Table of contents for 2018 Vol. 2 in SAVEUR

THE BAY OF MONT SAINT-MICHEL divides Normandy and Brittany on France’s northern coast. Twice a day, the bay rises as much as 50 feet and then slinks away. At low tide, one might meander through the exposed mussel farms more than 100 yards out to the looming medieval Abbey of Mont Saint-Michel. As the tide creeps back in, the shell-covered pillars vanish under the water’s surface, and the abbey appears to be stranded at sea. Moules de bouchot are cultivated around oak beams, coiled with loose ropes seeded with spats, or young mussels. The ropes rot away and the glossy, black bivalves attach themselves in knobby spirals to the wood. Mussels are not native to this bay, but thanks to its nutrient-rich waters, transplanted spats grow exceptionally well here. So…

“Nobody at the time was exporting high-quality Vietnamese fish sauce like this to America.” One of nearly 800,000 refugees who settled in America following the Vietnam War, Cuong Pham was shocked and dismayed to find that Vietnamese fish sauce, or nuoc mam, the funky, fermented mother sauce of his homeland, was nowhere to be found. Many Vietnamese families traditionally made their own, salting and fermenting wild-caught black anchovies. Pham, who arrived in California in 1979, traces his earliest memories of the stuff to the island of Phú Quoc, where his uncle once owned a fish sauce factory. The island is known for the anchovies that thrive in its surrounding waters and for the nuoc mam made in its many small villages. When Pham returned to Phú Quoc in 2005 to…

A little before sunset, a johnboat departs James Island, South Carolina, carrying three men, an empty cooler, bait, and marking poles. Chris Stewart, chef at Charleston’s Glass Onion, fought traffic after a day in the kitchen to be here. Shrimp baiting in the Lowcountry is legal for only 60 days a year, in late summer, and he couldn’t bear to miss an opportunity. South Carolina is the only state to allow this practice—attracting shrimp with homemade bait before casting a net over them—as baiting too often can deplete the shrimp supply. But since shrimp baiting’s heyday in the 1990s, the average number of licenses has dropped from 18,000 to just 6,200 last year. Rapid development, from new condos to waterfront mansions, is dramatically changing the landscape—and its demographic. The lore…

1. Justino’s Winemaker Juan Teixeira works with 800 growers, spread over the island, who help make it the largest producer on Madeira, with 4,000 barrels currently. 2. Barbeito Founded with unwanted stocks of old vintages in the ’40s, today, the company’s wines, and its collaborations with Rare Wine Co., are worth seeking out. 3. D’Oliveira This sixth-generation producer’s bottles are easy to find in the old town area of Funchal—some even dating back as early as the 1850s. 4. Madeira Vintners A new madeira company is virtually unheard of, but Madeira Vintners is only in its fifth year and is run entirely by women, including its winemaker. 5. Blandy’s Francisco Albuquerque has been the winemaker since ’89. But this company has stocks from as far back as the mid-19th century…

Between the dollar specials and those tiny forks, oysters have become a food we, by and large, order at restaurants. But they’re not as high maintenance as you’d think: These briny bivalves travel well (good news for inland cooks) and, if stored dry and uncovered in a cold fridge, can keep for up to a week. Buy them from a place that has high turnover, pick up a cheap shucking knife, then try these summery ways to prepare them at home. SIMMERED Oyster Chowder with Bacon, Corn, and Fennel SERVES 4 Total: 35 min. One of the easiest ways to cook oysters is to slip them out of their shells and into quick-cooking soups, stews, and chowders. This one—a creamy, flourless chowder with fresh corn, crispy bacon, and some of…

THERE’S A REASON I LOOK SO HAPPY filleting fish while wearing a silk blouse. saveur’s test kitchen has long been a second home for me, and there have been some thrilling changes coming out of here of late. It’s from this lucky place that I’ve headed up our food editorial for the past two years, honing stories and recipes with reporters, traveling to meet cooks and learn about regional cuisines, and tasting and testing every dish in each issue (a job I recommend). I’ve loved this magazine for far longer than that, though, and many of you have, too. That’s why, in my new role as executive editor, I’ve been working like crazy with our incredible team to bring you the best possible version of saveur. We’ve concentrated on four…

FORAGING FOR NATIVE PLANTS has been a practice of Chile’s indigenous people for centuries. As part Mapuche, one of Chile’s native groups, I try to bring those same influences to the menu at Boragó, my restaurant in Santiago. Some of the most interesting specimens are found along the country’s 2,600 miles of coastline. More than a decade ago, I went foraging along the shore outside Val divia with a Mapuche man named Don Pascual, a prominent leader in the community. As we walked, he pointed at a plant carpeting the rocks and told me, “You have to taste this one.” Sea strawberries are a groundcovering succulent with a gushy center. Peeled, they smell and taste exactly like soft, juicy strawberries—but with the brininess of seaweed. They opened my mind to…

