We are going to cut a whole salmon into good sized chunks and cook them in a pot of water, preferably sea water, to make “boiled fish” as the Ballard Norwegians call it, keeping in mind the secret to good “boiled” or poached fish is not to let the water boil. It’s a different way to work with a whole fish.

Back in my commercial fishing days in Southeast Alaska, I “boiled”  low value “humpies” for my glossy-coated dog Sasha on the galley stove and a coho or small king to have salmon ready ahead of time for sandwiches, salads, scrambled eggs and such.

On  “harbor days” when it was too snotty to fish, a few boats might raft together in a protected bay for a gam. This post is for those who still ask for the “recipe” after so many years for the salmon cooked in a pot of seawater scooped out of the bay and served warm on the bone right out of the pot on the hatch.

I don’t have my boat any more but I often do salmon as described below for potlucks and back yard gatherings.  One 8 lb or so salmon will yield approximately 16 skinless and boneless 4-5 oz portions.

Your local fish market should have a nice selection of whole salmon this time of year if you aren’t lucky enough to catch your own.

If a salmon has all of it’s scales it hasn’t flopped around on deck or been otherwise mishandled. The presence of bright aspic-like slime tells you the fish is as fresh as can be. The inside of belly should be bright and free of blood. Starting with a five to ten pound headed and gutted king, coho, sockeye or chum salmon with the fins removed, cut the salmon crossways into “roasts”, three to four inches long.

Lacking sea water, add sea salt or kosher salt until the cooking water tastes “sea-water salty”.  Add two onion slices, one bay leaf, six peppercorns and two whole allspice to the water. Heat the water in a large pot until the surface trembles. Add the chunks of salmon.

Simmer for 20 minutes or until the backbone just pulls away from the flesh when nudged with a table knife or spatula.

Carefully remove from the water to cool.

The fish should be warm but not too warm for the next step: lifting the backbone from the meat. After the backbone is pulled away, there will likely be a few clearly visible belly bones to remove as well. Just lift from the exposed end of the bone. Now we remove the skin as shown by grabbing the edge along the back and carefully pulling toward the belly. If the fish is too warm or too cool the skin will not  peel off so easily and chunks of fish may come off with the skin. For smaller portions,  gently bend and break in two along lateral line. Working with the skeletal  and muscular features of the fish, we now have skinless and boneless fillet-like portions without having done any filleting. Pretty nifty.

One way I like to serve “boiled salmon” like this is with “green sauce”, an uncooked puree of various greens fresh from the garden with olive oil, yogurt, lemon juice and sea salt to taste.  The flavor will depend on the mix of greens which varies depending  on what’s in the garden or farmer’s market on a particular week. Here I’ve used spinach, chives, sorrel, mint and lamb’s quarter.
Puree four to six cups of chopped greens in a food processor with 1/4 cup quality olive oil, 1/4-1/2 cup yogurt, the juice of 1/4 to 1/2 lemon and sea salt to taste. If you have a good percentage of sorrel in the mix, you can cut back on lemon juice. (Though I list ingredient quantities here, I usually put this together by eye and feel.) The sauce can be made a day ahead of time. Serve salmon and sauce at ambient temperature. Perfect for summer.

Salmon this way is also good with pesto, relishes and salsa and, broken into pieces, is an excellent salad ingredient or dog treat.

The first week it was 23 Brix Bing cherries.

The first thing I do with the cherries, or any Frog Hollow fruit, is, using a refractometer, measure the Brix which is a measurement of the percentage of sugar in the fruit. Photosynthesis, or the manufacture of glucose, is the plant’s job. High Brix indicates successful plants and good orchard management. High Brix also means superior varietal flavor. Glucose is the chemical building block for everything manufactured by the plant.

Then arrived 23-27 Brix amber-red Rainier cherries. While I have known 30 Brix Rainiers, 23 to 27 Brix is angel territory.

The marketing and PR work I did for Frog Hollow farms a decade back has developed into a sweet relationship. My blog fell asleep a few months ago. It is waking up, I promise. Rainier cherries are as good a place for the resurrection as any.

Curiously, the yellow-fleshed Rainier cherry is a cross between two red-fleshed varieties: the bing and the Van. It was developed  at WSU in 1952. Rainiers are a sweet, low acid fruit much favored by Asian palates. Large premium grade Rainiers bring top dollar in Japan. Cargo jets are loaded with the best of our Washinton cherries at airstrips almost at the edge of the orchards. The Japanese are sticklers for quality. They look for large, firm fruit with the rosy blush that indicates sweetness. With Rainiers, the darker the red, the sweeter the cherry, at least that is my experience.

The Rainier is fragile. Many orchards start picking at dawn to preserve firmness, an essential quality characteristic. A soft cherry was likely picked in the  heat. Firmness is easily maintained by picking early in the day and getting the fruit into refrigeration and keeping it there.

The sure-fire indicator of freshness is green stems.

That being said, cherries store very well if the sugar content is high. You can easily tell a cherry that has been in storage for awhile by the dessicated stems.            

