Chez Murillo: Farmers' Market Seafood

Since it's been warm lately, Uly and I felt like it might be nice to have some white wine and seafood for dinner. It's been a few months since we've been to the Union City Farmers' Market...last time we were there, it was winter and there wasn't much going on, so we were pleased to see it bustling and full of activity yesterday morning. We wound up getting some oysters and wahoo (ono), a fish frequently found in Hawaii.

For the oysters, we just followed this recipe from epicurious. The oysters seemed fresh, but we didn't want to take any chances eating it raw, so a quick broil did the trick...the accompanying champagne vinegar mignonette went perfectly. Would have been nice to have some bubbly, but didn't seem worth it to open a whole bottle when we only had 3 oysters each.

The wahoo, we did a simple marinade of soy sauce, sesame oil, and garlic that I saw on Chowhound. It was supposed to also have ginger for even more Asian flavor, but alas I forgot to pick some up at the grocery store. It still turned out really well, though. We wanted some sort of fruity salsa to go with the grilled fish, considered mango but then ultimately decided to go with pineapple to give it more of the Hawaiian flavor. The salsa was just a mix of pineapple (we just used canned), onions, cilantro, jalapeno, and lemon. For sides, we sauteed some snow peas with shallot, and cooked some jasmine rice, flavoring it with a bit of scallions, cilantro, and lemon. The fish didn't look that big when we bought it, but it was huge (probably more than a pound) and we didn't even get to finish it.

For our wine, we opened a bottle of Mayo Chardonnay that had been sitting in our fridge for some time. It was actually a free bottle, since it had no label (not sure how a winery runs out of labels, but hey, it worked out for us!). It might have been a bit too full-bodied for the delicately flavored fish, but it held up well to the salsa, which had a bit of a kick from the jalapeno.

It was a pretty light meal, but very satisfying especially in the hot weather. Definitely looking forward to more warm summer nights!