My pal Bruce Bottomley, who spent more than 15 years working and raising a family in Japan, often feels like a transplanted Asian man in Halifax. To compensate for the pull of Japan, and his homesickness for Asia in general, he creates small tasks for himself to shorten the distance between himself and his spiritual homeland.

Right now, he takes Korean language classes from Korean students and he works on perfecting classic Korean dishes. I (enviously) follow him @bruceley on twitter as he posts one delicious photo of dinner after another.

 [By the way, he's a talented photographer, too. Here's a flickr stream of his photography, some of which have gone viral in Japan, and another very active flickr stream he started to document his other passion: ramen noodles.] 

 Bruce’s wise guide to learning another another cuisine. If you’re smart, you’ll imitate him: 1) Invite native speakers to your home to speak with you. 2) Cook one of their native dishes for them. 3) Take notes as they discuss (argue over) your technique. Once you learn multiple perspectives over how a dish is cooked, you get to the heart of the dish itself.

Recipe: Bottomley’s Samegyetang

This was the third time Bruce cooked Samegyetang. Apparently it’s a summer dish in Korea. Funny, with it being January and cold season, it seems to me that by adding giant hunks of ginseng and garlic that will annihilate any traces of cold in your system, you are inviting me to eat this on a weekly basis throughout the winter.

Ingredients:

• One chicken (say 3-4lbs)
• One whole head of garlic
• Ginseng root – 2×3 inch piece
• 3/4 c sweet rice – soaked for one hour
• Dried figs 4-6

Directions:

• Wash and rinse chicken.
• Superstition alert: remove the tips of the chicken wings (to lessen chance of spousal infidelity) and the nub of the tail (it’s fatty).
• Stuff bird with half the garlic, one piece of ginseng root, rice and figs.
• Seal up the bird with some toothpicks or skewers or whatever
• Put the bird in a pot. Like a stock pot. Pour water in the pot to cover the bird (about half full, say) and bring to a boil.
• Add the rest of the garlic and ginseng to the pot.
• Bring to a boil, skimming off the fat, keeping the lid on with a steady boil about 40 minutes or until done.

The bird is done when the meat comes off the bone with ease.

Serving the bird:

• Take out the stuffing from the chicken. Place a scoop of rice in everyone’s soup bowls. Everyone should get a fig. Add in some stock from the pot, so the consistency is one of soupy rice porridge.
• Pull apart the chicken and lay it out on a platter. Dress it with chopped green onions, and liberal amounts of salt and pepper. Chop up the ginseng root and leave on the plate. You can chew on it if you like.
• Serve with kimchi or Kaktuki (daikon radish kimchi), on the side. Everyone helps themselves to the chicken, then adds a few scoops of the kim chi to their bowl, so the clear broth turns red and gets some heat going.

Save the broth! You have some lovely soup broth there, brother. Use it the next day with some noodles.

One large chicken, with a heaping first course of dumplings, and lots of tea, fed four people. Finish with peanut cookies.

Recently, I listened to my favourite food radio show Bien Dans Son Assiette (Plug: it’s worth learning French just for this program, Monday – Friday, 8pm AST) dedicate a whole hour of prime time to the oyster. What an idea!

David McMillan, one of the owners of Montreal’s popular Joe Beef restaurant, talked oyster quality, name dropped many brands, and shucked oysters.

The show got me thinking.

We have quality oysters in Halifax, just not a wide variety of them. Most are local. Really local. Maybe too local. In this case, the 100 mile stance isn’t worth it. We sit on the doorstep of greatness – we have to include more New Bruswick and PEI oysters on our menus.

Rowan Jacobsen wrote a must-read book (if you are into oysters) called Geography of Oysters. Aside from being nearly comprehensive, he lists a dozen oysters to acquaint yourself with. Three of them are close to Halifax: Beausoleil (NB), Colville Bay (PEI) and Glidden Point (Maine).

Question: why don’t I often see many of those oyster brands here? Before I continue my complaint, let me tell you what we do have and where you can get them.

1. Now is the time to eat oysters

There are four main months for oysters. July, August, September and December, according to Nick Budreski, owner of CanEsp, a high end distributor of Nova Scotian seafood. His father grows delicious Black Point oysters in Pictou County, Nova Scotia.

December is the best time of year he says. Oysters are fat and juicy, busy building up stores to get through a long winter night.

“Because the water gets so cold around here, they will not be breathing or feeding. It will be reduced, almost in a comatose state, for probably about 3-4 months in March and April. They are preparing to go into hibernation. If you were looking to maximize the length of time you would have oyster out of the water, in a cooler, then now would be the time.”

What are you waiting for? Go forth and eat.