Looking into a glass-fronted case in a Sydney seafood shop, you might think you’re staring at a pile of giant pill bugs. But Moreton Bay bugs (named after the bay near Brisbane) and their cousins, Balmain bugs, are crustaceans, not insects, and they’re beloved treats on Australia’s eastern coast. Despite the bugs’ alienlike look—broad heads, flattened antennae, and no claws—Aussies eat them as readily as we do blue crabs in Maryland or crawfish in New Orleans. Most of the meat is in the bug’s tail, so a lengthwise slit down the center is the fastest way to get at it after grilling, the most popular preparation. Considered a species of “least concern” by conservationists, the sweet, white, lobsterlike meat is served atop picnic tables and white tablecloths alike. Not everyone…

Donatella Marino’s storefront is a few dozen diagonal yards from the marina in Pisciotta, a fishing village in the Cilento region of Italy. Directly in front of the shop, the Tyrrhenian Sea stretches westward to the horizon, and it’s in these waters that Marino’s husband, Vittorio, and about a dozen local fishermen use menaica nets to catch mature alici, or anchovies. Thought to have been introduced by the ancient Greeks, the net’s design guarantees that only fish above reproductive age are caught, ensuring the survival of the species. This custom diffused throughout Italy’s western coast until the 1970s, after which the nets were largely replaced with dragnets that rake in fish of any size, including big commercial players like swordfish and tuna. The traditional nets never fully vanished, though, and…

AS A PALESTINIAN CHRISTIAN, raised in Nazareth near the Sea of Galilee, I remember my family observing “Fish Fridays” all through my childhood. Abstaining from red meat was a religious ritual (in the early days of Christianity, the church designated Friday as a day of fasting). But since my father adored fish, a love he passed down to all of us, Fish Fridays never felt like a deprivation. When you’re in a minority, as Christians are in the Middle East, you tend to cherish simple traditions that make you feel part of a larger community. For us, it was this seafood feast—which included my extended family and neighbors—that had us gathered around the table for hours. To ensure we got the best catch, my father would wake up before the…

The cliffside village of Auchmithie, on Scotland’s northeast coast, once sat above a bustling commercial harbor; its stone cottages were home to hundreds of fisherfolk. The women of the town were renowned for their strength. They carried the men down to the boats on their backs so they could begin their journey with dry feet. It was the women too who preserved the haddock the men returned with, creating what would become known as the Arbroath smokie, named for a larger town a few miles down the coast. The smoking technique they used continues to be practiced by about a dozen producers today, including Iain R. Spink, a fifth-generation maker. He hangs pairs of salted fish over a low fire in the bottom half of a whisky barrel, then covers…

NINE YEARS AGO, KOBUS VAN DER Merwe quit his job at a Cape Town food magazine to help his parents run a casual eatery in Paternoster, a small beachfront town about two hours’ drive north of the capital. Cooking every day and exploring with botanist and horticulturalist friends, he became convinced that the bounty of the region justified something more. Last year, he opened Wolfgat, a tiny restaurant in a 130-year-old fisherman’s shack. Here, he serves a seven-course menu dependent entirely on the strandveld, an Afrikaans word for where the ocean meets terra firma on the Cape. Together with a staff of six locals. (“There’s no hierarchy here; we all serve, clean, and cook.”) Van der Merwe prepares salt-rich stems and leaves of bushes in the dunes foraged before dawn,…

When the ocean is calm and the moon on the wane, Habel Higa Lewa fishes for wahoo and mackerel late into the night along the coast of Sumba, an island in Indonesia’s Sunda Archipelago. He’s paddling a dugout canoe, which he will have labored over for up to two months, committed to using chisels, machetes, and handsaws to hew it from a single log of kapok, or almond wood. A wiry man in his 70s, with teeth stained red from chewing betel nut, Lewa is a member of the last generation in Indonesia to live isolated from the modern world. Change has come to his far edge of the Coral Triangle: Motorized vessels, still small by Western standards but with bigger capacity and longer range than canoes, are encroaching on…

Yukiaki Tenpaku reaches for a piece of raw ubame oak in his clifftop smoke hut, stoking a fire like the ones his ancestors used 300 years ago. Tenpaku is the owner of Maruten Ltd., a small company in Japan’s Shima City that makes katsuobushi the old way: by gently smoking, drying, and fermenting bonito fish for shaving into pinkish-brown flakes. It’s a main ingredient in dashi, Japan’s staple stock, and is widely used as a topping on dishes such as okonomiyaki, where the supple flakes twist and curl in the rising heat. From the beginning, the Tenpaku family has practiced tebiyama—a time-honored way of smoking that attaches firewood flavor while allowing for precise control over the flame. But very few makers still use this labor-intensive method, and Tenpaku believes it’s…

