It's a New Year and I have been ignoring this blog for far too long (yes, 3 years!) Not too much has changed over the years, which is a good thing, since sometimes you want things to stay as they are. Frank and I rang in the year in a quiet fashion, but we went to town through our meals! A bit over indulgent, but hey, that's what celebrations are for. I recently purchased a book called What to Drink with What You Eat and The Flavor Bible. Both are comprehensive guides to food pairings and I find them both fascinating. This compelled me to try out what they say is the perfect pairing of Guinness and oysters. I personally think Corona and oysters are perfect together, but the Guinness combo was interesting. It wasn't exactly what I was hoping for, as I found the Guinness to be too earthy with the oysters and I like to cute the brine and creaminess with something a little crisp. The oysters came from my new favorite place in town, Fish King!
The lineup was Malpeques, Hama Hamas, and Fanny Bays. The Malpeques were my personal favorite. In addition we got some of Fish King's Ahi Poke, which is nicely heavy on the Soy Sauce, but not too salty. We had Meyer lemons from the tree, freshly grated horseradish and the obligatory bottle of Tabasco. We bought a dozen of each oyster and it took us 3 days to eat them all, even though Frank kept saying he could finish them off right then. On the 1/01/10 we supplemented the oysters with some ahi sashimi and the next day with brie and cured sausage. Yikes!
On to the Gravlax!
Enough about oysters. I think my favorite thing this New Years was the homemade Gravlax! Fish King had some gorgeous Scottish salmon and I have been itching to make my own cured salmon for some time now. I found quite a few simple recipes on TasteSpotting but this is the one I went for, by Six Course Dinner and it was sooooo good! Next time I will try adding the Scotch! We had it with homemade goat yogurt cheese, more of those Meyer lemons (our tree exploded) on top of some Acme Olive Bread that I had kept in the freezer from our last trip to SF.
Overall, not a bad start to the New Year...
