I picked up a gratis copy of edible San Francisco from the Ferry Building Marketplace on Tuesday. The magazine celebrates the culinary heritage of San Francisco, Marin and San Mateo counties, and features some fantastic food writing! I'm looking into a subscription because we will learn a lot about California agriculture and aquaculture _and_ this is a wonderful resource to go along with our Kitchen Chemistry course.
We don't seek out organic food, but we try to "Buy Fresh, Buy Local". When we learned of Hog Island Oyster Company, we immediately made plans to visit the farm in Tomales Bay, about 45 miles away in Marin County.
The drive to Marin County is always one we look forward to, but we had never driven along Hwy. 1 north of Marin City. This is what awaits us just across the Golden Gate Bridge. This is fifteen minutes north of that, and this is another fifteen minutes up the road. Of course, the 30-mile journey takes 3 hours since we cannot NOT pull over at every lookout. We are simply captivated by the windblown coasts of Marin County. So beautiful.
Since we are craving oysters by now, the guy at Hog Island sent us to The Marshall Store, an oyster bar less than a mile away. Tony, the owner, also farms oysters for Hog Island. The folks at The Marshall Store are great - we learned about oyster farming (they use the French method), about Tomales Bay (the water is only 48 deg. Farenheit!), Drake's Bay Oyster Farm (they raise Pacific Ocean oysters), Hog Island and the smaller island, Piglet. We even learned to shuck oysters.
Best of all, we got to do what we came to do - eat oysters!! We sampled half a dozen raw oysters and half a dozen barbequed. Oh. My. Word. It was hard to stop. The meat was tender, smooth, plump, slightly briny, mild and sweet at the same time. Mmmmmm.... they are Crazy Good.
Good Eats episodes:
Shell Game (Season 8)
No comments:
Post a Comment