Food Lab 25: Smoked Mollusks

We knew it had to happen sooner or later. And it's not like we haven't had previews: the bourbon eggs, attempts to make cheese, homemade rice paper, lobster thermidor, gluten-free pizza crust...I could go on. But this is the first time that the main lab idea was a total #FAIL.

The day started so well. Mad Kitchen Scientist, Chef Spouse and I gathered at the Maine Avenue Fish Market to stock up. We bought big and little clams, mussels, oysters, head-on shrimp, crawfish, some octopus and a piece of salmon for The Empress and Chef Spouse, who's not huge on bivalves.

Upon arriving back, the first thing we did was put the mussels in a brine, consisting of:

4 qt water
1/2 c kosher salt
1/4 c brown sugar
Bay leaves
Dried hot peppers
1 dozen allspice berries
Fennel seed
Mix of peppercorns

Looks promising (and pretty), doesn't it?  Just you wait....

Chef Spouse then valiantly started opening the oysters, even though he'd never done it before and we had no oyster knife. It did not go well, to the point that, after destroying the shell on one, semi-successfully opening two more, and determining that there was no way to open the rest without the right tools, he left to purchase an oyster knife. While he was gone, the IAs arrived. Turns out, Papa IA is a man of hidden talents, including the fact that he worked as an oyster shucker at one point. Once Chef Spouse had the right tool and a good coach, he dispatched the rest of the oysters in quick order, and we proceeded to slurp them all down poste haste.

In the meantime, the octopus went into a marinade of:

Shallots
Garlic
Olive oil
Lemon juice
Hot peppers
Chopped fresh rosemary
Chopped fresh sage

And Mad Kitchen Scientist fired up the Big Green Egg.

Next we par-boiled the crawfish in a simple Old Bay and salt mix, since we were planning to smoke them. Why did we par-boil them first? Visions of still-live crawfish scattering the second they hit the grate in the smoker.

Then it was out of the brine for the mussels, out of the pot for some of the crawfish, and onto a slow smoke heat (around 225) until the mussels opened up, signaling that they were - or should have been - ready to eat.

Here's the thing. I've had smoked mussels before. I know it's possible. But it wasn't this weekend. Instead of forming into tasty, juicy little pockets of chewy deliciousness, the mussels were rigid and nearly impossible to pry fully open and, when we did, there were two flat bits of flesh against the inside of each shell that were kind of the consistency of pate. They didn't taste bad, exactly, and you could taste the smoke, but they were profoundly disappointing. The crawfish fared a little better, although you couldn't really taste any smokiness.

After that, we cranked up the heat in the Egg (I still think it needs a name), and put together a sort of clam bake in Mad Kitchen Scientist's new 9 qt cast iron dutch oven. It included:

3/4 L white wine
2 fennel bulbs, quartered
1 onion, chopped in eighths
Head on shrimp
2 red and 2 yellow tomatoes, also in eighths
6 ears corn halved
all 3 dozen clams

Once again, looks pretty good, right? Oh my, were we wrong.

So we kept the Egg closer to 400, smoked until the clams started to open, then popped the lid on to steam briefly.

The clams were not terrible. They were a little tough, but not inedible, and again, you could taste the smoke. The shrimp overcooked to the point that they fell apart. I couldn't eat the corn - banged one of my teeth slightly loose in an accident earlier this summer, and it's still not 100% - but the tomatoes, onions, and fennel were not great, either.

Thank goodness we had those oysters, that octopus, which we grilled, and salmon, which we also grilled, or we would've had nothing to eat but the cheese and olives The Executive Committee had put out for us.

So our first disaster. Doing a little additional research now, I realize we left out the key step with the mussels: that they needed to be briefly boiled and de-shelled THEN smoked. Same thing with the clams. The shrimp should have also been removed from their shells and dry-smoked, preferably after being treated to a rub or marinade of some sort. To paraphrase The Wedding Singer, this is information I would have found useful YESTERDAY. Fortunately, we had plenty of champagne, sparkling wine, and white wine to console ourselves with.

Food Lab 15: Moules et Frites

I know it's been two months since the last Food Lab, but in our defense, this one got rescheduled twice, and even with all that, the IAs weren't able to join us. It's been a busy spring.

Speaking of spring, I can think of few better ways to spend a lovely spring day than hitting the Maine Avenue fish market with Mad Kitchen Scientist, Chef Spouse, and the Executive Committee, buying several bags of mussels, heading home via Sapore, where we picked up truffle oil and truffle salt, and then labbing them up with frites and several takes on aioli.

