Presenting: The mother of all photo albums.
Tuesday, January 01, 2013
"Salvage Operation" Oyster Stew
Oyster Stew a la Wixsom via Swan
Ingredients:
-35 Oysters (20 steamed/shucked, 15 raw/shucked, water within the latter 15 strained and set aside)
-1 fennel, fat bit sliced and diced
-3 medium shallots (finely chopped)
-4 cloves of garlic (minced)
-10 medium Yukon Gold potatoes (or so), drawn and quartered to bite-sized pieces
-1 scallion (to be sauteed with the raw Oysters separately)
-1 stick of butter (or a bit more if you're feeling naughty)
-Salt/pepper to taste along the way
-Pinches of Cayenne to taste along the way
-Parsley, finely chopped (for garnish)
-1 QT of Half & Half (not heavy cream, this is for lightness)
Okay, so shucking oysters is a royal pain in the ass! I won't devote too much time to what's supposed to be the proper technique or the fact that you sometimes have to bend the rules a bit to get through the goddamned pile before midnight, and I won't say that was the reason why I steamed some of them beforehand to make the job easier, although the thought did cross my mind. The reason I did that was because my mother in law, Margo Wixsom, bought a boatload of them a couple of days earlier and we ended up with whatever she and a bunch of friends and family couldn't BBQ or eat raw on that first night, and she really wanted to make the stew with the rest of them after having had the dish at the Station Cafe at Point Reyes Station recently, so she called me to steam about half as she was heading to our place. I dutifully complied without knowing what was to come next. Turns out the cold she had kicked in a bit heavy so I took on the whole job of making the stew myself, purportedly as a salvage operation so all those wonderful oysters wouldn't go to waste. There was a period in between where I wasn't sure when she'd arrive so I started looking at online recipes for the stew. It was then that I realized that I should use some of the water from within the remaining oysters to strain and set aside to get that sea-salty deliciousness that you know and love about oysters. This was not as easy to do after steaming them, as the insides of the shells were pretty much dried out with the liquid below in the steamer tainted with all the dirt and crap from the outside of the shells. There were enough raw oysters left to get the good kind of water from within.
So...I had 20 steamed oysters chilling in the fridge, and another 15 raw, with the liquid separated out. Then Margo arrived and clued me in as to the rest of the game plan.
First, I took some butter (I just threw in a whole stick and said "fuck it" without asking exactly how much), and turned on a nice large sauteeing pan to medium low. Once the butter was melted I tossed in the garlic, followed by the shallots and fennel and made 'em sweat til they were kind of limp. I tossed in a bit of salt and pepper at this point before throwing in the potatoes, stirring them up a bit and covering the pan. With the potatoes in the fold, it was about 20 minutes or so of sauteeing time, with a check-in to stir each 5 minutes or thereabouts.
Meanwhile, at this point I thought it would be a good idea to cook the raw oysters a little bit to get them about par with the steamed ones from earlier. So I tossed in about two or three tablespoons of butter, one chopped scallion (aka green onion, without the really white part) and sauteed those for 5 minutes on low. I tossed in a pinch of cayenne to keep them honest. Then I set them aside until the potatoes and whatnot were done.
I then transferred the potatoes and whatnot from the pan to a pot, tossing in a full quart of half & half, warming that up (don't boil it or you'll be sorry, said my wife, Kiera, who stepped in as it started getting bubbly). Just as the potatoes/whatnot and the half and half was starting to feel like it was maybe halfway to the warmth I wanted it to be, I added the raw oyster sautee mixture, the strained water from the shells, and finally the steamed ones. I also added about six or seven grinds of fresh pepper and another pinch of cayenne. Five minutes later, it was ready to serve.
To garnish, I added the chopped parsley and a tiny pinch of cayenne for the finish. We didn't have oyster crackers, but Kiera had made some croutons from a baguette the other night so those got tossed in as well (her suggestion).