WALKING AROUND LIMA, where there are cevicherías in every neighborhood and each one is bursting with locals, you would never know that ceviche—a citrus-marinated seafood starter—wasn’t invented in Peru. Crude forms of the dish—at its most basic, raw fish marinated in a lime, fish stock, and ají chile mixture—are found all along Latin America’s Pacific Coast and have been for centuries. Yet, it is in Peru that the most elaborate versions have taken shape, influenced by waves of immigrants and international chefs. When the Spanish arrived in Peru in the 1500s, they found coastal communities eating raw fish mixed with the juice of tumbo, a pulpy passion fruit relative. They added lime and onions, upping the acidity and bite of leche de tigre (tiger’s milk)—ceviche’s famous bright and briny base.…

1. Anchovies These inexpensive fish are often deep-fried (no pre-soaking needed) until crisp and fragrant, then eaten as a snack or appetizer. 2. Sea cucumbers Among the most extravagant delicacies and prized for their slithery mouthfeel, sea cucumbers require lengthy soaking and cleaning. 3. Cuttlefish After soaking, these are used in soups, stews, and stir-fries, such as a version of the Shanghainese classic red-braised pork. 4. Mussels Sun-dried mussels are considered particularly nourishing in China. Soak and rinse before using in vegetable dishes, soups, or stews. 5. Octopus In Chinese medicine, dried octopus is prized for giving qi (vital life force). It is simmered slowly to make tonic soups. 6. Large yellow croaker These are often cut into small pieces and steamed in dishes like xiang kou ji (Shaoxing chicken…

THE FLUKE IS KELP-BROWN AND SPECKLED, SHINY, STILL WET from the tank. It strains against the cutting board, thrusting up its head and tail to convulse into a taut, furious U. The spiny rays of its fins ripple, as if trying to find traction against currents of air—an impossible escape. Its splayed eyes look desperate. We’re at the seafood butchery station, under a tall, frosted-glass window that looks out onto a South of Market alleyway in San Francisco, flooding light on the fluke slowly expiring on its wooden board. With a downward lunge of his blue-gloved hands, Joshua Skenes drives the tip of a chef’s knife into a spot behind the head that experience has mapped. His features compress with the effort. “You go through the brain,” he says, “to…

LONG BEFORE IT WAS FAMOUS FOR PIZZA OR DIRTY-WATER DOGS OR CRONUTS, NEW YORK WAS A CITY OF OYSTERS. Prior to the turn of the 20th century, oysters were both a junk food and a delicacy—sold from carts with hot corn and peanuts, and served in restaurants in dozens of styles. The oyster beds of New York Harbor were said to produce about half the world’s supply. When Charles Dickens came to town in 1842, he made a special point to go slumming and visit one of the city’s notoriously rough oyster cellars. Piles of discarded shells in the street were a smelly monument to a city on the rise. By the time city officials figured out it was best just to dump them back into the water, the moment…

It’s not quite 4:30 in the morning on Friday, February 2, but the Rio Vermelho neighborhood of Salvador, the capital city of Brazil’s Bahia state, is already buzzing. Revelers, dressed mostly in white, stream along the street parallel to the beach, some still drunk from the night before, others struggling to wake up. In the dark, streetlights reveal popup booze stands hung with lemon-yellow Skol beer ads, and stalls selling roses and carnations and lilies—f lowers enough for a thousand weddings. Down by the beach, a crowd has gathered around a makeshift pagoda, where two men in shorts are pounding on 3-foot-tall drums, and another is striking the cowbell-like agogô with a stick. A dozen old women in satin blouses and ankle-length hoop skirts, heads swathed in kerchiefs, sing and…

1 Hair of the Tiger Making the most from leftover leche de tigre LITERALLY TRANSLATING TO “tiger’s milk,” leche de tigre is a critical part of Peruvian ceviche: The mix of citrus, chiles, aromatics, and fish stock flavors and gently “cooks” the raw fish. But in parts of Central and South America, it’s also often sipped as a hangover cure. After testing several versions for “Lessons from Lima” (p. 38), we turned our leftovers into a zesty, revitalizing cocktail. The gentle spice and citrus notes of reposado tequila were just right with the heat and umami of the tiger’s milk. —Alex Testere Hair of the Tiger Cocktail In an ice-filled shaker, combine 5 oz. Leche de Tigre (recipe on p. 41), 1½ oz. reposado tequila, and ½ tsp. fruity hot…

The gray sideways rain began the afternoon we finally arrived in Madeira and didn’t let up for the week. Writer Megan Krigbaum and I were shooting and researching “Strange Magic” (p. 62) on the Portuguese island, which locals swear is one of the sunniest and loveliest places to be year-round. Our flight had been delayed by a day. Our boat rides were canceled. Optimist that I am, the early weather didn’t faze me. A brief pause in the torrents on the third day prompted us to journey to the east side of the island, the one allegedly least affected by the coastal storm. Midway through our drive, as we neared some explosive waves crashing off the north side of the island, the weather got even worse. What we thought would…