Baseball, Ballparks, & Seafood

I pretty much write about whatever I find interesting at the time and find a way to tie it to oysters or seafood.  Philadelphia hoagies, the history of chili peppers, unconventionally flavored potato chips.  Luckily, most of my interests are culinarily focused or akin, so it aligns rather easily.  I enjoy gardening, so I made a ceviche with homegrown produce.  I like underrepresented history, so I did a piece on famous oysterman and abolitionist Thomas Downing.  However, I'm also a massive sports fan, and nothing is better than playoff baseball, especially with the Phillies in the mix.  #RingTheBell.  #RedOctober.  So, as we're heading into the MLB postseason, I wanted to do an exploration of ballpark cuisine with a seafood twist.

Of all the professional sports, none is more closely tied to culinary fare than baseball.  Popcorn, beer, soft pretzels.  It's a stop-and-go game full of frequent lulls that are perfect for grabbing some grub.  Some say a ballgame isn't the same without a hot dog, others say a hot dog isn't the same without a ballgame.  Baseball is also full of tense moments and nervous energy, perfect fidget snacks like sunflower seeds and peanuts.  The iconic 7th inning stretch's Take Me Out to the Ball Game literally has ballpark culinary staples right in the lyrics.  I don't even need to say them and any American reading this knows exactly what those foods are.  If you think about it, that's objectively pretty funny.     

via TheBayOnline.com

Seafood and baseball are closely tied as well.  Beach season and baseball season are the twin tides of summer.  And over the last few decades, several seafood offerings have steadily flowed into the ballpark.  Oracle Park's garlic crab fries, Fenway Park's lobster rolls, T-Mobile Park's poke bowls.  The Baltimore Orioles have hosted Crab Fest games at Camden Yards, and the Milwaukee Brewers reportedly have a secret Friday Fish Fry in American Family Field's section 208.  Double A's Richmond Flying Squirrels even showcased a 300 pound monstrosity earlier this year with the world's largest crab cake.  I hope it at least tasted good.

Beyond the dishes, many ballplayers have been dubbed with seafood nicknames.  Tim Salmon and Mike Trout might not count, but Catfish Hunter and Oyster Burns certainly do.  Several minor league teams' names and mascots are also seafood inspired.  The Biloxi Shuckers, Jersey Shore Blue Claws, Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp.  There's a collegiate league team out of Seattle known as the DubSea Fish Sticks.  The Carolina Mudcats have Muddy, a flathead catfish, as their mascot, and Japan's Chiba Lotte Marines have Nazo No Sakana (謎の魚), or Mysterious Fish, as their mascot.

Things have become even more fun with minor league baseball's alternate identities.  Back in 2014, the Lehigh Valley Iron Pigs decided to don bacon uniforms for a series.  The following year, the Fresno Grizzlies became the Fresno Tacos for a weekend.  Ever since, whether it be via the Copa de la Diversión or Stouffer's Alter Ego Challenge, MiLB teams have been embracing regional culture, economy, and cuisine in rebranding for a couple of games a season.  As few things are as fiercely tied to regional identity as food, many of these rebrands have paid homage to local delicacies.  And many are seafood themed.  The Fort Myers Mighty Mussels became the Grouper Sandwiches; the Portland Sea Dogs were the Maine Clambake; and the Morehead City Marlins switched to the Fish Tacos.  I won't lie, I find the MiLB alter egos concept so enjoyable, especially in contrast to the MLB's City Connect jerseys.  The Augusta Pimento Cheese and Erie Pepperoni Balls, yes please!  The Phillies and Twins dressed like cans of Axe Body Spray, no thanks.   

However, nothing can beat the Chesapeake Baysox' temporary rebrand as the Oystercatchers, a seabird native to the area.  In short, the Baysox initially released the baseball glove with an oyster and baseball pearl as part of their rebranded logo, pictured here.  And, well, many fans saw something less catcher's mitt with an oyster and more of a "third base" situation.  My favorite quote had to be "most men can't even find the baseball."  They quickly took the NSFW rebrand down from all socials, but it had already gone viral.  In laudable fashion, they owned it and brought it back for merchandising, donating 10% of proceeds to Cervivor, Inc., a non-profit focused on cervical cancer awareness.  You can't make this shit up.  Minor league baseball is the best, and this is MiLB at its finest: absurd, self-aware, and community-driven.