Speaking of the frites, Mad Kitchen Scientist had rendered some beef tallow, which he brought to add to our typical peanut oil deep fry. Chef Spouse claimed he couldn't taste the difference, which I think is mad - there was a DELICIOUS difference. Sure, beef tallow's probably not all that healthy, but then again, fries aren't exactly arugula salad to begin with, and since when has "healthy" been a criteria for Food Lab (never, just in case you haven't been paying attention)?

But the real stars of the day, other, of course, than the truffle oil, were the mussels. I've eaten the delicious bivalves many times, but this was my first time making them. I did all the de-bearding, and that was an interesting process. Many of the mussels, which were resting in a bowl of cold water, were very slightly open. As soon as I started messing around with the beards, they all, to coin a phrase, clammed up tight. It was slightly disconcerting to be reminded that, although they weren't nearly as feisty as last weekend's blue crabs, those mussels were still very much alive.

We decided that four mussel preparations would likely get us into enough trouble. We chose:

1. Traditional white wine, cream and herbs (in our case, shallots, garlic, parsley, tarragon and bay)
2. Traditional tomato base (to which we added shallots and garlic, parsley, bay, oregano, capers and olive oil)
3. Fennel (with white wine, garlic, bay, a sweet/hot red pepper, and butter to finish)
4. Asian (with garlic, a sweet/hot red pepper, cilantro stems, ginger, scallions, and a combo of mirin, rice wine vinegar, sriracha and chicken stock for the liquid)

In the first round, it was traditional cream versus fennel. The traditional cream won, although we were all surprised at how tasty the poached fennel was.

The second round was tomato base versus Asian. We agreed that that tomato base would make an EXCELLENT pasta sauce (in fact, we couldn't finish them all, so we removed all the remaining mussels from their shells, dropped them in the tomato sauce, and guess what Chef Spouse and I will be having for dinner tonight or tomorrow?).

The shocker was the Asian mussels. It might have been the tasty, tasty rooster sauce, but we could not get enough of the broth.

Oh, and I should point out that making mussels could not be easier. Debeard them and stick them in a bowl of cold water while you prep whatever ingredients you want to use for the sauce (make sure you include enough liquid to cover however many mussels you have in the pot you'll be using). Bring your sauce ingredients to a boil, skim the mussels out of the water (so all the sand they dropped stays the bottom of the bowl), and drop them in your boiling sauce. When they open up, they're done, so take them out, boil the cooking liquid/sauce down a little more, pour it over the mussels, eat.

Now Chef Spouse is not a huge shellfish/bivalve guy, so he was mostly excited about making aioli.

The first batch did not turn out. To say the least. We had curdled salad dressing. Even starting over with a new egg yolk and using the bad batch as the oil didn't help. We had three theories as to why: eggs too cold, too high a percentage of extra virgin olive oil, and we put the citrus in too late. Mad Kitchen Scientist pointed out that, while the egg might have been cold when it first went in the container, as soon as we started working it, it was no longer cold. Chef Spouse made an all extra virgin olive oil version later to test that theory, and it came out fine (other than tasting REALLY strongly of olive oil), leaving us to conclude that you MUST put the citrus in with the egg yolk right at the beginning.

We also made 4 versions of aioli:

1. Traditional (and whisked by hand) - egg yolk, lemon, garlic, salt, half and half mix of canola and olive oils
2. Truffle - like the above, but substituting in 1 tsp truffle oil for an equal amount of the olive oil
3. Saffron - this was the one with 100% extra virgin olive oil, plus a hearty pinch of saffron threads that had been reconstituted in hot water (you bung in the water and the threads)
4. Sriracha aioli - egg yolk, lime instead of lemon, 1 clove of garlic, an equal amount of ginger, salt, all sesame oil and, at the very end, a generous shot of rooster sauce

The hand whisked version was creamier, but the others (all done with an immersion blender) were fluffier. The truffle aioli was excellent on the fries. But once again, rooster sauce won the day. Oh rooster sauce, how I love you.

Now all this aioli left us with quite a few egg whites, so of course we made some Ramos gin fizzes (and thank goodness our favorite liquor store started carrying orange flower water, because ordering it online was a pain). We decided our unofficial motto is: "No egg white left behind!" But mostly what we drank was Belgian beer. What else, right?