What I thought was going to be a salvage operation ended up eliciting the following comment from Margo: "This is better than the Station Cafe's!" I doubt that, but I'll go with it. I was skeptical about how it would turn out, especially after a day of watching Bowl games interspersed with beer and Kiera's world famous chili. I highly recommend topping off such a day with this stew, serving at about 10pm. Try and employ someone else to shuck the oysters if you can. If only I had "The Help...."
Ingredients:
-35 Oysters (20 steamed/shucked, 15 raw/shucked, water within the latter 15 strained and set aside)
-1 fennel, fat bit sliced and diced
-3 medium shallots (finely chopped)
-4 cloves of garlic (minced)
-10 medium Yukon Gold potatoes (or so), drawn and quartered to bite-sized pieces
-1 scallion (to be sauteed with the raw Oysters separately)
-1 stick of butter (or a bit more if you're feeling naughty)
-Salt/pepper to taste along the way
-Pinches of Cayenne to taste along the way
-Parsley, finely chopped (for garnish)
-1 QT of Half & Half (not heavy cream, this is for lightness)
Okay, so shucking oysters is a royal pain in the ass! I won't devote too much time to what's supposed to be the proper technique or the fact that you sometimes have to bend the rules a bit to get through the goddamned pile before midnight, and I won't say that was the reason why I steamed some of them beforehand to make the job easier, although the thought did cross my mind. The reason I did that was because my mother in law, Margo Wixsom, bought a boatload of them a couple of days earlier and we ended up with whatever she and a bunch of friends and family couldn't BBQ or eat raw on that first night, and she really wanted to make the stew with the rest of them after having had the dish at the Station Cafe at Point Reyes Station recently, so she called me to steam about half as she was heading to our place. I dutifully complied without knowing what was to come next. Turns out the cold she had kicked in a bit heavy so I took on the whole job of making the stew myself, purportedly as a salvage operation so all those wonderful oysters wouldn't go to waste. There was a period in between where I wasn't sure when she'd arrive so I started looking at online recipes for the stew. It was then that I realized that I should use some of the water from within the remaining oysters to strain and set aside to get that sea-salty deliciousness that you know and love about oysters. This was not as easy to do after steaming them, as the insides of the shells were pretty much dried out with the liquid below in the steamer tainted with all the dirt and crap from the outside of the shells. There were enough raw oysters left to get the good kind of water from within.
So...I had 20 steamed oysters chilling in the fridge, and another 15 raw, with the liquid separated out. Then Margo arrived and clued me in as to the rest of the game plan.
First, I took some butter (I just threw in a whole stick and said "fuck it" without asking exactly how much), and turned on a nice large sauteeing pan to medium low. Once the butter was melted I tossed in the garlic, followed by the shallots and fennel and made 'em sweat til they were kind of limp. I tossed in a bit of salt and pepper at this point before throwing in the potatoes, stirring them up a bit and covering the pan. With the potatoes in the fold, it was about 20 minutes or so of sauteeing time, with a check-in to stir each 5 minutes or thereabouts.
Meanwhile, at this point I thought it would be a good idea to cook the raw oysters a little bit to get them about par with the steamed ones from earlier. So I tossed in about two or three tablespoons of butter, one chopped scallion (aka green onion, without the really white part) and sauteed those for 5 minutes on low. I tossed in a pinch of cayenne to keep them honest. Then I set them aside until the potatoes and whatnot were done.
I then transferred the potatoes and whatnot from the pan to a pot, tossing in a full quart of half & half, warming that up (don't boil it or you'll be sorry, said my wife, Kiera, who stepped in as it started getting bubbly). Just as the potatoes/whatnot and the half and half was starting to feel like it was maybe halfway to the warmth I wanted it to be, I added the raw oyster sautee mixture, the strained water from the shells, and finally the steamed ones. I also added about six or seven grinds of fresh pepper and another pinch of cayenne. Five minutes later, it was ready to serve.