The stored cherries will lose some moisture over time which concentrates sweetness. A brown-stemmed cherry eats well as long as it is still firm, but it won’t have the crisp, vibrant appearance or taste of a fresh cherry.

Cherries firm up concentrating sugars and flavors when chilled. I heard Sally Schneider recommend on the Splendid Table putting cherries in ice water for five minutes before serving. A wrinkle on that theme learned from sushi master and good friend, Shiro Kashiba of Shiro’s Sushi in Seattle, is simply presenting cherries topped with ice cubes in an attractive serving bowl and giving them a few minutes to chill thoughly in the melting ice.

The holiday season is a good time to consider the Oyster. Here follows my opinionated viewpoint on how best to enjoy them. I have entitled it The Art of Eating an Oyster. I wrote the first version 25 years ago. It has served me well. Those who have influenced and/or participated in my unabashed passion for the Oyster are recognized below.

The Art of Eating an Oyster

The Oyster, perhaps more than any other food, is a feast for the senses. First of all, a feast for the eyes. Served icy cold on a platter of shaved ice with the oysters glistening in their juices, they need no garnish to attract the eye or imagination.

Forgo the fork. Engage the oyster. Your fingers have tastebuds. If you have been through many oyster seasons, your salivary glands perk up in anticipation when you pick up the cold, damp, wet, rough shell.  You can already taste the oyster.

As you lift the oyster to your mouth…

…pause momentarily to breathe in the fresh clean smell of the sea.

Tilt your head back, close your eyes, slurp in the oyster and its juices. If iced down before serving and is minutes or less off the shucking knife, the oyster is cold and vibrant as an icy gust of wind off the bay on a winter’s low tide.

Experience the sensation that M.F.K. Fisher, the doyenne of oyster poets, referred to adoringly as the oyster’s “strange cold succulence” and what novelist Tom Robbins likens to “French-kissing a mermaid.”

Carefully chewing the oyster, your palate is inundated with a variety of distinct tastes that come in succession. If the oyster is well-fed, plump, and firm, the first taste is sweetness from the glycogen, which the warmth of your mouth is already breaking down into component sugars. The sweet taste dissipates quickly, then depending on the  growing waters, comes a unique line up of flavors…a succession of brine, various mineral, algal and other mollusk flavors on the tip, sides and finally on the back of your tongue and the soft palate in the back of your mouth.

The most intriguing, the most difficult to describe and the most important taste when it comes to combining a wine or ale, is the aftertaste or finish—those flavors that linger after the oyster is chewed and  swallowed. The aftertaste of an oyster is part sensation—an enlivening of the tongue, cheeks and roof of the mouth. The truly great oyster is characterized by its distinctive aftertaste.

Wash down the oyster and invigorate the palate with a brisk, dry, clean-finishing white wine or a malty porter or stout. A bite of crusty light rye bread, like the French pain de seigle, to neutralize the taste-buds and then on to the next oyster. And the next. And the next. Raise an oyster to toast a great oyster moment.

Whether eaten with a new friend, before a business venture, a romance, a meal, a marriage, a new year…think of oysters as a beginning, a prelude to a wonderful experience about to happen.

###

I raise an oyster in gratitude to the following individuals and places for their influence on my relationship with the Oyster and my life: Paris, Earnest Hemingway, Lewis Carroll, M.F.K. Fisher, Eleanor Clark (The Oysters of Locmariaquer), Sandy Ingber (NY), Julia Child, Steve La Haie (Chicago), Sheila Lukins, William Rice (Chicago), Tom Meyer (Wash. DC), Bill Taylor (Taylor Shellfish Farms, Shelton, WA), Ruth Reichl (NY), R.W. (Johnny) and Betsey Apple, Narsai David (SF), Leslie Kelley (SEA), Betty Fussell (NY), Tom Sietsema (Wash DC) Rowan Jacobsen (Vermont) Nancy Leson (Sea), Rodney Clark (Toronto), Melina Hammer (Brooklyn), Jim Gossen (Houston), Jerry DiVecchio (SF), Xavier Caille (Paris), Robb Walsh (Houston), Beth Kraklauer (NY), Jonathon Gold (LA), Russ Parsons (LA), Zanne Stewart (NY), Jane Lear (NY). Poppy Tooker (New Orleans), Melanie Young (NY)

You might also be interested in:

• The Oyster Is His World (New York Times, R.W. Apple Jr., April 26, 2006)
• Paris Through Expatriate Eyes (Terrance Gelenter December 21, 2010)

When I learned Paul Greenberg, author of Four Fish, and I would both be on the program at the Chefs Collaborative Summit in Boston, I proposed we organize a charter fishing field trip out of Boston prior. It would be an opportunity to show chefs the handling-for-best-flavor steps as fish came aboard. An ardent fisherman since childhood,

Paul was right on it making arrangements with Neponset Sport Fishing Charters for the 38-foot Blue Moon II, licensed for 6, which meant four open spots in addition to Paul and I.  Leigh Belanger, the Chefs Collaborative Program Director, recruited Board members Peter Hoffman, owner of Savoy and Back 40 restaurants in Manhattan, Amy Bodiker, an organic farming consultant from Cleveland, Robin Schempp, owner of Right Stuff in Vermont and Bruce Sherman, chef-owner of North Pond restaurant in Chicago. A great group.

