle Public Market for some fresh seafood and produce.

City Fish Co. was calling my name (even though the guys closer to the main entrance who do all the yelling and fish-throwing are pretty entertaining):

I passed on the uni shots and opted for a dozen Kusshi oysters and a whole cooked Dungeness crab and my bill was $24. I think maybe I got the "Seahawks go to the Superbowl" discount or something, because those oysters are $18.99/dozen and the Dungeness crab was $10.99/lb and I think I had about a pound and a half crab. (Either that or the guy helping me REALLY liked our 2 minute chit chat about yoga.) I think we'll need to return in a few days and stock up before we head out to our next destination (unknown at this point).

It was gray and rained/drizzled most of the day, but I hear the weather is supposed to improve, and Thursday and Friday both look like possible sunny days.

Mignonette Sauces for Oysters

Laura Domela — Sun, 27 Jul 2014 15:02:06 +0000

For raw oysters eaten on the half shell, I normally make some variation on a classic mignoette sauce: champagne vinegar, Prosecco or Champagne, shallots, fresh ground pepper. Since we picked up enough oysters yesterday for more than just one meal, I decided to make a few different sauces, so I googled "mignonette recipes" and found several that sounded interesting.

I ended up making five:

1. Classic mignontte (front, standard favorite)
2. Lemon/cucumber/jalapeno/vodka (right, bright light yellow, one of our favorites)
3. Shoyu/scallion/rice wine vinegar/ginger (dark one in the back, least favorite…we needed pickled ginger or seaweed for this one to work better)
4. Sriracha/grapefruit/tequila/scallions/vinegar (red one on the left, another favorite).
5. The fifth sauce (not shown) was more of a relish, with minced cucumber, ginger, rice wine vinegar, shallots, and pepper. It was good, but not as good as the two favorites and the classic.

We had three oysters courses last night. For the first course we smoked/grilled a few of the Shigokus on the Traeger with a bourbon chipotle butter sauce (delicious, we'll definitely be repeating this). The second course was a half dozen of the teeny tiny Olympia oysters, with the classic mignonette, and the third course was a dozen Shigokus with the variety of sauces, and a side of sauteed spinach. It was fun and delicious!

Exploring Hood Canal

Laura Domela — Sat, 26 Jul 2014 21:19:22 +0000

We headed out to explore Hood Canal today. We're staying right near the town of Hoodsport on Hood Canal near the Olympic National Forest in Washington. Hoodsport is apparently renowned among SCUBA divers as a staging area to view the giant Pacific octopus (cool!!!)

The shores along the canal are mostly rocks and shells (oyster, clam). Clam season is apparently over, but oyster season is not, and there were plenty of people out doing what looked like gathering shellfish as we drove past.

We were headed down toward Shelton to Taylor Shellfish Farms to pick up some of their Shigoku oysters (our favorite). Shigokus were developed by Taylor Shellfish Farms (right here!) and we were lucky enough to discover them about 1/2 mile from our house in Portland at our local market that happens to carry them most of the time. (But it's still fun to get them right from the source!)

Taylor Shellfish is quite an operation.

The seafood store had everything we wanted (Shigokus, and the tiny Olympia oysters) and we left with four dozen Shigokus and two dozen Olympias. Hey guess what we're having for dinner tonight and tomorrow night??

Shigoku oysters are grown in floating bags that are attached to stationary lines and floats that rise and fall with the tides, so the oysters are tumbled twice a day. This low-energy, low-maintenance method is a variation on British Columbia’s more labor-intensive Kusshi, and it continuously chips off the oysters’ growing edge and forces them to “cup up." The shells end up deep and scoop-shaped.

This results in a small, dense oyster with a light clean taste of cucumber and salt. (My mom does NOT like oysters, and she liked these, so if you're not an oyster fan but want to be, try the Shigokus.) Also, they're super easy to shuck compared to many other oysters.

More scenery along the canal:

The road runs right along the water in most places:

Cute little beach house:

Our next stop was the Hardware Distillery Co. in Hoodsport. I read about this place online and decided we should check it out. The owners, Chuck and Jan, started the distillery a few years ago near their vacation cabin in Hoodsport and it's become quite a little hot spot in town!