Ballpark Food History

Stevens Scorecard via Our Game

 Alter egos, animated mascots, and celebrated cuisines were not always part of baseball.  Records of the first foods at ballgames are sparse and disputed, and concessions were relatively disorganized and ad hoc — apples, lemonade, ham & cheese sandwiches, beer, ice cream, pasta, even charred onions and tripe.  Then, in the 1880s, Harry M. Stevens began shaping the ballpark cuisine landscape we think of today.   Posthumously known as the King of Concessions, Stevens' beginnings weren't even in food sales.  He started by selling scorecards at Columbus Buckeyes games, a novel concept at the time.  He added food advertising to those scorecards, and eventually sold the food itself at ballgames.  Stevens' business quickly spread to ballparks and stadiums all across the country, essentially codifying concession offerings.  The invention of the hot dog is often mistakenly credited to Stevens, but he was responsible for popularizing them at ballparks.  He's also credited with bringing peanuts to the game.  Story goes that a peanut company wanted to advertise in Stevens' scorecards, but was unable to pay.  Stevens accepted literal peanuts as payment, then resold them at ballgames.   They were so successful that he eventually bought a peanut farm in Virginia to vertically source them.  This is also a speculated origin for the phrase "working for peanuts."

Stevens passed away in 1934, but the concessions game continued on.  Ballparks themselves followed America's Post-WWII car and highway development and migration from cities to suburbs.  Stadiums became soulless, concrete multi-purpose shells in the industrial outskirts of town, prioritizing capacity over quality.  The food largely followed.  Some diversity came in the form of nachos and pizza, but they served mostly the classics.  That's not inherently an issue, but it was when the quality decreased.  Stale soft pretzels, tepid hot dogs, rubbery burgers; the AstroTurf of cuisine.  Concessions operations became consolidated to a few major conglomerates, and they mirrored the prioritization of capacity over quality.  Even today, all 30 MLB teams' concession programs are operated by just six companies.  The rise of agribusiness in the 60's and 70's diminished our foodways well beyond just the ballpark's, but that's a whole other conversation. 

  

However, when Camden Yards opened near Baltimore's Inner Harbor in 1992, ballpark culture started to shift again.  Stadiums began moving away from sprawling parking lots and back into cities' downtowns.  The Orioles' concession company partnered with local vendors to serve regional cuisine like crab cakes and pit beef.  This kicked off the ballpark renaissance, and over half the league built new stadiums in the next 15 years.  They began reconnecting with their local identities, both geographically and culinarily.  Cheesesteaks at Phillies' games, BBQ at Royals' games, Skyline Chili at Reds' games.  30 years later, we've now entered the era of epic ballpark cuisine where clubs try to one up each other with the most extreme dishes.  Cotton candy fries, mac 'n' cheese hot dogs, s'mores quesadillas, two-foot burritos, toasted crickets.  Some people celebrate the direction ballpark cuisine is now heading, and others utterly despise it.  I see both sides.  The Boomstick Burger and What Up Corn Dog look disgusting, but I loved the Banana Dog at a Savannah Bananas game.  And that's okay.  Some dishes are home runs, others are 'a swing and a miss.'  Either way, it's all pretty damn fun.

So, in that spirit of ballpark whimsy and fun, I set out to reimagine some of baseball's culinary classics with a seafood twist.  Let's kick it off with "....buy me some shrimp at the seafood shack, I don't care if I never get back...."  Maybe "hook, line, sinker you're out?"  Whatever...play ball!

Blue Crab Nachos

While not canon in classic ballpark cuisine, nachos have become a staple at practically every stadium.  As noted, hot dogs, peanuts, and popcorn go back to the early 20th century.  Nachos at ballgames first appeared the 1970s.  The original nachos, invented in the 1940s on the US-Mexico border, were fried tortilla chips, jalapeños, and cheese baked in an industrial oven.  Not an ideal offering for fast paced concession stands.  However, in 1976, Frank Liberto of Ricos Foods invented a shelf stable, pourable spicy cheese sauce, enabling nachos to be served efficiently.  Liberto first sold them at Arlington Stadium for a Texas Rangers' game, and they were an instant hit.  Within a decade, nachos with cheese sauce were being sold at practically every convenience store, concert, movie theater, and of course, ballpark.