2. Retail sources for the season

On the radio program I mentioned, they interviewed a fishmonger at Quebec City’s Old Port Farmer’s Market. He sold up to seven varieties at any one time, including Caraquets, Beausoleil, La St Simon and Colville Bay (called the best oysters in the world, by Jacobsen).

Our Farmer’s Market sells one variety, ShanDaph. The big guys in Bedford aren’t adventurous, either. It is ridiculous that our big seafood shops only carry one or two varieties. However, small fry Peter Boudreau at Mike’s Fish Shop will order in outside varieties for you – just not on short notice, like three days before Christmas.

[To be honest, it might be good marketing, if not business, to run a mini oyster bar at the market on Saturday mornings, educating and introducing people to new oysters. It's salesmanship wot moves 'em. I volunteer to shuck eat lots of oysters. But I digress...]

• Mike’s Fish Shop: ShanDaph oysters, a Northumberland Strait oyster from Big Island
• Clearwater: Malpeques.
• Pete’s Frootique: Black Points, from Pictou.
• Fisherman’s Market: Malpeque and North Harbour, Cape Breton.
• Bill the Lamb Guy in the old market sells wild Tatamagouche oysters, but their season ended December 10th.

3. Restaurant selections for the season

• Fid alternates between Raspberry Points (PEI) and Eel Lakes from Yarmouth County. Right now he has Raspberry Points.
• Five Fisherman oyster bar sells Eel Lake, Caribou and Atlantic Choice now.
• Press Gang: oyster bar sells Beausoleil, Black Point, Sober Island (from Sheet Harbour)
• Ryan Duffy’s: Black Point
• Salty’s: Beausoleil and Wallace Rose (from Caribou Island, Pictou Co.)
• LATE ADDITION: Brooklyn Warehouse: Barnstables from Massachusetts

4. What I’d like to see more of

A list, based on oysters that either I’ve eaten before, or ones I read about via Jaconbsen’s book. And I’m not even counting West Coast oysters.

• PEI: Pickle Point, Colville Bay, Bedeque Bay, Canada Cup, Summerside
• NB: La St Simon, Caraquets, Lamèque, New Brunswick Flat, Northumberland
• Maine: Glidden Point [Getting Maine oysters over the border is a hassle, because oysters are live and that means extra paperwork. Still, it’s not that much work.]

5. Storing oysters

• Keep them in the fridge
• Don’t leave in plastic: they are live animals and need air, even if they exist in a comatose state
• Keep their seals moist: Put them in a large bowl and cover with a wet cloth. Rewet the cloth every couple days.
• Do not store on ice.They will wake up and start sucking up the ice water. This shortens their lifespan and makes them lose their briny taste. [McMillan says that if you see a fishmonger storing their oysters on ice, don’t buy from them.] 
• Serve them on ice, to keep ‘em cold and quiet.

5.1. Over a month in the fridge

McMillan says oysters will last one month easily if you follow the proper storage. This is another reason why our fishmongers and restaurants ought to bring in more oysters. Unlike fish, they last and stay fresh a long time.

“When the guy from Joe Beef says one month, that’s actually something that is not abnormal,” says Budreski. “We have seen them last as long as three months in a cooler. So long as the seals are properly moistened, then they can last for that long.”

6. What to drink with oysters

“Champagne and oysters are a pretty good thing,” says Dennis Johnston of Fid. He likes a sparkler, like the L’acadie vineyard brut sparking wine.

I’d have to agree with the L’acadie choice, and there’s no shortage of other local drinks to choose from. Tideview cider works. So would a Gaspereau wines muscat. Then there’s beer. Guinness is traditional, but you could do Montreal’s McAuslan’s Oatmeal Stout, or Garrison’s Martello Stout.

7. To resume my complaint about our oyster culture

Okay: here is my complaint and my wish for Christmas. I want more oysters in this city!

Occasionally, we see more varieties at the 5 Fisherman or The Press Gang. But people in Montreal get all sorts all the time; so do Torontonians and big city consumers across North America.

We are in the midst of oyster gold here, so why be oyster poor?

“It has to do, sort of, with the dining culture down here,” says Dennis Johnston of Fid. “Being Nova Scotian and having a restaurant down here, for over 11 years now, it’s not in the culture to go out on a regular basis as it is in larger urban centres. So right there that limits you. When people go out, they look for comfort foods, like steak and mash.”

That’s not a complaint. He’s stating a reality.

Yes, there’s a long history of Canadians-New Englanders of all economic classes eating oysters. I am sure we fit in somewhere, but that’s another story. The past. Pre-1970’s, no one ate shellfish much at all in Nova Scotia, says Johnston. Industry and farming brought it back.