I worked out with skipper Jim Maloney how we wanted to use the opportunity to demonstrate the handling steps from hook to plate to produce the best flavor. We would stun, bleed, dress, rinse and ice pre-rigor. A few days later, the fish would be prepared for the Chefs Collaborative post-conference National Board dinner by Michael Leviton at four-star Lumiere…a good opportunity to see and taste the results.

Looking West at Logan Airport

In the 1970s,  the pollution here was so bad, a fishing charter in the Boston Harbor would have been unthinkable. After the Clean Water Act of 1972, Boston was forced to curtail effluents and clean up its waters. Today Boston Harbor is  a poster child of marine water quality restoration projects, our fishing trip  a tangible outcome.

On fishing day, it was still dark when we found the Blue Moon II at the Neponset dock at 5:30 a.m. Skipper Jim Maloney and deckhand daughter, Lauren, were loading bags of ice. The sun was just peeking over the islands to the east as we eased out of the harbor.

It was a short 15 minute run to reach the pier that extends past the end of the Logan Airport runway. The pier supports the lights that guide incoming planes to the runway. An unlikely fishing spot? Maloney explained the pier provides habitat for various small fish that bluefish and striped bass feed on. Only one boat preceded us but before long there were dozens.

Our fishing method and bait would “depend on what they’re taking.” On this day it was to be “bunker chunks,” frozen menhaden cut into pieces. Skipper Maloney hands us each a pole with a chunk of menhaden on a hook. The boat is anchored.

While we are waiting for fish to take the bait held off the bottom with a balloon bobber, Greenberg tells how menhaden, an important mid-Atlantic forage fish, have been decimated with a single company, Omega Protein of Reedsville, Virginia, catching the vast majority of the fish.

“Menhaden are useless to humans in their pure form,” he says, “but Omega Protein grinds them up in the millions for use as pig, chicken and salmon feed and more recently as Omega-3 dietary supplements.” Greenberg recommended, Bruce Franklin’s book The Most Important Fish in the Sea. “According to Franklin menhaden populations were once so vast that the lead end of a school would arrive in Cape Cod while the tail end was still in Maine.”

Getting “skunked,” not catching a single fish, crossed our collective mind as the early morning sun greeted more boats appearing along the pier and reflected off the wide body jets lifting off overhead. Skunk days are rationalized with something like, “It’s just nice to be out on the water and get some fresh sea air. Catching fish isn’t that big of deal.” At least we lucked out for weather; it was flat calm.

But we wouldn’t be skunked this day. The ice was broken when the tip of Peter Hoffman’s pole made sharp lunges. Excitement on deck! With Peter reeling in, the fish made a swoosh here, and a dash there and a plunge until  Lauren finally scooped a large bluefish into the net and slung it aboard. The “skunk was off the deck,” as we say.

I couldn’t find a club of any sort to stun the fish with (charter boat fish are normally put into the fish box and left to flop) so I grabbed the long handled deck brush and gave the fish a sharp conk on back of head just above the eyes. The heart still pumps but the fish is immobilized…no flopping on deck, no bruising, no scale loss, no lactic acid build-up. Stunning is the first step on deck to getting a fish in top shape to the plate. Deckhand Lauren promptly nicknamed the deck brush, the “club brush.”

Although local, plentiful and sustainable, bluefish don’t appear on many menus in New England. Sportsfishermen have trouble giving them away. Often brown-hued and strong flavored, it is all in the handling. Our goal is to transform the sleek, oil-rich bluefish into an entirely different fish on the plate.

The next step is bleeding, severing the artery between the heart and the gill. We bleed the fish so it dies a relaxed death; removing the blood gives fish cleaner flavor.

Paul Greenberg had the next action. The bend in his pole and the grin on his face told of a strong. good-sized fish. He thought it to be a good striper by the heft, but alas another bluefish. They were good-sized here.

With the change of tide,  the current was now carrying some of the small forage fish away from the pier, maybe striped bass would give chase. Bruce Sherman had one on, but, after some good pulls, it shook the hook. A beaming Robin Schempp landed the first striper. As fish were landed, I kept up with the stunning and bleeding.

In 1984, the US Congress responded to a precipitous decline in wild Atlantic striped bass populations, overfishing and pollution of critical spawning habitat both contributing, with the Atlantic Striped Bass Conservation Act. The re-emergence of wild Atlantic striped bass abundance after 25 years has been quite a fisheries management and pollution reduction success story.

“I am 35 years-old and when I was a child up until 15 years ago I never saw striped bass in Boston Harbor,” says Naponset Charters manager Jennifer Maloney. “They made a huge comeback after the cleanup.”

Amy Bodiker,  fishing for the first time in her life, hooked into a whopper striper. Her arms and shoulders tired from reeling in the powerful fish but the fish made her happy. At 38-inches long, it would be the biggest fish of the day and a lifetime memory for Amy. When Lauren had it in the net and on deck, I conked Amy’s fish and opened it’s artery with a West Coast troller’s salmon cleaning knife I had brought along.