Everyone loves nachos.  Pretty much everyone loves crab.  And everyone I know loves crab nachos.  It's a well established dish, and was a no brainer to kick off my ballpark seafood trials.  I picked up ½ pound of fresh picked lump blue crab meat on my way back from a brief trip to the shore.  Once home, I grated Tillamook cheddar over Mission tortilla rounds, added the crab with pickled jalapeños, black olives, and ample amounts of Old Bay.  Into a 400° oven it went and additional toppings were up next.  I mixed up a quick pico de gallo with some garden fresh tomatoes, peppers, garlic, cilantro and lime.  I also made a crab-seasoned nacho cheese sauce with a roux, heavy cream, shredded cheddar, Old Bay and a little bit of the pickled jalapeño brine.

After about 15 minutes, the crab nachos were bubbly brown and ready to go.  I took them out of the oven and drizzled on the cheese sauce with a few dollops of Daisy.  Cheeky little Old Bay seasoned lime and it was time to serve.  They were delicious, at least from the few bites I had.  Cheesy, savory, and spicy with a bright acidity from the pico de gallo and sweet, briny bites of lump crab meat.  I'm sure my wife and kids would have articulated the same.  But, instead of bases, they were too busy stealing chips and clearing plates.  Hey, at least I tried.  Nacho easiest pun situation.  

Seafood Bratwurst 

The natural choice here would be seafood hot dogs.  I made and profiled smoked trout dogs a few years ago, which were delightful, but I wanted to try something new.  Next to the classic ballpark frank, nothing says I'm at a ballgame quite like a brat.  I picked up some day-boat scallops, monkfish, and a Northern Atlantic lobster tail from Hill's Quality Seafood.  Chef Cuso's rustic style of seafood sausage looked interesting, but I was swinging for the fences on this one.  Proper sausage maker, 10mm plate, coarse grind, stuffing in hog casings. 

The seafood all got a rough chop and mixed with proportional bratwurst seasoning.  I've made pork bratwurst several times before, both by toasting and grinding my own spices, and using premade spice mixtures.  Maybe I'm just an inept spice crafter, but the premade mixtures have always turned out better for me, especially with A.C. Legg's Bratwurst Seasoning.  Don't mess with a winning lineup, right?  I set the mixture in the freezer to chill and meld for a few minutes.  Rule one of sausage making is keeping everything ice cold.  Otherwise the fat will render and the meat will smear, leaving you with a nasty paste rather than a coarse grind.  I wasn't sure the same logic applied to shellfish, but I wasn't about to test and find out. 

My wife is from Wisconsin.  As such, I know a brat is not a brat without peppers and onions, so I sautéed some while I waited.  Once the seafood mix was fully chilled, I added a little lager (Wisconsin-style, again) then ran it through the coarse grind and into hog casings.  I ended up with only two brats, but they were big league sized.  Seafood's expensive, and I'm a baller on a budget.  Onto the grill they went for 5 minutes, then into some Amoroso's Italian Rolls with the peppers and onions, horseradish, and spicy mustard.  Give 'em the heater, Ricky!  And they were delicious.  Discernibly bratwurst with that herbaceous, peppery-nutmeg flavor, but they had a distinct, oceanic sweetness, especially from the toothsome lobster.  The caramelized peppers and onions brought in that familiar savory-sweet and the horseradish a piquant zest.  I shared the other with my neighbor, and he agreed: web gem worthy.

    Rock Shrimp Cracker Jack

No ballpark cuisine post would be complete without Cracker Jack.  Recipes for candied popcorn & peanuts in the States go back to the early 19th century.  However, Frederick Rueckheim is largely credited with its popularization.  He and his brother first reportedly offered it at the 1893 World's Fair.  A patron tried some and declared "whoa, that's crackerjack!," which was slang for something excellent or outstanding.  Rueckheim trademarked the name Cracker Jack in 1896, and in that same year, there's record of it being a concession at an Atlantic City game.  Then, in 1908, Jack Norworth penned Take Me Out to the Ball Game and Cracker Jack was forever deified within baseball.  Just imagine what food that might be if "and Cracker Jack" didn't rhyme with "never get back."  Also, I don't say deified lightly.  Check out what happened when the Yankees tried to replace Cracker Jack with Crunch 'n Munch.