Oyster respect is different in France, where oysters and the Christmas season go hand-in-hand with homards.

“If you show up at a party with a box of those oysters in France, people go apeshit for that! I went to France for Christmas one time with my in-laws. We came back with 3 cases of Belons and everybody sits down with some champagne and hoes down for a pre-lunch lunch.”

So we have a cultural hurdle to get over.

The other hurdle is expense. A buddy of mine once worked at Rodney’s Oyster House in Toronto. That was a memorable year. I spent a lot of time eating oysters on his staff discount. I also heard amazing tales of excess: Bay Street brokers overdrinking, overeating, overstimulated, going hog-wild while half-naked.

Let’s face it: Oysters, like lobsters, are expensive. A truly great oyster bar in Halifax won’t likely happen without enough people on expense accounts to support it. Still, given the proximity and lifespan of these shellfish, it would be nice to see more of the great oysters appearing in shops and on menus.

I’ll add a deluxe oyster shack bar to my ever-growing wish list of stuff I want to see in Halifax along with a bar that specializes in American and Canadian microbeer and a magically appearing taco truck.

However, oyster fans can go apeshit for oysters here, too, even if restaurants don’t offer a wide variety. Buy retail. Buy with friends. Because boxes ranges from 70-100 oysters, go in on some. Then eat them at home to your heart’s content.

Buy a box for New Year’s and watch your party degenerate into an 18th century tale of gluttony, libido and decadence.

8. Coda: On Eastern oysters (Crassostrea Virginica)

“The Eastern is the Riesling of oysters. From the wrong place, it can be simple, one-dimensional, almost flavourless, but when grown in great waters, it can achieve a brilliant sublelty and refinement, a transparency of sea and minerals that some consider unsurpassed,” writes Jacobsen.

This one variety grows naturally all along the Eastern North American seaboard.

Oysters are not big business in Nova Scotia. We are the weakest of the other maritime provinces. Nova Scotia accounts only 4% of national oyster production, versus 20+% in NB and over 30+% in PEI. British Columbia is the biggest overall producer in Canada.

“What interesting is the microclimate. The algae, the salinity of the water is what changes the flavour of each oyster,” says Dennis Johnston.

“I was talking to some guys down Penobscot way. They grow their oyster wild and actually move them at varying times down the Penobscot River towards the ocean, to slowly increase the salinity as the oysters grow, to ripen them.”

So many secret tricks to this business. So many foragers, growers and distributors who guard their pearls of wisdom!

I found a phenomenal ginger snap recipe which I will now share with you.

1 cup sugar

1 cup butter

3/4 cup dark molasses (Even though I really don’t like Crosby’s creepy new ad campaign, I used Crosby’s).

1 egg

1 1/2 teaspoon vinegar

3 cups flour

1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

2 teaspoons ginger

1/8 teaspoon white pepper

Cream butter and sugar. Add molasses. Beat in egg and vinegar. Sift all the dry ingredients, then blend the dry into the wet. Butter a cookie sheet and start putting teaspoonfuls onto the sheet. Cook at 300 degrees F for 7 to 10 minutes.

In any case, this is a good recipe if you like ‘em really buttery and sweet, almost caramel in flavour. The key is, as with any butter cookie, not to overwork the dough. Just do it enough. And if it feels too crumbly, add more butter and sugar!

2 cups cake flour

1/4 cup rice or cornstarch

8 oz butter, on the cold side, in pieces.

10 Tablespoons of sugar

Mix the flours. Knead the butter and sugar with fingers or a fork, working quickly, so you don’t warm the butter too much. Maybe go outside without any mitts on, have a smoke and let your fingers turn blue, then go in and mix stuff. Work in the dry ingredients. Break them into six balls. Put parchment paper on a cookie sheet, the flatten the dough balls. Pat them down with your hands so the shortbread is about half and inch or less thick. It will spread out a little when cooking. Then take a fork and poke holes in the cookie. Use the fork to make a nice little design around the edges. Put them in the fridge to cool for an hour. Preheat the over to 300 degrees. Bake for half an hour or until the edges are nice and brown. Take out, cut the shortbread into slices and let cool. Pour a scotch and away ye go!

Young & Dublin will offer community dinners at Local Jo’s Cafe on Oxford, starting in January and running until March.

“One of the main objectives of doing things at Local Jos is that a lot of the values that Local Jos has are really similar to the value of Young and Dublin,” says Chavarie. “The whole meat thing and where your food comes from was a big part of it. Same for Local Jo’s.”