When bleeding has ceased, the blood on deck is flushed through the scuppers and over the side with a deck hose or deck bucket. Fish are gutted or dressed as soon as they finish bleeding. I had a special trough for cleaning fish on my salmon boat in Alaska. On the Blue Moon II, I used Skipper Malone’s bait cutting platform.

After gutting and rinsing, the next step is to get the fish into ice right away. The sooner a fish is iced before the it goes into rigor mortis, the better. If a fish goes through rigor mortis without icing, it goes in quickly, doesn’t stay in very long and comes out quickly. Though very fresh, such a fish can end up with soft unappealing texture from both biochemical damage and the ripping and tearing of tissue at a microscopic level. When iced pre-rigor, the fish goes into rigor slowly, stays in a long time and comes out slowly. The result is resilient, supple flesh that retains all of its goodness.

The white matter often seen on the outside of cooked fish is albumin, a protein released from tissue damage be it from cooking at too high a temperature or for too long, from age or from less than ideal rigor mortis conditions. You won’t see albumin on the outside of a fresh, well handled and mindfully cooked piece of fish. The juices, proteins and goodness are held in inside by flesh with cellular integrity.

Fish should be iced in a straight position; fish that go into rigor bent often result in damaged gaping flesh. If a fish is straightened while in rigor, it will pop out, resulting in damaged tissue.

It is counterintuitive but the best eating fish is not the freshest. Providing the fish has been handled as described above, the best texture, flavor and mouthfeel results from letting the fish take its time coming out of rigor. The chemistry of rigor mortis is extremely complex. While I don’t completely understand what is going on, the longer a fish is in rigor the better it eats. If properly handled and iced, a fish can remain in rigor for several days.  The flavor and mouthfeel of a fish that has gone through rigor in ice and has been otherwise well handled is noticeably superior. More “juiciness” in the words of  one fish scientist. This is fish that gives the term, mouthfeel, meaning. To me, mouthfeel is related to, but goes beyond, flavor and texture.

Perhaps one percent of  commercially caught fish will have been handled as described here. I’m not sure how many commercial fishermen are actually aware of how handling affects flavor. I wasn’t completely until I teamed fishermen and chefs up to identify cause and effect relationships. Fish of this quality can boost the diner’s perception of the restaurant and the chef’s skill’s considerably. Countless times, I’ve heard waiters report back to the kitchen, “They said that was the best fish they’ve ever eaten.”

The loose idea was for our catch to be prepared by Michael Leviton at Lumiere, for the Chef’s Collaborative Board dinner three days later. From the standpoint of rigor mortis, the timing was perfect if we could keep the fish straight and in ice. Our challenge was to get our two bluefish and two stripers, rather large fish, from the boat to the Lumiere kitchen. Fortunately the dock at Neponset had a cart that allowed us to keep the fish straight. We slipped the fish into garbage bags, three of us making the transfer so we could keep the fish from bending. We put ice around the fish and filled the bellies as well.

Our van was waiting at the head of the dock. Our van driver was more interested in our catch stories than getting errant fish juice on his carpet. No worries. Peter Hoffman gallantly placed his rain coat under the fish just in case. Once again it took three people to keep the bagged fish straight when lifting into the van.

Michael Leviton was at the the Red Sox game so we would have to figure out quickly where to store the fish until he could pick them up. Bambara, the restaurant at the Hotel Marlowe would have a cooler. We didn’t go unnoticed with our cargo of four heavy, bulging white garbage bags and our inordinate interest in their placement on the hotel luggage cart.

At this point, our fish were all very stiff, very much in rigor and we were careful to keep them that way when transferring our bundles from the luggage cart to flat sheet pans in the kitchen. So far, so good. Michael Leviton would fetch them after the ball game and take them to Lumiere.

I was on the plane to Seattle when the bluefish was filleted, but, according to Michael, the fish cutter was impressed with the clear limpid blue color of the flesh, clearly different from the bluefish they normally received. “Great project.”

“The clarity of the striped bass filets was impressive,” said Leviton. “The fish ate wonderfully, both raw and cooked!”

Amy Bodiker reported on the fish courses at the Lumiere dinner.

“The fish was fantastic – and cooked with a lot of love! Robin’s striped bass was made into a tartar with a bit of an Asian application; the blues were served in a salad under a seared scallop; and my striper was roasted (and presented) whole. Served with roasted fennel and smoky tomato, green olive sauce. The flavor was spectacular!”

Left to right: Jon Rowley, Robin Schempp, Peter Hoffman, Peter Greenberg, Bruce Sherman, Amy Bodiker (kneeling)

You might also be interested in:

• The Beautiful Taste: Fish handling, Part 1
• Jon Rowley’s Seattle (Gourmet’s Adventures with Ruth, November 2009)
• Salmon Q & A with Jon Rowley (Gourmet, June 2007)

How a fish is caught and handled during its first three hours out of the water determines its eating qualities, at least that is what I found after I started paying attention to the relationship of flavor to fish handling on my own salmon troller in SE Alaska, studying hook-and-line fishing methods in different parts of the U.S. and Europe and working with chefs and fishermen conjointly to correlate what happens on deck with what happens in the pan and on the palate. The concept is simple but it took something like 10 years for the light bulb to go off.