Cracker Jack is made with popcorn, right?  And popcorn shrimp is a popular dish.  So why not shrimp cracker jack?  I picked up some rock shrimp from Hill's Quality Seafood, along with peanuts, molasses, and other fixins' at my local market.  Cracker Jack has those distinct, red skinned Virginia peanuts, and most markets around me don't sell them in shelled, cocktail form.  No problem, though — I had the kids shell (or shuck!) them.  They were more than happy to be involved.  I also created a simple brown sugar syrup with some vanilla extract and molasses and set it to the side.  I wanted to mimic that Cracker Jack candy flavor, but that classic butter based caramel wouldn't work in this instance.  Next, batter up!  I mixed water with equal parts AP flour and potato starch, per the instruction of Dredgemaster Flex, a.k.a. Rizzi from Lou's Takeaway.  Dude knows how to fry.  The AP would create that familiar popcorn shrimp breading, and the potato starch would ensure it stayed crisp enough to hold up to the caramel coating.    

Now, time to fry.  Each shrimp got battered and dropped in a peanut oil bubble bath.  Sure, seed oils are the enemy these days.  Red meat, eggs, and avocados were all once too, but now look at them.  I'm not saying red dye 40 and soybean oil will be deemed superfoods at some point; but everyone should chill out for a bit and let science catch up to the clickbait.  Stay hydrated, eat more fiber, and all things in moderation.  You'll be fine.  Once all the shrimp were done, I returned them in batches to the frying oil for a second dip.  Just like twice fried potatoes, this would ensure the ultimate crispy exterior.  Finally, I mixed the shrimp, peanuts, and caramel sauce all in a bowl, seasoned to taste, and plated.  They weren't as close to Cracker Jack as I'd hoped, but did taste great.  Just more like Honey Walnut Shrimp than the ballpark classic.  Not quite a home run, but a solid line drive up the middle.  I'll need to hit the cages in the offseason for this one.  Will keep y'all posted.

Overall, my whole baseball, ballpark, and seafood exploration was a grand slam.  Interesting history, exciting ephemera, and some fun dishes.  The only remaining question: what to do next?  Lobster poutine for the Stanley Cup?  Fish and chips with caviar for Wimbledon?  Salmon buffalo wings for the Super Bowl?  Oh — what about oyster baseball cards for the hundreds of varieties around the country?!?  Comment below with what should be 'on deck.'

Cheers,

The SF Oyster Nerd

   

Seafood Sausages

Seafood sausages have been on my mind for a long time.  I talked about them way back in a 2017 post when I made Oyster Chicharrones.  Cooking seafood at home is still something I feel is pretty foreign to many Americans.  Sure, salmon and crab cakes make the occasional appearance, but we seem to be more comfortable with pot roasts and spaghetti bolognese rather than stuffed squid or salt crusted whole fish.  There has been incredible progress in chefs making traditional and identifiable dishes with a fishy twist.  Josh Niland of Fish Butchery is definitely most notable in his creations of swordfish belly bacon, blue eye trevalla cheeseburgers, and tuna meatball subs.  Still, I believe there's a shameful underrepresentation of seafood on American dining tables and clever ways out there to fix that. 

Grinding beef for hot dogs

I've always wanted a proper meat grinder and sausage stuffer, and thanks to my siblings, I finally got one for my birthday.  I'll be honest, the catalyst that finally made it happen was wanting to create my own homemade kid's cuisine like hot dogs and chicken McNuggets.  I'm about to be a pappy, and I want that kid to enjoy the classics without my guilt of just boiling an Oscar Mayer wiener and tossing it in a bun.  Ambitious and idealistic, absolutely.  That kid will have his fair share of Kraft Mac and Cheese and Tombstone pizzas, no doubt.  I'm by no means fully committing to an organic only, zero gluten, sugar free, did-the-chicken-have-friends type diet for my kid.  While you have to be pragmatic, nobody feels good about heating up some Gorton's fish sticks and feeding them to their children.  If I can mix in the occasional house cured pepperoni or homemade turkey lunch meat, I'll consider that a win.  