To garnish, I added the chopped parsley and a tiny pinch of cayenne for the finish. We didn't have oyster crackers, but Kiera had made some croutons from a baguette the other night so those got tossed in as well (her suggestion).
What I thought was going to be a salvage operation ended up eliciting the following comment from Margo: "This is better than the Station Cafe's!" I doubt that, but I'll go with it. I was skeptical about how it would turn out, especially after a day of watching Bowl games interspersed with beer and Kiera's world famous chili. I highly recommend topping off such a day with this stew, serving at about 10pm. Try and employ someone else to shuck the oysters if you can. If only I had "The Help...."
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
Toast
When I come back in here and look at all of my older posts, it's striking how involved, obsessed even, I was with the 2004 election (and look where it got us). Despite the network and cable news manufactured drama of late, the 2012 election looks to me like the 1996 one. Yes, Obama is not the savior everyone seemed to anoint him as (self included at times), and he may not be as good a salesman as Clinton was, but I don't think Clinton would have ordered the raid on Bin Laden's compound, among other things. Anyway, point is, this election was over already when you looked at the GOP primaries, with their whack-a-mole frontrunners. Romney's a shitty candidate and a shitty human being. We know it, and the GOP knows it too. As the Rude Pundit has said about Obama in general, Obama played rope-a-dope in the first debate. Romney's gonna wear himself out as a debater as with everything else. Romney won the first debate? If judging on style, maybe, but in the substance he basically backtracked on his positions, as Bill Clinton himself pointed out. And KOS has a great clip of Romney debating with himself. Dude's so toast you can't even stick a fork in him. We're talking serious carbonization here.
Thursday, June 28, 2012
Roberts' quote of John Marshall
I've started reading the Obamacare ruling and the most striking thing, aside from the fact that Chief Justice Roberts came down on the side of the more liberal Justices on the Court in the first place, is this passage:
"Nearly two centuries ago, Chief Justice Marshall observed that 'the question respecting the extent of the powers actually granted' to the Federal Government 'is perpetually arising, and will probably continue to arise, as long as our system shall exist.' McCulloch v. Maryland, 4 Wheat. 316, 405 (1819)."
In interviews I've read, particularly a long one from the Atlantic Monthly nearing the end of his first term as I recall, Roberts often name checks John Marshall as the model of Chief Justice he wants to be.
Now, I need to read the rest of the ruling before drawing any conclusions, but I thought that passage being cited near the beginning was rather noteworthy. This could mean Roberts
(and, for that matter, Marshall himself) is simply espousing the fatalistic view regarding the trajectory of all Empires, but I guess I need to go back and look at McCulloch after I manage to finish the current ruling at hand.
I doubt many in the coming months of hellfire 'til November will bother to do that, and certainly among the loudest of voices you'll hear. I am certain by the time he gives his speech, President Obama will have read it. And that is the kind of person we need to keep in office, certain disappointments notwithstanding. In fact, once Obama's second term is up, and maybe about fifty years or so have passed, 44 will go down as one of a very few voices in American politics with any dose of reality, or sanity, for that matter. As I've mentioned often in here, in today's climate, President Eisenhower (and the GOP Congress he had in 1954) would be considered a "tax and spend liberal." Obama extends that to Reagan too but that is a bit of a stretch IMHO. Summer reading, here we come!
"Nearly two centuries ago, Chief Justice Marshall observed that 'the question respecting the extent of the powers actually granted' to the Federal Government 'is perpetually arising, and will probably continue to arise, as long as our system shall exist.' McCulloch v. Maryland, 4 Wheat. 316, 405 (1819)."
In interviews I've read, particularly a long one from the Atlantic Monthly nearing the end of his first term as I recall, Roberts often name checks John Marshall as the model of Chief Justice he wants to be.