Hook-and-line gear (longline, troll, jig, rod and reel) offers the potential for the  highest quality fish because they come aboard and can be dealt with individually. Here are the steps I have found that produce the highest quality, best tasting and most beautiful fish.

• As soon as the fish come aboard or even before, the fish is stunned by a sharp blow to the top of the head. The heart is still pumping but the fish won’t flop and bruise itself and we can prevent the lactic acid build-up associated with struggle. The stunning step also prevents scale loss. Scale coverage is essential to the manufacture of protective slime when rigor mortis sets in. Complete scale coverage makes for beautiful, shiny fish and is probably the best indicator of how well a fisherman has handled the fish.

• Bleed as soon as possible while the fish is alive by severing an artery between the heart and the gill. This allows the fish to die a relaxed death and removing the blood results in cleaner flavor.

• Dress. Remove the entrails and rinse as soon as possible.

• Get fish into ice before it goes into rigor mortis (gets stiff). Fish should be straight when they go into rigor. Pre-rigor icing is the key step to supple, resilient high quality fish.

• In a perfect world, the fish would be left in rigor iced until it started to come out. Gaping sometimes seen in very fresh fillets (see below) comes from handling and filleting in rigor, especially if the fish in rigor gets bent in the process.

For the best flavor, texture and “mouth-feel,” the time to eat a fish is just after it comes out of rigor when the aforementioned steps have been accomplished.

It is counter-intuitive, but fish can be too fresh. Depending on the species, cooking a fish in rigor can result in a weird texture, i.e. soft, grainy or, in the case of sturgeon, like shoe leather.

For more on fish handling see: The Beautiful Taste: Fishing with Chefs in Boston. Fish Handling, Part 2

The apples are washed in tubs full of water and then set on a high table. Kids, dogs, skaters and skateboarders maneuver in and out of the six or eight people taking turns cutting apples, …

…dumping cut apples into the hopper,

turning the crank to grind the apples…

and turning the screw on the press.

The apples came from an old tree on neglected city property.  They weren’t pretty, just pretty sweet. We quartered them, leaving the skins and seeds and keeping an eye out for coddling moth “worms” of which we found a good number. When the hopper is empty, it is filled again and the crank is passed to one with strong arms and shoulders. Cider making is a workout if you handle the crank. Strong shoulders are also needed for turning the press.

Bright, fresh, amber cider coming right out of the spout is a pretty sight. Even prettier is seeing happy kids, toddlers to teenagers, putting their cups under the spout for refill after refill. Childhood memories in the making.

There is ongoing flow of cider as long as there are apples to grind and press. Friends stop by all afternoon to socialize and have a cup of cider. If they pitch in, they leave with a gallon of cider.

After cleaning up, those who stayed feasted on bbq’ed coho salmon, corn and oyster chowder, salad and homemade glazed apple cake.

Everyone takes home a jug of cider. I  put mine on the back porch opening the lid a few turns. When it turns spritzy in a few days to a week, it can be kept in the fridge for a few weeks. A nice seasonal beverage and wonderful to steam mussels in. The Mediterranean mussels grown by Taylor Shellfish down on Totten Inlet are plump sweet and perky during the fall cider season.

Old-fashioned getting people together to keep a hands on tradition alive is refreshing in this age where so much time is spend sitting on our butts in front of a computer.

Grouse Mountain Farm's 8.2 Brix German Red Strawberry Tomato

In the worst summer in 30 years to grow tomatoes, we didn’t turn up a 10.0 Brix tomato in our 10.0 Brix Tomato Challenge but we did land an 8.2 Brix German Red Strawberry tomato at Liz Eggers and Mike Hampel’s  Grouse Mountain Farm stall at the University District Farmers Market. River Farm (U-District Market) and Summer Run Farm (Ballard Market) had the second and third highest Brix with a 7.2 Brandywine and a 7.0 German Striped. Tomato Challenge tomatoes were to be at least 2.5″ in diameter and commercially grown.

Looking back it seems destiny controlled the fate of the 8.2 Brix tomato that captured the $100 prize for the highest Brix tomato in our 10.0 Brix Tomato Challenge. Kevin Davis has also invited the couple in for dinner at Blueacre Seafood Restaurant. It was a stunning German Red Strawberry variety grown for the first time this year by Liz and Mike. (I mistakenly identified it as a Brandywine). I was lucky to find it.  I came to the market late that day. This tomato was one of the last ones unsold. It caught my eye even before I got to the stall.

Liz Eggers and Mike Hampel of Grouse Mountain Farm at the U-District Farmers Market.

When I called Liz at her and Mike’s farm in Chelan to tell her they had won $100 for the highest Brix tomato, she said, “I’m half-shocked since I and many other growers considered this year a less than optimum year for tomatoes. I didn’t even plan to submit a tomato to the challenge, you just happened by and picked up that tomato. Lots of people looked at it, but were scared away by the size!”

