Well Earthlings, Summer’s installment of the delecTable dinner series is in the books, with a good time seeming to be had by all. Faces both familiar and fresh came out for a celebration of the season and even though the past three months can hardly be passed off as ‘summer’, our garden sure proved the contrary.
Scenes from the delecTable summer dinner
Between a tomato quintet and a corn trio, some folks had to be worrying that they’d inadvertently signed up for a vegetarian feast (not that there’s anything wrong with that). Fears were quelled with the arrival of beef tenderloin, planked trout, and grilled quail. It was a lot of fun on both sides of the imaginary kitchen door. The quality of the produce this time of year makes for pretty light work – the less we do to it the better- so our job was made made easy, and easy work is fun work. The presence of hired gun John Lazaruk also lightened the load. Thanks John.
The perfect oyster
While John was grilling up pizza, yours truly was shucking up some of Rodney’s finest. Oysters that is. Delivered that morning, they were some of the best I’ve eaten (I mean seen!). I was skeptical of the Kushi oysters from the east shores of Vancouver island, as I’m not historically a fan of shucking the left coast varieties. These oysters are a ‘man made’ oyster – they are harvested at about 9 months of age and placed in a mechanical tumbler (that’s right, as in spin the bin, pick a number, congratulations you’ve won a frozen turkey) which breaks of the thin shell fragments and scares the oyster into growing deep rather than long. This leads to a plump, deep, meaty (and easy to shuck clean!), DELICIOUS oyster. Stealing the show however were Pictou, Nova Scotia’s own Merrigomish Harbour oyster. Of these, I shucked the perfect oyster (See Photo). I couldn’t help but quote Rodney himself in describing this beauty as “a C-cup oyster in a B-cup shell (Seriously, See Photo).
A very special thanks goes out to Ruth Khlasen for providing and speaking to her incredible Monforte Dairy cheeses. That’s a whole other Blog on it’s own.
By the end it was very dark, we were slightly chilly, and we were already talking about Autumn’s installment. I distinctly recall shouting “come hell or high water, I’m cooking a whole pig!!!!” – good seats are still available.
Chow!