Now, I need to read the rest of the ruling before drawing any conclusions, but I thought that passage being cited near the beginning was rather noteworthy. This could mean Roberts
(and, for that matter, Marshall himself) is simply espousing the fatalistic view regarding the trajectory of all Empires, but I guess I need to go back and look at McCulloch after I manage to finish the current ruling at hand.
I doubt many in the coming months of hellfire 'til November will bother to do that, and certainly among the loudest of voices you'll hear. I am certain by the time he gives his speech, President Obama will have read it. And that is the kind of person we need to keep in office, certain disappointments notwithstanding. In fact, once Obama's second term is up, and maybe about fifty years or so have passed, 44 will go down as one of a very few voices in American politics with any dose of reality, or sanity, for that matter. As I've mentioned often in here, in today's climate, President Eisenhower (and the GOP Congress he had in 1954) would be considered a "tax and spend liberal." Obama extends that to Reagan too but that is a bit of a stretch IMHO. Summer reading, here we come!
Friday, April 20, 2012
Ah, the blog. Starting to gather dust. Still here for the ages, but rapidly becoming extinct. Most of my private thoughts I keep to my written journal, one I've kept since 1990. That had fallen by the wayside a bit as the online activity picked up, but now things are evolving back to public v. private. And that is a good thing. Because unless you can read my handwriting, it's like interpreting code.
A few things have happened in the past couple of months that could be considered "life changing" to a degree. Probably the biggest event was the burglary that happened at our house back on March 13th. We had this false sense of security that an alarm system would keep us safe. But the perps had obviously been casing all the houses on our block and in our neighborhood, because K & Brenna had left to pick up Livie from preschool and headed right back. They were gone for 15-20 minutes. When they returned, the alarm was beeping and the house was ransacked. All visible electronic devices were taken, but thankfully not my external drive with virtually all of our digital photos. K ran next door to our neighbor's house (he is somewhat older and hard of hearing so did not see what was taking place) and called 911. By then our neighbor on the other side of our house's alarm had tripped off, too, so the cops were heading their way. But it took 5-10 more minutes. See, this is also what the perps know: an alarm system is only as good as the police response time. And OPD is severely understaffed. It seems our society's zeal for "lower taxes" strikes again. Oh well, I guess the real taxation comes by way of private insurance, which thankfully was there for us to replace our (replaceable) items.
Two things cascaded from that event. The first is a brand new iMac which I am now devoting time to building a proper DAW studio once and for all. I was planning on getting Logic and building off of that, but then a friend of the family, Scott Ghene, who was visiting from Rochester, floored me with what was to come next. He was at guitar center and wanted to get me ProTools, so he showed up with Protools MP Fastrack Ultra the next day. This will help me get up to speed more quickly and start taking on more music. It has been tough since our house doesn't have enough room for me to set up all of my old (antiquated, but not vintage) analog gear...so I've sort of been lying in wait. And, it's time to wake up. Huge shoutout and thanks to Scott!
The second event was much bigger (for me): We got a dog. I was the firewall between the girls' desire to have one and the reality of us actually getting one. But the burglary breached that firewall in a big way. So we took our time to find the right rescue dog. We wanted one that was house-broken, good with kids, and also somewhat menacing looking. We found him through Coppers Dream Rescue. His name was Amos, but that name is unacceptable. So we began thinking...what would be a good name that sounded somewhat like Amos? Seamus!
And here he is.
Here are some more photos.
A few things have happened in the past couple of months that could be considered "life changing" to a degree. Probably the biggest event was the burglary that happened at our house back on March 13th. We had this false sense of security that an alarm system would keep us safe. But the perps had obviously been casing all the houses on our block and in our neighborhood, because K & Brenna had left to pick up Livie from preschool and headed right back. They were gone for 15-20 minutes. When they returned, the alarm was beeping and the house was ransacked. All visible electronic devices were taken, but thankfully not my external drive with virtually all of our digital photos. K ran next door to our neighbor's house (he is somewhat older and hard of hearing so did not see what was taking place) and called 911. By then our neighbor on the other side of our house's alarm had tripped off, too, so the cops were heading their way. But it took 5-10 more minutes. See, this is also what the perps know: an alarm system is only as good as the police response time. And OPD is severely understaffed. It seems our society's zeal for "lower taxes" strikes again. Oh well, I guess the real taxation comes by way of private insurance, which thankfully was there for us to replace our (replaceable) items.