Anyway, with a new meat grinder on hand and the desire for seafood whimsy in heart, seafood sausages naturally came next.  Sausages are one of the most classic, iconic, and identifiable American foods.  It's debatable on where they originate, so I won't open that whole cultural appropriation can of worms.  Either way, everybody loves a good sausage.  And get your minds out of the gutter.  This is a PG kid-friendly blog, now.  Just kidding.  However, from ball park franks to spicy Italian on pizza, everyone enjoys eating sausage.  What better way to bring seafood and identifiable comfort food together than in a sausage?  So, with knives sharpened and hog casings soaked, let the grind begin.    

Smoked Trout Hot Dogs

Lake Michigan Trout and Salmon

I was fortunate enough to have a vacation this summer to visit my girlfriend's family in Wisconsin.  If anywhere in the states is sausage country, it's definitely the Midwest.  Funny thing too is that everything is called a "brat" and not a sausage.  Spicy Italian brats, breakfast brats, lamb merguez brats.  I figured I'd even see bratwurst brats, but it wasn't that bad.  Just classic brats.  More importantly, we had the opportunity to go fishing on Lake Michigan.  It was a pretty amazing experience.  Milwaukee felt just like a coastal city as we shoved off the pier, and even more so while we filleted our twelve salmon and lake trout as we came back into port.  We enjoyed some fresh on the grill that evening, though our haul was way too large for our modest party of six.  Luckily, a neighbor was kind enough to smoke the rest, allowing us to enjoy the delectable lake treats back in the Bay Area.

With now a little over three pounds of smoked lake trout in my fridge, I knew I was going to make smoked trout hot dogs.  The concept has always just seemed right to me.  Snappy casing, paprika and garlic forward beef, and that briny, smoky trout flavor underneath it all.  Just makes sense.  As it was my first attempt at homemade hot dogs, I needed a little guidance, though.  Ryan Farr, a Bay Area sausage legend of 4505 Meats, had a comprehensive recipe in his book I used as my base. 

Beef Mock Tender from the Chuck, Beef Fat Back, Smoked Lake Trout, Lamb Casings and a
Mixture of Cure #1, Kosher Salt, Paprika, Onion Powder, Garlic Powder, and Black Pepper

I started off with grinding the beef and fat back.  Rule one of sausage making is everything must be ice cold, otherwise the fat will render and the meat will smear, leaving you with a nasty meat paste rather than a nice fine grind.  Bad bacteria also love room temperature meat, so, safety first.  After thrice through the grinder, I was ready to add the spices and emulsify the sausage, slowly pouring in ice cold water as it blended in the food processor.  The water helps the emulsification in making it smooth and keeping it cold, preventing it from breaking, just like a mayonnaise can.  Once all this was completed, I quick fried a tablespoon of the mixture for flavor and seasoning.  Tasting just like Coney Island's finest, I now had a smooth hot dog farce ready for casing and smoking.  I lightly folded in the smoked trout in hopes of retaining some of the fish's texture and transferred it back to the grinder for stuffing.  A quick few pumps into the lamb casings and I had trout hot dogs ready for the smoker.  Yes, I was going to really nail home that smoked flavor (and the recipe called for smoking the hot dogs, so I figured I should stick to the plan).  

 

A seemingly endless hour later, I had twelve beautifully smoky lake trout hot dogs. The color was a bit disconcerting at first as they were a pale gray right after stuffing, but the smoking process really brought out that classic red hot hue.  Paprika, beef and cure #1 do the trick, apparently.  Flavor and texture were spot on for a classic hot dog.  Unfortunately, the delicate and fragile fish didn't hold up through the stuffing process and melded into the beef farce.  One of the disadvantages of an electric vs. hand pump sausage stuffer.  However, they had that perfect snappy casing and a flush, meaty interior.  Taste was just like a Nathan's 100% all beef frank with a savory seafood finish.  Full garlic and paprika up front, layered with smoky, salty lake trout on the back.  Moisture was the only slight issue.  They were a little drier than I'd hoped.  But hey, most people drown their dogs in condiments anyway, so no real problem.  Dressed up with prepared horseradish, tomatoes, chives, radish, and red onion, they'd be a welcomed twist to any classic 'murican BBQ.  These are most certainly a make again and a great addition to my slowly growing sausage arsenal. 

