Meroir Dinner Party and Tea Tasting at Daniel’s Home

Oysters harvested at Budd Inlet (photo by Bonnie Zion)

1st course:  Oysters smoked with Spicy Seattle Chai served over charcoal and smoldering seaweed

For 12 people you will need:

-a small bag hardwood charcoal -2 dozen medium sized oysters -1 big pinch of loose chai -a few cups of fresh clean seaweed

We started by igniting the charcoal, letting it burn down, and placing it in a deep cast iron pot with a lid. After that we sprinkled tea on the coals to create smoke and placed a layer of wet seaweed on the coals to help create steam. We put the oysters on top of everything before placing the lid over the pot. When the dish is served the cloche is removed and the tea smoke and sea scented steam billows out.

People may need to be equiped with shucking knives to help open the oysters. If the oysters get hot enough in the pan they will start opening. However, in practice many of our oysters were only gently warmed and did not open.
Sourcing:
Oysters-retrieved at the evergreen beach courtesy of Emily Dunn-Wilder and the shellfish club
Seaweed-Harvested at Duckabush river
Tea-Spicy Seattle Chai blend from encore teas of Olympia

2nd course: Soy soaked egg yolks and Meroir rice

For 12 people you will need:

-4 cups short grain rice -Clam or oyster juice -fresh clams to pickle (along with some nice pickle juice -see below) -alternatively  you could buy pickled clams -apple cider vinegar -honey -salt and pepper -fresh rose hips -fresh edible seaweed -sugar -soy sauce -mirin -36 egg yolks

We took the liquor from several oysters and mixed it with purified Duckabush river water to cook the rice. We had bought pickled oysters from Hama Hama and enjoyed them so much that we decided to re-use the pickling liquid for the clams we harvested. We mixed up our own quick pickling liquid with apple cider vinegar, salt, pepper, and honey. Then we muddled some rose hips with sugar and infused their flavor into water which was also used in our pickling liquid. To this rose-hip-infused-vinegar-pickle-brine we added seaweed. The next component of the dish was egg yolks in a soy sauce marinade. To make this you just slip as many whole egg yolks (separated from the whites) as you want into a mix of 1 cup light soy sauce and one cup Mirin (sweet Japanese rice wine). Its important to do this at least a day ahead of time. The yolks will turn dark and concentrate their flavor as osmotic action pulls water out of the egg’s cells. The yolks can be put into the liquid up to three days ahead of time. We got the egg yolk idea from a New York Times article. Check out this link: http://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1017850-soy-sauce-pickled-eggs

To plate: Take the pickled shellfish and dice it. Then, mix it into the rice. Place the rice into a bowl in a mound. Top it with three of the egg yolks surrounding a clump of the pickled (and drained) seaweed in the middle of the bowl

Sorrel cocktail with candied seaweed/lemon peel garnish (Photo by Lydia Hammond)

Sourcing:
Rose hips-picked at Duckabush river tidelands
Oysters-retrieved at the Evergreen beach courtesy of Emily Dunn-Wilder and the shellfish club
Clams-gathered at Duckabush river tidelands
Seaweed- gathered at Duckabush river tidelands

3rd course: Sorrel Cocktail

This was an experimental cocktail mixing the bright, acidic, herbal flavor of sorrel micro-greens with he briny flavors of the Puget Sound. We thought Gin would be the most appropriate alcohol with this. The cocktail ended up evolving as we were making it. The sorrel flavor was not as strong as we had hoped; so, we started adding Meyer lemon juice for a similar flavor, balanced it with simple syrup gave the cocktail a frothy cappuccino-like head by shacking the hell out of our cocktail mix with egg-whites in a jar.

For 12 people you will need:

1 cup packed sorrel (tender young greens if possible) -2 cups simple syrup (made from 1 cup water and 1 cup sugar) -juice of 5 lemons and zest from 1 -1 cup fresh seaweed (we used bladderwrack) -sugar -1/2 litter of gin -egg whites from 5 eggs (pass these through a strainer to break up the whites so you don’t slime your guests)

start by making the candied seaweed: Dip fresh seaweed in warm simple syrup and coat with sugar then bake until sugars caramelize. Add the simple syrup along with the juice of 5 meyer lemons to a blender. Then juice the sorrel by blending it with about a half cup of water and straining it through a fine strainer.  Place everything in a container that has a tight fitting lid. Add the egg whites and gin and shake shake shake until foamy! Pour into a glass and garnish with candied seaweed and a touch of sorrel.
Sourcing:
Sorrel-purchased from Armando who works at Black Hills Organics.
seaweed-harvested from Duckabush river tidelands

Candied seaweed from duckabush (Photo by Bonnie Zion)

4th course: Bug bitten black tea ice cream

For 12 modest servings you will need:

-2 cups good heavy whipping cream -1 cup of the best whole milk you can find -3/4 cup cane sugar -25 grams flavorful Chinese black tea (we used a fairly pricey bug bitten black tea bought from red blossum tea in San Francisco) -6 egg yolks

Warm the Heavy whipping cream (we used Organic Valley brand), whole milk (our milk was Dungeness Valley Creamery whole raw milk), and tea stirring to keep the milk from burning on the bottom. When the milk is steaming hot, but not yet simmering, turn off the heat and let the mixture stand for 30 minutes. Strain out the tea and save the tea leaves for candying. They will be used as a garnish on your finished product.

In a bowl, mix a little bit of the strained cream mixture with the egg yolks and sugar. By doing this you can gently warm the yolks to the temperature of the cream before putting them on the stove (this is called ‘tempering your eggs’). Combine the egg yolk sugar mix with the rest of the tea-cream in a sauce pan and heat, stirring constantly until the cream becomes thick. This magic is the result of the yolk proteins unfolding in the hot cream and cross-linking to themselves creating a custard. Put the custard in the fridge over night.

To freeze the custard you can use an ice cream maker. If, like us you don’t have one, you can put the custard in two small zip-lock bags. Put each of these bags into a larger bag and fill the larger bag with ice and a couple handfuls of coarse salt. Seal up the larger bags and shake them, adding more ice if you need to, until the custard is pretty well frozen. This took us about an hour. Once its shaken long enough the ice cream will set up and then its ready to be put in the freezer overnight.

To candy the tea leaves dip them in simple syrup, roll them and sugar and bake them in the oven at about 350 F until they’re delicious (about 10 minutes).

To serve: Give everyone a little scoop of ice cream, top with the candied tea leaves, and maybe a couple grains of salt.

Aerial view of toasted barley tea (photo by Bonnie Zion)

Tea served between our 4 courses:

bug bitten Chinese black tea, Song Zhong Phoenix Oolong Tea- purchased from red blossom tea company,

Green tea from Sichuan, China, Barley tea handmade by Ze, Fermented dark tea from Hunan China