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Oysters to Oysterage
Garlic butter oysters from the Hanami Japanese Restaurant at the Vancouver Airport. Pan-fried with mushrooms.. not bad.. even better were the gyoza and California roll. A pleasant change to see an airport restaurant managing to serve nice food to a captive market!
A beautiful day on the Aldeburgh seafront.
Dog-friendly town, Aldeburgh.
We did our best to liberate what cheeses we could from the overloaded display at Lawson’s Delicatessen: Suffolk Gold, Mrs Temple’s blue cheese, St André – a vignotte lookalike – and a wedge of Manchega. Lots of nice looking sheeps’ milk cheeses on offer too, and you can fill your bottle of olive oil from a silver keg in the back. Hours of fun.
Here was my welcoming committee to the Butley Orford Oysterage. Some big fat grilled sardines, who followed a very tasty oyster soup – thick and creamy with chopped oysters adrift in its scalding depths.
If you can think of it, they smoke it at Richardson’s Smokehouse. Some of their fish in preparation, below.
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Eng-landed
It was goodbye Gorge on Tuesday, and hello London Wednesday afternoon.We left London last night and here we are in Suffolk, where the sun is improbably shining on a cool autumn countryside and the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival is about to get underway. Headliner is Sharon Olds; Philip Levine has had to pull out. My Suffolk hosts have promised me a tour of local fooderies with the possibility of lunch at Butley Orford Oysterage. We tried to lunch there a couple of years ago but were too late for the restaurant; the extremely kind man in the adjoining shop took pity on us and shucked us a couple of dozen to eat standing at the counter with brown bread and butter. Our non-oyster eating companion simply gazed at us in disgust while she meditated on a batch of smoked prawns.
So. Much to look forward to. Looking back on the blur of packing, packing, packing and more packing, the bright moments included a farewell trip to Fanny Bay, where the sun shone on us on our last walk through the Wacky Woods.
A lovely bay on a windy day.
What would farewell to Canada be without a dinner at Tita’s, all dressed up for Halloween? The quince maragaritas were divine and the ancho chile chocolate ganache smoother than silk.
Anton, great dog of the forest, says cheerio.
Rosewall Creek, a beautiful place to walk any time of the year. -
Coconut cake
I found a very good recipe to use up some coconut I found in the back of my cupboard – relic of a failed macaroon initiative I suspect. It seems a pretty perfect cake to me: everything can be mixed up quickly, you don’t need to ice it and it won’t dry out by morning! I reduced the quantities from the original recipe (which makes a 9×13 version) and it was excellent — and perfumed the house nicely to boot. The oil and the syrup should ensure it keeps well for several days, although it does not seem destined to last that long.
Middle Eastern Coconut Cake (Harissah)
Syrup
3/4 cup water
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla
Harissah
1 cup sugar
3 eggs
1 cup oil
3/4 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp lemon juice
1 cup flour
1 tbsp baking powder
2 cups unsweetened coconut (I used dessicated) (- if you use sweetened, reduce sugar to about 3/4 cup)- Boil the water and sugar together 5 to 10 minutes until nearly consistency of pancake syrup. When syrup has cooled a few minutes, carefully add vanilla (do not add it immediately to the scalding syrup unless you want to experience a volcano effect on your stovetop).
- Mix sugar, eggs, oil, milk, vanilla and lemon juice until blended. Add flour and baking powder to mixture and blend well. Stir coconut into batter, and pour mixture into greased and floured 8×8 square cake pan.
- Bake 40 minutes at 325 F until set and top is a light/medium golden brown.
- When cake is done and still hot, and still in the pan, poke holes with a skewer or toothpick and pour the syrup evenly over the top.
- Let cool, then cut in squares or diamonds.
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In her latest collection, Rhona McAdam navigates the dark places of human movement through the earth and the exquisite intricacies lingering in backyard gardens and farmlands populated by insects and pollinators, all the while returning to the body, to the tune of staccato beats and the newly discovered symmetries within the human heart.
“…A beautiful, filling collection, Larder is a set of poems to read at the change of the seasons, to appreciate alongside a good meal, and to remind yourself of the beauty in everything, even the things you may not appreciate before opening McAdam’s collection….”
Rhona McAdam is a writer, poet, editor, and Registered Holistic Nutritionist with a Master’s in Food Culture from Italy and a deep-rooted passion for ecology and urban agriculture. Her work spans corporate and technical writing to poetry and creative nonfiction, often exploring the vital links between what we eat and how we live. Based in Victoria, BC, and available via Zoom, Rhona is always open to new writing commissions, readings, or workshops on nutrition and the culinary arts.