Greg Atkinson happened by. It didn’t scare him. “Now that is a tomato!” Greg said with a knowing grin.

When most tomatoes this summer were coming in around 5, including some from the Grouse Mountain table, an 8.2 Brix tomato was quite a score.

When a tomato reaches 8.0 Brix you notice distinct density. With sugar being heavier than water, an 8.0 Brix tomato is heavier in the hand and decidedly firmer. They look more confident. They announce themselves. On a good year, you can often spot them on a table.

I wait until I get home to measure tomatoes I have gathered that day at the different markets. I try to photograph particularly beautiful tomatoes and steps in the process. To get a Brix measurement I need a drop of juice on the refractive lens. After measuring the sugars, the tomatoes gathered that day get sauced.

Grouse Mountain Farm
I asked Liz to tell me about that tomato, their farm and to send a few photos. Liz says the German Red Strawberry is an indeterminate variety that needs staking. “It has wispy foliage and is a shy bearer for me. I’m guessing 80-85 days to maturity, although it is hard to tell this year. I grew it from seeds a friend gave me a few years ago.

“We started farming in 1988 when we moved to our land at 25-Mile Creek on Lake Chelan. We cleared some land of brush to put in a small planting of fruit trees and a small garden. The key word here is small. We only farm two acres now and do all of the work ourselves. We started with things we were interested in, unusual fruits that were hard to find, heirloom varieties of apples and pears, colorful heirloom tomatoes, etc.

When we started getting an abundance of produce one year (1994) we attended the Tilth Harvest Festival and sold the surplus. This was before the Neighborhood Farmers Market Association started. When we realized the interest in our produce we decided to expand as much as we could, and still be able to do all the work ourselves. We have been selling at the University District Farmers Market since 1995. Although we have always used organic practices, we became certified organic in 1996. We love direct marketing and have built many friendships with our customers over the years.

As far as cultural practices with tomatoes, I don’t think I do anything that special. I start all my own seeds, put the plants in a small unheated hoop house (I have to bring them in at night until frost threat is over) and then plant them out about mid-May. As you can see in the photos, I trellis them up some fencing at a fairly close spacing 1 1/2′ apart, rows about 3′ apart. I don’t prune them. We spray them a couple of times in early growth period with some fish fertilizer and kelp. Try to keep them watered and weeded. That’s about it. Then it is – wait until they ripen and enjoy!!”

I have purchased 10.0 Brix tomatoes from Liz and Mike in the past but it was not to be this year.

Liz Eggers with her tomatoes at Grouse Mountain Farm

What did we learn?
I have used variations of this survey method to find and learn about the best strawberries, peaches and even the best salmon and oysters. Taste and compare, taste and compare, taste and compare. In the case of fruits and vegetables, it becomes measure, taste and compare. It remains to figure out what was learned in the worst tomato growing summer in decades.

The amount of sunlight, soil temperature, air temperature, air flow (CO2 required for photosynthesis), plant spacing, leaf surface, and a multitude of other factors can affect the success of a tomato plant as measured by a refractometer.

Grouse Mountain Farm's 8.2 Brix German Red Strawberry Tomato

Low Brix was something that all Northwest tomatoes shared this year whoever the grower, whatever the variety, whatever the method which in this particular year, would lead me to suspect not enough sunlight for extended periods of time throughout the region probably had something to do with it.

Sunlight is required for photosynthesis. Different plants have different solar energy requirements. Tomato plants obviously did not receive their normal summer allotment this year. That is my conjecture. This winter I’m going to look at local weather history looking especially at cloud cover through the years to see what I can learn vis-a-vis tomato happiness.

I’ve been in touch with a few tomato growers in other parts of the country. I’m hoping to collect tomato Brix readings from them next year so we can compare. Farmers are like fishermen, eternal optimists. Lets put this season behind us and get ready for a tomato glory year.

We have been sampling tomatoes from different growers selling in Seattle area Farmers Markets for the past month. Thanks to farmer’s market managers Chris Curtis (University, Magnolia, Columbia City, West Seattle), Julie Whitehorn (Queen Anne), and Lori Taylor, (Bellevue) for your support of the project and for help with gathering samples and logistics. I couldn’t have done it without you.

Testing tomatoes from the Bellevue Farmer's Market

It has been a tough slog. Very few tomatoes brixed over 6.0 which is my benchmark for a tomato-tasting tomato. It gets discouraging when tomato after tomato, week after week, no matter which variety, no matter which grower, Brixes under 6.0, with some as low as 3.5.