Two things cascaded from that event. The first is a brand new iMac which I am now devoting time to building a proper DAW studio once and for all. I was planning on getting Logic and building off of that, but then a friend of the family, Scott Ghene, who was visiting from Rochester, floored me with what was to come next. He was at guitar center and wanted to get me ProTools, so he showed up with Protools MP Fastrack Ultra the next day. This will help me get up to speed more quickly and start taking on more music. It has been tough since our house doesn't have enough room for me to set up all of my old (antiquated, but not vintage) analog gear...so I've sort of been lying in wait. And, it's time to wake up. Huge shoutout and thanks to Scott!
The second event was much bigger (for me): We got a dog. I was the firewall between the girls' desire to have one and the reality of us actually getting one. But the burglary breached that firewall in a big way. So we took our time to find the right rescue dog. We wanted one that was house-broken, good with kids, and also somewhat menacing looking. We found him through Coppers Dream Rescue. His name was Amos, but that name is unacceptable. So we began thinking...what would be a good name that sounded somewhat like Amos? Seamus!
And here he is.
Here are some more photos.
Tuesday, January 03, 2012
My sweet little Brenna is now 2 years old. She's a craft one, and parrots her big sister often these days. I have a lot of cute videos of this, but the time to edit and post I need more of. In the meantime, here's a photo album that chronicles the past year for our family.
Monday, December 26, 2011
It was a very meaningful Christmas this year. This is the "zone" for excitement in the girls (4 and almost 2). We opened presents at 7am and then headed south to Margo and Greg's to cook for the extended family (as we did with Thanksgiving). My focus was pretty much exclusively on not fucking up the 18 lb. Prime Rib and keeping the other eye on the Pack clinching the #1 seed against the hated Chicago Bears. And K whipped up a storm with Pork Loin Wellington with Sake sauce, some crab, brussels spouts, luscious
mashed potatoes, quinoa, fresh beet salad and more...
Since I won a Kindle Fire at the company Christmas party this year, that made my main gift to k somewhat of a no-brainier: a dodo case for the kindle fire. Made here in SF. A real book with bamboo inlay that is really elegantly designed. K's gift to me was an extension to the Kitchen Aid mixer I got for her so many years ago when we lived in El Cerrito. She had wanted a blender. And back then I couldn't even cook a proper spaghetti. The extension includes a meat grinder and a mechanism for making sausage. Hello? "Sausage!"
The big reason why this Christmas was so meaningful was the heart and soul K put into the gifts for the extended family. Instead if buying gifts this year, she made them. Hats, leggings, and embroiled bookmarks based on Olivia's drawings. I will be putting together a little scrapbook of this soon.
Love to all, b
mashed potatoes, quinoa, fresh beet salad and more...
Since I won a Kindle Fire at the company Christmas party this year, that made my main gift to k somewhat of a no-brainier: a dodo case for the kindle fire. Made here in SF. A real book with bamboo inlay that is really elegantly designed. K's gift to me was an extension to the Kitchen Aid mixer I got for her so many years ago when we lived in El Cerrito. She had wanted a blender. And back then I couldn't even cook a proper spaghetti. The extension includes a meat grinder and a mechanism for making sausage. Hello? "Sausage!"
The big reason why this Christmas was so meaningful was the heart and soul K put into the gifts for the extended family. Instead if buying gifts this year, she made them. Hats, leggings, and embroiled bookmarks based on Olivia's drawings. I will be putting together a little scrapbook of this soon.
Love to all, b
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