Salty Language

Once a week I consider two or three options for stay-at-home dinners. A seafood choice is always a given since Andrew comes from Singapore, an island surrounded by oceanic waters and abundant crustaceans, his favorite type of food. It doesn't help that we live 1500 miles from the nearest coastline. But this is America and most everything is available, even shellfish flown in daily.

Apparently, I'm enough of a regular at the seafood counter that I was once asked how I fix the mussels I routinely buy. When I mentioned steaming them in wine, the fish-monger/meat-butcher nodded knowingly. Perhaps he hoped for a different take. Maybe a recipe for combining them with scallops in a black bean sauce which is equally tasty but much more complicated. Me? I'll stick with delicious and easy every time, if I'm the one in the kitchen.



Salty Language


The mollusks were talking last night. They remained mum in their mesh bag on the trip back from the market but started a sotto voce chatter in the 'frig. They clammed up tight when I rinsed them and scrubbed them and put them in a strainer. Restless, the pile shifted, squeaked, and caught the smells of a wine laced broth drifting overhead. Lulled by the warmth as if on a beach, they relaxed their jaw-clenched shells. And, I swear, one stared me in the eye, accusingly, as I upended them all into the boiling pot.



Marilyn Aschoff Mellor