Things perked up past Saturday at the U. District Farmer’s Market when a sizable firm Brandywine of intense red color spoke out to me, “You aren’t going to be disappointed in me.” And I wasn’t disappointed. “That is a tomato!” exclaimed Greg Atkinson, who happened to walk up at the moment. It didn’t reach 10 Brix but it jumped way up the Brix ladder to 8.2…pretty exciting actually after a month of low Brix measurements. There followed tomatoes from two different growers at the Ballad Market on Sunday which measured over 7.0 Brix, encouragement to keep the Tomato Challenge going another week. The grower of the 8.2 tomato (don’t want to spoil the ending), who grows tomatoes uncovered outside, says his tomatoes are just coming on. They are at the same stage of ripening in the middle of Sept that they were in the middle of August last year. It the weather cooperates with a few more warm days, we might see a 10 Brix tomato after all! That would make me very happy.

Brandywine ready for the Brix test.

I set the bar at 10.0 Brix based on notes I have taken on farmer’s market tomatoes and my own P-Patch tomatoes in the past. 10 Brix is doable (on a good year). Tomatoes are tested with Vee Gee and Atago refractometers by squeezing a drop of juice on the lens and viewing the % of sugar or Brix through the viewfinder.

Squeeze a drop of juice on the lens.

Growing tomatoes for density and flavor is a matter of providing the plant optimum conditions for photosynthesis or the manufacture of glucose. I’d love to see the day when the best growers post their tomato Brix like Seattle’s Metropolitan Markets post their Peach-O-Rama Brix daily.

Lens cap closed over a drop of juice. Ready for viewing.

The 10 Brix Tomato Challenge winner will recieve $100 cash, dinners at Blueacre Seafood, The Herbfarm, emmer & rye, and both the Steelhead Diner and Blueacre Seafood tomato accounts. If no 10 Brix tomato turns up, $100 will go to the highest Brix tomato.

If you are interested in this project, I will be discussing tomato flavor and will be measuring sugars in Saturday’s tomatoes  from 3:00 to 4:00 p.m. at the Slow Food booth as part of the Artisan Food Fair at Pike Place Market. Bring a tomato from your garden. I will be happy to measure, or show you how to measure. it’s percentage of sugars.

A pretty Brandywine. Will this be the one?

Filed under: flavor, taste Tagged: Artisan Food Festival, Atago, brandywine, brix, Chris Curtis, emmer&rye, Emmett Watson, Herbfarm, Julie Whitehorn, Lori Taylor, Pike Place Market, refractometer, Slow Food Seattle, tomato, tomato challenge, Vee Gee ]]> http://jonrowley.com/2010/09/24/tomatochallengeupdate/feed/ 2 jonrowley Tomatoes at the Market Testing tomatoes Farmers Market Stall Brandywine Brandywine Refractometer Brandywine http://jonrowley.com/2010/09/22/piperorchardpiecontest/ http://jonrowley.com/2010/09/22/piperorchardpiecontest/#comments Thu, 23 Sep 2010 04:59:22 +0000 jonrowley http://jonrowley.wordpress.com/?p=122 Continue reading →]]> I love apple pie and have been trying to learn about heirloom apples so I couldn’t very well turn down an invitation to judge an apple pie contest organized by the Friends of Piper Orchard, Seattle Tree Fruit Society and City Fruit. The Piper Orchard with some 50 heirloom apple and some nut trees in Carkeek Park was planted in the 1890′s but had become neglected and overgrown until being cleaned up and refurbished by a dedicated group of community heirloom apple enthusiasts in the 1980′s. Today it is a living museum of heirloom apple tree varieties maintained by the Seattle Parks Department and Friends of Piper Orchard.

Apple Cider press Photo: Nancy Gohring

Held at the Environmental Learning Center at Carkeek Park, the apple pie contest was part of the annual Festival of Fruit which included an heirloom apple tasting, cider press, lecture on making hard cider by Northwest apple guru Bob Norton, apple identification for people who don’t know the variety of the old apple tree in their back yard and a tour of Piper Orchard.

I was instructed to be ready to judge at 10:00 am. When I arrived, fellow judge Bob Norton, was giving a talk about making hard cider.

A table in the back of the room held the pies, bathed in the slanted autumn light coming in through the window. About a third of the pies, recently out of the oven, were still warm. Is there anything more heartwarming than the smell of apple pie right out of the oven? I guess the answer would be the smell of several apple pies right out the oven.

King Tompkins

Earlier that morning I sent out a tweet on Twitter asking what made an apple pie great. Molly Watson, a former staffer at Sunset Magazine replied immediately, “Fully cooked apples, flaky crust and not a lot of nonsense in between.” Angie Jabine former editor of Northwest Palate magazine added, “Superior crust (the hardest part), the right sweet-tart ratio. Cinnamon.” “It’s all about the crust!” says Poppy Tooker from New Orleans. Colorado piemaker Kelly Yandell, whose Twitter handle is @themeaningofpie, likes a little lemon zest. Archery coach Ann J. from Toronto says “tasty crust, not too thick, cooked through and apples should have good texture.”

I’m also big fan of crust… a golden-brown, tender, crisp, flaky crust with “backbone.” My wife Kate and I collaborated on a joyful two-year quest to develop the quintessential American apple pie figuring pie was probably the best way to celebrate and give expression to heirloom apples. When we started I had a notion of what the perfect crust was like; it just took two years to get there.