Picnicking is more than a titillating renaissance painting. It’s more than Edwardian haircuts, white linen and wicker baskets. It’s more than a Truffault movie with bicycles, love triangles, bottles of wine, bread and cheese. Of course, it is all that, and more, but a picnic is a state of mind. It’s event and escape, a mix of the senses. I see picnics as outdoor gesamtkunstwerk: total gastronomy pieces set in the outdoors. Sometimes you plan them, other times they are random performances that happen to you.

If you can’t get behind that, you probably shouldn’t picnic. Or, you should leave the picnic to professionals. In the spirit of giving, I have planned three imaginary picnics you can try to do on your own. Each one is a set piece involving place, time, food, music and literature.

Fantasy Picnic #1: Walk all day to the end of Cape Split. Pull out a reed mat and sit. Eat raw molluscs. The ocean washes through your earbuds. Listen to Boris or some other Japanese noise rock, while shooting back fresh sea urchins, holding their prickly shells gingerly in your hand. Wrench open some littleneck clams and suck out the salty bivalve. Complete mollusc metal meal by drinking cold sake and reading some Black Mountain poets.

Fantasy Picnic #2: Five minute picnic. Walk through a steaming parking lot eating a jumbo veggie hot dog with mustard, mayo, ketchup, sauerkraut, synthetic bacon bits and hot peppers. The rubbery dog squelches against your teeth. You hear Bachman Turner Overdrive pumping from a Pontiac Sunfire in front of Canadian Tire in August. Sit on the hood of your car, experiencing a full-course plastic suburban meltdown. A dogeared copy of Our Band Could Be Your Life, owned by an older cousin whose musical taste you respect, sits in the front seat of your car.

Fantasy Picnic #3: Put Canned Heat‘s “Going to the County” on repeat in your portable music player. Eat cold fried chicken, potato salad, salted radishes and carrots on a checkered tablecloth by a slow moving river. Read Harry Crews to a tattooed lover while you both eat and drink your way through lunch with a washtub full of ice cold beer. Maybe some Ram Jam would go down well to complement the sound of fat asses locking themselves into the black holes of inflatable inner tubes. Finish the day by tubing down the river.

My latest (real) summer picnic.

For the type of picnic I recently experienced, you will need to go to a green spot by the ocean, or with a view of the ocean. Maybe Needham Park or the Dartmouth Common or the park by the Dingle. We went to a little beach near Hubbards. Our friend Larry, a legendary home cook, prepared a picnic basket for Jenny and me. When we arrived at his house, the picnic was already packed into a hamper. They disassembled it, broke down the contents, then repacked it with efficiency of a kind (retired) SAS soldier, whereupon a friendly amount of money changed hands to compensate the cook for his time and goodwill.

The meal was superb. It caught the traditional romance of a British picnic. We should have listened to a Zombies or Kinks boxed set and brought along some badminton racquets. Reading could have included Evelyn Waugh’s Scoop. But we didn’t do any of that.

We relied on randomness of other people, just as we did with our meal. What happened was a performance piece. As we tucked into this meal, an extended family of 20 to 30 surrounded us. They unpacked their hibachi. They pulled out giant watermelons. They had a dozen bags of chips. A Price Club sized jar of Miracle Whip and Cheese Whiz sat on their picnic table. We sat on the grass, in a small imaginary bubble so becoming to the blogger, as children and seniors watched our folly. Feeling a firm sense of the absurd that only a food snob could feel as the fourth wall of picnicking caved in on top of us, I felt the yawning chasm between art and life. It was like a salty breeze blowing a sand in your sandwich.

In other words, these people were completely essential to the moment. I loved it.

Larry’s picnic menu:

• Hot Smoked Salmon and Dill Mayonnaise Sandwich: Home smoked.
• Roast Chicken and Curried Mayonnaise Sandwich: picnics need chicken.
• Cheese and Onion Tartlets: Pastries at picnics are essential, too.
• Fruit Salad with Lunenburg Fruit Wine Dressing. Apples, blackberries, strawberries and raisins (soaked in rosewater) in a Lunenburg pear wine and ginger syrup dressing.
• Fresh cheese and Oatcakes Crispy, thin oatcakes. Fresh, homemade cheese. Salty and sweet.
• Golden Cupcakes filled with Chocolate Grenache: Eaten in the car on they way home.
• Homemade Lemonade: Pink lemonade infused with mint. Like Rollins says, Do it.

It’s an rookie mistake on the part of a new business owner, but I sure hope it can stay open. I was there for lunch with another Passable writer, Melissa Buote, and the place was crawling with journalists from Metro and the CBC. Please go to the restaurant (3081 Gottingen), have some killer jerk pork (read Passable writer Melissa Buote’s review in The Coast) and help Hibbert by signing the petition to save the restaurant.

http://www.theenergyproject.com/takebackyourlunch