Chuck was pouring today, and started us right off the bat with their award-winning aquaivit. (It was great!) He had a special bottle from the freezer out for the folks who were finishing their tasting as we arrived, so in all the excitement we were included in that special moment, and then started at the beginning with the vodka made from peach wine (oh hey, and ended full circle with another tiny pour of cold aquavit).

We bought a bottle of the R Gin and a bottle of the Bee's Knees Plumb. For the R Gin, Chuck takes up about 100 pounds of barley to Hama Hama Oyster Co. (just up the canal a bit) and they cold smoke it in their big smoker. R Gin has a subtle smoky taste, and the name comes from the (discredited) old wives’ tale that oysters are best in months with the letter "R".

The Bee's Knees Plumb is a distilled honey mead, made from 80% honey and 20% plums from Chuck's friend's plum trees. It's good! I'm not sure what we'll do with it yet, but we'll figure it out.

The building housing the distillery used to be the Hoodsport Hardware Store, hence the name Hardware Distillery. They've got a great vibe in there, and the decor is all old hardware and cool distillery equipment. Definitely worth a stop if you're coming through and are into this kind of thing. We also tasted in sequence the white dog, and then the same spirit that had been aged for just a little while in that small barrel…interesting to taste the difference a little wood makes.

Next we headed back up the canal and decided to try the Hama Hama Oyster Bar for lunch.

There's a market where you can buy fresh oysters and clams and other stuff, and outside around the corner they've got a "snack bar" where they're serving up oysters (raw and grilled), crab cakes, steamers, etc. while you sit outside on the water, in the sun, having a totally chill day eating delicious fresh seafood.

Fun atmosphere, great service, nice people, delicious seafood! We had some grilled oysters (since tonight's meal will be mostly Shigokus and Olympias on the half shell), a crab cake, some steamer clams, and a glass of Oyster Bay Sauvignon Blanc. Everything was delicious and we'd come back here in a second!

The grilled oysters with served two sauces: (1) a chipotle bourbon sauce (so good!) and a classic escargot sauce of butter and herbs (also good, but I loved the chipotle bourbon one best).

Hoodsport is a cute little town, and this whole area feels authentic and not too touristy at all. There are several state parks along here that (of course) are pretty dang crowded right now (a sunny weekend in July) but overall the place still feels pretty mellow.

We're just back hanging out at the Airstream now. The RV park here (Glen Ayr Resort) is totally fine. It's nice, right across the road from the water and we're backed up onto what I hear is a small creek (I'd have to go check to verify). We've got full hookups, but their internet is out (we're using our AT&T datacard with router and doing just fine). I'd stay here again, but I might try to see if this place had any waterfront spots first, because it looked fabulously close to the water as we drove past an hour ago.

Barleans Fisheries in Bellingham

Laura Domela — Sun, 13 Jul 2014 17:34:26 +0000

Yesterday we headed over to Barleans Fishery with Leigh & Brian to stock up on some local seafood. We picked up some fresh Dungeness crab and Manila clams for dinner last night, and for the freezer, flash frozen fish and shellfish including: scallops, spot prawns, jumbo prawns, halibut, tuna steaks (3.99 each!), smoked salmon, and several filets of true cod. We also got a few cans of smoked tuna and regular tuna.

It's all seafood in there, except for the silicon ice trays and a couple bags of fresh/frozen blueberries from our trip to the berry farm near Champoeg just before the 4th of July. Should last us a bit!

Sea Creatures on the Oregon Coast

Laura Domela — Wed, 22 Jan 2014 20:05:23 +0000

1. First we ate some sea creatures for lunch at the South Beach Fish Market:

We had razor clams, prawns, and halibut fish & chips.

2. Then, we headed over the Oregon Coast Aquarium to look at some sea creatures behind glass.

Behold, the giant octopus:

Sea nettles, and moon jellies:

Colorful anemones:

This one was about 10 inches across (or more):

I always wondered what sand dollars looked like when they were alive. They're purple, and fuzzy:

We were there for the 1pm feeding of the otters…always entertaining!