Roxbury Russet

Apple pie, of course, is all about apples and there are so many to choose from. Some apples turn into applesauce in a pie. Others like the Newtown Pippin hardly lose their shape at all when cooked. Some are seductively aromatic. The Brammley Seedling is puckeringly tart and Russets are sweet.

Unless I’m using Gravensteins, the tart-sweet apple which many say has the best flavor of all, I favor a mix of apples with different textures, colors, aromas and flavors. I’ve been exploring the wonderful world of heirloom apples like those century old varieties grown in Piper Orchard. Professor Norton has a simple definition for “heirloom” when applied to apples—“a variety that has been around for at least a century.”

With more heirloom varieties coming into farmer’s markets, selecting apples for a pie is a fun way to support the growers committed to bringing the old varieties back and a way to experience and learn about the panoply of tastes and textures of the apples our grandparents and their grandparents made pies from.

Apple pies with fellow judges Tracy Bernal and Lorna Yee

My fellow pie judges were Tracy Bernal, former Tom Douglas pastry chef and veteran Festival of Fruit pie judge; food writer, blogger and cookbook author Lorna Yee and Professor Norton who joined in after his cider talk. There were ten apple pies to judge. Each pie had a number. Judges received a slice of each and scored the crust and filling on several criteria. Every pie received a ribbon. We awarded three pies “Best of Show” ribbons, two for superior crust and pie #5 for a standout apple filling. Unfortunately I never learned the variety of apple in pie #5, nor did we learn who submitted it. Shucks. I couldn’t help thinking if the pie maker with the best crust would marry the piemaker with the best filling, we would have a hell of pie.

I tried not to eat too much pie but wasn’t successful.

Emmett Watson

The late Emmett Watson, long time columnist and Seattle culture chronicler for the Seattle P-I and then the Seattle Times, railed until his death against the inadequacy of local tomatoes.

He covered the Seattle Mariners’ spring training in Florida. Once he tasted a really great tomato, there was no going back. Washington tomatoes didn’t make the cut when he came home. Emmett asked me once if I could do for tomatoes what I did for peaches with Metropolitan Market’s Peach-O-Rama. Years have gone by but it feels like the time, with the farmer’s market farming movement, is right for a great local tomato quest. My whole life and career seem to have involved a series of quests. Peach-O-Rama was the result of a two year quest to find the best West Coast peaches. Peaches and Peach-O-Rama will be the subject of a future post but now it is tomatoes.

For the past three weeks I have been stalking farmer’s markets looking for great tomatoes, really good tomatoes that exceed 10.0 Brix, without success. The season is growing short. That is why I am offering $100 for a 10.0 Brix commercially grown 2.5″ or larger uncut tomato. Blueacre Seafood and Steelhead Diner will give you their tomato business. emmer & rye, The Herbfarm, and Blueacre Seafood, and Campagne will buy you dinner. Kevin Davis at Blueacre knows 10-Brix tomatoes. He has worked with them in California. I have grown them but not on a commercial scale.

Brix is a measurement of the percentage of sugars in fruits or vegetables as measured by a refractometer. You can find inexpensive refractometers on eBay for about $30.

The ones I use come from Atago (model Master Alpha) and Vee Gee (model BX-1) in Kirkland. It is a simple instrument. All you do is put a drop of juice on a lens and then look through the viewfinder to get the instant reading. I’m forever befuddled why every farmer, fruit grower, buyer and home cook doesn’t have one.

So what does a Brix measurement tell us? A high brix reading (each fruit and vegetable has a different Brix range) indicates the fruit came from a successful plant and that the farmer has soil, watering, air and sun working together optimally. A plants primary job is photosynthesis. Everything manufactured in the plant uses glucose as a building block. If if a plant has high brix it has more of everything, especially taste.

Moreso than a simple sweet taste, high brix usually comes across as a deeper, more satisfying varietal flavor.

I have tasted and brixed (we’ll use brix as a verb) countless tomatoes. Cherry tomatoes are always sweeter but the taste is one-dimensional sweetness. In many cases, but not always, the larger the tomato variety, the more complex the tomato flavor. Here’s a scale I came up with to provide taste reference points for brix measurements.

• 4.0-5.0 The majority of commercial tomatoes seem to fall into this range. Undistinguished flavor.
• 6.0 This is where the tomato starts to taste like a tomato. Brightness comes into good tomato flavor.
• 8.0 Denser, more intensity and bright, concentrated flavor, a noticeably good tomato
  

  14.0 Brix Brandywine

• 10.0 Dense, solid, tremendous varietal flavor. We are experiencing a truly great tomato.
• 12.0 You will remember this tomato taste for a long time.
• 14.0 The highest brix tomato (Brandywine) I have tasted. Unbelievable. A flavor to make an Italian grandmother weep with joy.

Perhaps 10.0 Brix is raising the bar too high but we shall see. Emmett, the 10.0 Brix Tomato Challenge is dedicated to you. Let’s cross our fingers.

Photo: Ron Zimmerman, The Herbfarm

And here’s a little something Ron Zimmerman of The Herbfarm was inspired to create for the 10.0 Brix Tomato Challenge: