STRANGE GRUB - Giant Penis Clam (aka Geoduck)

Now that LAM reads my blog regularly, I debated for 2.5 seconds whether to use the word PENIS, but I figure since I'm talking about FOOD and not my sex life, she'll get over it.

Ain't that right, Mama? :P

Moving right along...

So the name geoduck is derived from a Pacific Northwestern Native American word and is pronounced GOOEYduck or GWEEduck - essentially nothing like it's spelled. And one can only assume that the guy in charge of that transliteration had an iffy grasp on English phonemes.

If we just called it Giant Penis Clam, we wouldn't have that whole pronunciation issue and people wouldn't ever have to wrack their brains trying to remember what it's called, but I guess that might cause marketing issues and people would want to eat them less than they already do.

Unless of course we're talking about the exports to China (most of our geoduck crop is exported to China, BTW), where they'd probably sell doubly well if they were called Giant Penis Clams because superstitious Asian people in Asia seem to have an affinity for eating anything that remotely suggests that its consumption would result in penis or potency enhancement. (I never said I wasn't going to talk about other peoples' sex lives...)

And if you think I'm making a big penis-pumped phallic to-do about this clam, when you see the pics, you'll know why it's near impossible not to.

So the flesh of geoduck, if you've never had it, tastes like a cross between your average fan-shape shelled clam - say, a Littleneck - and the sweetest scallop you've ever tasted, with texture ranging from a cross between firm jello and oyster on the shell end becoming progressively firmer toward the *ahem* protruding end, otherwise known as its siphon or neck, to where it's downright crunchy at the tip. (The Man says that was so wrong, but WHAT - IT'S TRUE.)

The one I photographed here has a rather short neck and I think he had a pretty bad attitude about it as a result, making it extra challenging to pry him from his shell.

Before you get started have a pot of hot tap water or boiled water ready for purposes you'll see in a bit. Then cut through the tough ligament thingies attaching the clam to the shell on both sides.

Then pry the shells apart, and !Voila! Dumbo.

At this point, give the geoduck a good and thorough rinse in cold water. If it smells like anything but fresh ocean water, it's probably not so fresh, and you might not make yourself sick, but you'll most likely turn your palate away from geoduck for a very, VERY long time if you eat it.

If it smells murky or rotten at all, you should get your not small amount of money back. (This stuff ain't cheap.)

When you pull the body of the clam away from the shell, you're going to find this thing that looks like bwalls, and well, it is a gonad, so it's basically bwalls.

People tend to discard this part, but it tastes sweetly of the ocean and makes a wonderful stock for seafood based soups and stews.

By the way, this tubey thing isn't a clam penis, nor is it some kind of parasite. It's something called a crystalline style and is part of their digestive system. Tastes like a mildly salty chap chae noodle, actually. :P

Ok. Once the gonad is removed, you have the mantle (the fleshy part that was covered by the shell) and the siphon (the fleshy part outside the shell), and it is all covered by an outer rubbery *sheath* called a periostracum. To remove that sheath, dunk the clam in that hot water for 15 to 20 seconds. Doing this will not only facilitate the removal, but it'll firm up the flesh and make it easier to slice. 

Start from any edge and rub the periostracum away. Once you've got about an inch pulled away with which to pull, slowly and gently pull on the periostracum toward the end of the neck. It should pull away with ease. You may have to do this a few times to get all of the stuff off the clam.

Pile o' RubberIMeanPeriostracum

In the front, the siphon, in the back the mantle, both completely edible.

I like to separate them into a mantle piece and siphon piece, then cut the siphon piece in half so I can wash away any sand or dirt that's accumulated there.

On the day I took these pics, we ate the entire clam as sashimi, so I cut them thusly. (That's an Alton-ism.)

mantle pieces

siphon pieces

And served them with choh gochoojahng (Korean style), wasabi and shoyu (Japanese style), and paper thin slices of lemon.

This is geoduck sushi from another day from Nozomi in Carlsbad. Mirugai (MEErooguy) is the Japanese word for geoduck, so you'll likely find it presented on the menu as such. And they for the most part only serve you siphon pieces.

But the stuff also makes delicious soups and ceviche among other things as well.

The fact that this is a Strange Grub post does however indicate my awareness that geoduck is not for everyone. You have to have an open mind and adventurous palate to allow yourself to get past the obscene appearance and uncommon texture. But if you, like I, are a sucker for superfresh raw things that smell and taste of the ocean, you may want to give The Giant Penis Clam a blow go.

Mama, you may pick your jaw up off the floor now. <Turns off phone.> :P

shinae

STRANGE GRUB - Stir-Fried Sand Fleas...

I probably should have started with the uni post, but this is the first post in what I *PLAN* (and to know me is to know that *plan* means something closer to *hope against my undisciplined behavior patterns*) to be a regular feature in which I eat what I know other people consider to be weird crap, and then write about it.

Though I am utterly humbled by things like Zimmern eating woodworms in the Philippines and Bourdain choking down poopy wildebeest poopchute in Namibia (I think it was wildebeest, anyway), I have always considered myself a fairly adventurous eater. I attribute a good deal of it to having been born in Korea and being introduced at an early age to a lot of food ideas and flavor profiles that most folks here in the US might consider challenging.

Emerita talpoida
aka sand crab
aka mole crab
aka sand flea
aka sea cicada
aka What's For Dinner :)

When I do eat things that make other people go *ewww*, it's out of sincere enjoyment or hope that I will find enjoyment, and not for sport or novelty. I won't eat things on a dare that I don't think have the potential to be delicious to me by whatever complex calculus I derive that it could. So while I have eaten hot vin lon (the Vietnamese version of balut) and enjoyed it, you probably won't find me eating dog soup because I'm pretty sure my emotional attachment to dogs will keep me from tasting whatever kind of yumminess is to be found in a morsel of canine.

I imagine these posts might really gross some people out, but I'm not writing them so much for the ick factor. I'm writing them because this is the truth, if an occasional one, of the way I eat. And because I think it a worthwhile endeavor to explore the idea that the edibility and deliciousness of a thing is very much a mental, social, and cultural construct.

a big'un - about an inch long

Why will I eat an unhatched baby duck but not a baby dog? Why am I more willing to eat these sand crabs that I'm writing about today, which are essentially the beetles or roaches of the sea, than grasshoppers and earthworms of land? Why do people who eat lips and assholes of cows stuffed into a casing think it's gross to eat chicken feet at a dim sum parlor? It is a strange logic indeed by which we decide which grub is too strange to eat, and which not.

If anything, I hope that this post (and hopefully the ones to follow in this series) serves to open minds, my own included, about the things people do or don't eat, will or won't eat, and why.

SPICY THAI CHILI GARLIC SAND FLEAS

Almost certain to be enough to serve the very limited number of people in your life who won't run away and retch at the thought of eating it.

When I first moved to Oceanside and found these critters washed up alive in the sand at the beach, I was reminded of something I had several years ago in Phuket that looked a lot like them. A couple weeks later, I watched Andrew Zimmern eating something very similar on a re-run of Bizarre Foods - Thailand and determined that if I were to find out these suckers were safely edible, which I did, I'd grab a handful the next time I could, and cook them up. Which I also did.

- a handful of sand fleas, soaked and rinsed thoroughly, 4 or 5 times, to get rid of all that sand
- 1 clove garlic, minced
- 2 teaspoons fish sauce
- 1 Tablespoon brown sugar

- 3 Tablespoons oil for frying

- 1 wedge of lime to squeeze over the sand crabs before eating

1) Rinse your handful of sand fleas well and thoroughly, several times, in order to get the sand off their little sand flea persons.

I think I changed the water about five times... 

...to get them this clean.

2) Put them in the fridge for about 20 minutes so they'll fall asleep. *Zzzzzzzzzzzzz...*

3) Make your chili garlic sauce by mixing the chili garlic paste, minced garlic, fish sauce and brown sugar in a small bowl.

4) Heat your oil in a wok over high heat until it's screamin/smokin hot and throw your fleas in.

5) Stir fry them critters 2 to 3 minutes, or until the shells turn completely orange and have been orange for 20 seconds or so.

6) Pour in your chili garlic sauce and toss them little roaches til they're evenly coated.

7) Serve with a healthy squeeze of lime juice and a lot of frosty cold Singha which most of your guests will likely need in order to be able to choke one of these suckers down.

In all seriousness, they taste a lot like little shrimp crossed with soft shell crab if they were deep fried with the shell on and didn't have a lot of meat. Sweet, spicy, sticky, crunchy. Pretty decent beer food if you're not too skeeved by the idea of it to reframe it as food.

Really, folks. It's just a crustacean. Try getting me to eat a cockroach, though, and that's a whole 'nother story.

shinae

STRANGE GRUB: Cosmic Gifts That Look Like Aliens...

For as long as I've been conscious of it, it's seemed to me that the less you expect from life, or really, the less you feel entitled to, the more good stuff comes your way. Certainly it's not always a material change - that is to say that sometimes, the change is really in your perspective - but sometimes it is. I know it sounds all hokey and metaphysical, but my life really does seem to work this way. I don't always get it right, but whenever I'm truly grateful for just enough, the Universe usually sends me something so much better.

Eight - count 'em - EIGHT live uni...

Not to get all Wayne Dyer preachy in your face, but when, after a couple of years of interesting but mostly fruitless dating, I decided that all I really needed was a good man with a kind soul who would laugh and cry at the same things that make me laugh and cry and care for my children as though they were his own, I got that plus a hot, funny, geeky in the best way, fellow musician and foodnik who shares my obsession with really good sushi and voluntarily watches cooking shows every morning before he goes to work. (Well, that or Samantha Brown's Travels or No Reservations...)

When we decided all we needed was just enough space to live, cook and sleep in, where my kids would be comfortable, and where we wouldn't be soaking in triple digit temps for the summer, we got a little bungalow literally a 3 minute bike ride to the beach with a little yard where we can plant things and the Man can brew his beer and drive no more than six minutes to get to work as opposed to the hour it used to take him before we moved.

...some of them as big as The Man's head.

And most recently, when we decided that we would live on a somewhat limited food budget (among other budgets) and forego more regular sushi dinners (among other things) in order to allow me to stay home and try to carve out a new career path, the Universe sent us Diver Dude, who shall remain nameless to protect our source of ridiculously fresh from the dive (but legal!) uni year round and, when in season, spiny lobster, for a fraction of what we would pay retail.

Which might not be a big deal to some, but considering that I am *CUCKOO* for sushi and that uni (which is Japanese for sea urchin) is one of my very favorite kinds, this is a B.ig F.ucking D.eal to me. Nutty, buttery, and sweetly tasting of the sea, I can eat this stuff straight out of the shell with a little bit of that salty sea water to foil the sweet, on top of sushi rice and wrapped with nori (seaweed) and/or shiso, over plain rice with a little spicy ponzu laced with sesame oil, or even atop spaghetti with a little bit of garlic, bonito shavings and a sprinkling of toasted nori strips. Top it off with some really crisp and light lager or cava, and I'm somewhere nearing nirvana.

According to Diver Dude, these suckers are usually found about 50 feet underwater. Pair the diving with the somewhat labor intensive and delicate process of removing what I like to call roe clusters but what are apparently actually gonads, and it's not hard to see why you can easily pay anywhere from 12 to 20 dollars for a mere two pieces of uni sushi.

It would be almost indecent for me to tell you what we paid (or rather, didn't pay) for this much uni...

Sorry the pic's so yellow - nighttime, fluorescent bulb in the
kitchen, that kinda thing...

...with clusters this big...

monster uni

...but I can tell you that I, armed with a hammer and a paring knife, earned every bit of the savings in elbow grease and fine motor skills. 'Tis a delicate operation removing a critter's nutsack fully intact, as you can imagine.

uni carnage
Oh, the humanity...

uni pickin' fangers...

A pile of shells and ten inky digits later, sweet, delicious, delicate uni atop steamed rice and topped with a spicy ponzu with chili and sesame oil...

And just last night, yet another obscene quantity of uni with a ponzu of cucumbers, red onion, jalapeno, ginger, lemon zest and wasabi...

We'll probably slow our roll now that we've gotten our kid in a candy store overindulgence out of the way, but boy does it ever pay to be grateful some days...

shinae