Backlit bat ray, taken from the tunnel in the "open waters" section of the "Passages of the Deep" exhibit:

Non-pictured sea creatures we also saw: puffins, sharks, sea lions, harbor seals, tons of starfish, halibut, a bunch of sea birds, and a really ugly but cool wolf eel (as he lunged for a fish!).

3. We stopped on our way home and picked up some sea creatures to eat for dinner. We got a couple pounds of clams that I plan to cook up with some garlic, white wine, and saffron, along with an arugula salad and that'll be that.

The sun is out and we're continuing the rest of our work day from camp:

A good day on the Oregon Coast!

Fresh Crab and Salad for Dinner

Laura Domela — Tue, 02 Jul 2013 12:16:36 +0000

Dinner last night: fresh cooked crab we picked up yesterday in Ilwaco, and a tossed salad with arugula and tomatoes. I made a dip for the crab with light mayo, garlic aioli, a squeeze of lime, and a little bit of Deke's homemade mustard (yum!). We've got crab left over for omelettes.

It was still pretty warm out even when we finally had dinner at about 8:30pm — we were happy not to have to use the oven or the grill.

Portland — Newport — Florence

Laura Domela — Sun, 05 Aug 2012 01:16:39 +0000

This weekend we're in Florence for my Aunt Zelma's 100th birthday party. We left Portland and it was 102 degrees. We got to Newport and it was 59 degrees. It was sunny and gorgeous, but there was also this thick, fast-moving low bank of fog hugging the coast that was pretty cool to watch. In this bridge photo we're moving just out of it…at the top of the bridge we were above it. Hard to capture, but here's the shot:

We stopped in Newport and had some fish and chips at the South Beach Fish Market. Usually this is the place we get crab or crab sandwiches when we're camped nearby, but we decided to get some fish and chips instead this time.

We had halibut and prawns, and they were good. The fries were the weak link, for sure. They had a great horseradishy cocktail sauce for the prawns, and a basic tartar for the halibut. Okay, so…about the fish and chips thing. We've had some really good fish and chips, but I think we've figured out that "the best" fish and chips are usually the ones we're eating right now. Several places in a row, we thought "Hey, these might be the best, huh?" This time, though…nope. We were certain they were not the best. The fish and chips we had in Oak Harbor at Seabolt's Smoke House were better, and the fish and chips we had in Bandon at the Bandon Fish Market were better, and the fish and chips we had in Port Orford at Griff's on the Dock were better. So I think if the fish and chips are great, then the "best fish and chips you ever had" might be really hard to decide without a side-by-side taste test, and more often it seems like the best are just the ones you're having right now. But if they are just so-so, then you know right away. What do you think? What are your favorite fish and chips?

Also, what about all the "World Famous Clam Chowder"? We saw a billboard on the coast this time advertising "Nationally Famous Clam Chowder." Could this be a new honesty in clam chowder advertising happening here?

Fresh Seafood on the Long Beach Peninsula

Laura Domela — Wed, 02 May 2012 19:59:34 +0000

We drove into Ilwaco and grabbed some fish-n-chips (and shrimp-n-chips) at Imperial Seafood on the waterfront. After lunch we headed over to pick up some fresh crab at the fish market a few doors down. Unfortunately, they are closed until mid-May.

So we drove a little bit North up 101 and found Sportsmen's Cannery and Smokehouse and picked up three freshly cooked crabs (cleaned and cracked), along with some of their in-house canned jalapeno albacore for sandwiches in the future.

This is a cute little place right along the highway. Kevin said that when he was 8 years old, he and his family came up here from Texas and went salmon fishing and then took all their fish to this same exact place to have it canned.

Also, here's an arty portrait of a crab that was crawling around in the tank:

We're having fresh crab for dinner tonight, and I believe tomorrow morning Kevin is going to make my favorite breakfast for me: fresh crab, wilted spinach, and poached eggs on an english muffin topped with hollandaise. Sweet!

(Posted by Laura)