Low Country Boil Sausages

 

I immediately knew I wanted to do one of those gimmicky meal-in-a-sausage versions of something.  You know, those cheeseburger, Thai chicken curry, or chicken parmesan sausages you often see.  Got me thinking of what I could do for seafood, and a low country boil or frogmore stew quickly came to mind.  Heaps of crawfish, mussels, peel'n'eat shrimp, crab, spicy andouille sausage, potatoes and corn all steamed or boiled in tons of Cajun or Old Bay seasoning.  They're kind of a lot of work to put together.  Well, not terrible, but you know you're not throwing together a crawfish boil at home on a casual Tuesday evening.  What if that could all be brought together in a sausage for convenient consumption?  I also knew I needed to make something that my girlfriend, who pretends to like seafood while in reality does not, might actually eat.  She likes some shellfish, at least, so this could work.  A sausage like this would require some sort of base.  I suppose I could have made an emulsification out of crawfish tails and shrimp.  However, I wanted a hearty, rustic and coarse ground sausage.  A neutral base was needed, and nothing is more neutral than good old "tastes like chicken."  Seemed like a good carrier for the Old Bay and wouldn't overpower the other components.

Turkey Legs, Crawfish Tails, Andouille Sausage, Corn,
Parsley, and Old Bay Seasoning

As you may have noticed from the picture, I got two whole turkey legs rather than a bunch of chicken thighs.  Seemed a little more fun to me, plus my Local Butcher in Berkeley didn't have enough chicken thighs on hand.  Poultry is poultry, right?  There's also something appealing about single bird, pig, cow or whatever sausage.  It feels good to go from whole muscles to end product.  Takes away the whole "lips and assholes" element of sausage making, I think. 

I started out by deboning and coarsely grinding the turkey legs with skin on.  Sausage requires fat, and with turkey meat being so lean, the skin was the best source for this.  Also, I'd forgotten what a pain in the ass butt (sorry, no profanity in front of the kid) removing the tendons from the drumsticks was.  Seriously though, when raw, it's like deboning a fish on steroids.  With a solid base ground up, I started mixing in the crawfish tails, cubed andouille, parsley, corn and ample amounts of Old Bay seasoning.  I felt like quite the clever one using frozen corn, too, knowing it would keep the mixture ice cold as I pumped the casings.  F*ckin' smart!  Visually, they came out great.  A slight Old Bay colored tinge speckled with bright orange and white crawfish tails, verdantly green parsley, and eye-popping yellow corn.  If I ran a meat and seafood counter, these would be at the front of the case. 

 

     How'd they taste though?  Well, I can say turkey was a stupid idea.  I should have known.  For those of you who immediately thought "turkey's not going to work," you were right.  As soon as I started mixing the ingredients together and smelling them, I knew it was going to be too strongly turkey flavored.  A quick pre-stuffing fry of the mixture for taste confirmed.  Turkey meat, let alone the much gamier turkey leg meat, was going to be too fowl (dad jokes!) to let the other flavors come through.  I'd already crossed the Rubicon, though, once everything was mixed, so I had to forge on.  The Old Bay was pleasantly prominent, and there were nice textural bites of crawfish, corn, and andouille here and there, but it was primarily a seafood seasoned turkey sausage.  Hey, it would be disingenuous not to share my failures.  They did taste pretty good, just not what I was going for.  Perhaps a rebranding would be in order.  Old Bay Bird Brats or something?  I did see a recipe for a potato sausage in one of my sausage making books, so that will be base in my attempt at a Low Country Boil Sausage 2.0.  I'll keep y'all updated.

Seafood Boudin Blanc

Fish Sausage, Celeriac Puree, Peas, and
Onion Sauce in Whole Fish Butchery

Both my seafood sausages admittedly hadn't exactly been seafood so far.  Sure, they were seafood inspired, flavored, and partly comprised, but they were mainly based in meat.  It made sense.  When it comes to sausages, meat is more stable, easier to work with, less perishable, has a higher fat content and is a convenient way to use up scrap and discard.  Seafood is missing quite a few of those properties.  However, I knew I wanted to do at least one entirely seafood sausage.  A quick Google showed there are a few versions out there, primarily shrimp mousselline formed into a sausage shape.  I wanted a fish base, though, so my inspiration came from the aforementioned Josh Niland and his book's aquatic spin on the classic bangers and mash.  I also love the classic French boudin blanc sausage, and imagined the emulsified texture and flavor could translate well into a seafood sausage.

The entire world of boudins and puddings is quite the rabbit hole, or rather a veal, pork, and chicken hole.  There are countless versions of white, fine textured sausages with different meats throughout the world with very strict do's and don'ts. Creole boudin must have rice, Irish and Scottish white puddings use oats, and in France, they must have milk or cream.  The French also have a contentious debate on whether or not to include fillers or binders such as bread crumbs or eggs.  Rethel, in Northern France, even has a legal protection defining what a Boudin Blanc de Rethel must be.  A lot to consider and respect, but I just wanted to make a pure seafood boudin blanc, not become a culinary criminal.

Bay Scallops, California Halibut, Salmon Bellies, Shallots, Garlic,
White Pepper, Marjoram, Sage, Nutmeg and Hog Casings

  I'll admit, the only area of expertise I have with boudin blancs is knowing that I love them.  As I said, there's a whole lot to consider and centuries of debate as to what defines them.  With my rudimentary research, the main ingredients seemed to be sage, marjoram and cream or milk.  Other additions vary from mushrooms and truffles to raisins and apples.  I decided to stick with sage, marjoram, and cream, adding in white pepper, nutmeg, and some shallots and garlic sautéed in butter.  As sausages need fat, and this was a seafood only sausage, the best source for this was salmon bellies from Tokyo Fish Market in Berkeley.  Bay scallops' texture and consistency would help fortify the farce and round out the flavor, so I added them in as well.  Both went into the food processor and cream was slowly added.  With a well set salmon belly and scallop mousse, I folded in cubed Californian halibut filet with the herbs and spices.  It all came together well, hopefully with some of the firm texture of the halibut remaining once pumped into the casings.  Boudin blancs, much like hot dogs, are fully cooked before reheating for serving.  I decided on steaming them, shocking them in ice water to stop the cooking process, then browning up in a cast iron.  

The end result, absolutely wonderful, I don't mind saying.  They turned out exactly as I'd hope.  A nice, smooth, fine textured seafood sausage from the cream emulsification with the firmer cubes of halibut peppered in.  The contrast was great.  Flavor wise, they were also spot on.  Very garlic and shallot forward with a savory fragrance from the sage, marjoram, and nutmeg, backed up with a slight kick from the white pepper.  The hog casings browned up well in the cast iron and they came out exactly like a classic boudin blanc, just with a seafood spin.  A slight issue, similar to the smoked trout hot dogs, they were little drier than I'd have liked.  I'm not sure if this was from steaming them a bit too long, or needing to up the salmon bellies for more fat.  I'll have to play with that a little in future, but a buttery sauce would easily combat that on this version.  In terms of how to serve, I can't think of anything better than over a bed of mashed potatoes with an onion gravy.  Perhaps some citrus braised leeks or lemon-thyme roasted vegetables on the side would be a pleasant addition as well.  Incorporating some sort of acid, especially of the citrus variety, always goes well with seafood.    

All in all, my seafood sausage experiments went just as I'd hoped.  A few successes, a few failures, and invaluable experience and learning opportunities on where to improve.  And the possibilities are endless.  So many things could be next.  Octopus pepperoni, smoked black cod bratwurst, salmon mortadella.  Hopefully my kid won't be too picky of an eater, but this will certainly be a cheeky way to mix some omega-3's into his diet.  Wishing you all the best and hope you get a chance soon to try some fun and whimsical culinary experiments too.

Cheers,

The SF Oyster Nerd