Grilling in the spirit of Oysterpalooza
You don’t need an excuse to take a road trip to the Sonoma-Marin Coast over the course of the long Memorial Day weekend, but if it helps, just tell your friends and family you are going out to pick up some oysters.
The weather is usually cloudy and a bit cool - perfect for working up an appetite - and you can crank down the moonroof, enjoy the ocean breeze and stop at one of the many roadside oyster bars and farms to slurp up a few meaty mollusks fresh off the grill.
Whether topped with butter and garlic, hot sauce or pesto, the bivalves grown in the cool, clean waters of Tomales Bay are a treasure in our own backyard foodshed. They are also an important ingredient in the annual Oysterpalooza festival thrown each Memorial Day weekend at Rocker Oysterfeller’s Kitchen + Saloon in Valley Ford.
This year’s food-and-music fest, firing up from noon to 7 p.m. Sunday, will feature local bands playing throughout the day and various food options ranging from Smoked Brisket Tacos to Grilled Oysters with zesty sauces.
Rocker Oysterfeller Chef/Owner Brandon Guenther has modeled the festival after the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, aka Jazz Fest, with food booths and an array of bluegrass, Americana and New Orleans jazz bands booming with lots of brass.
“That keeps the energy high,” Guenther said. “The lineup we have this year is a really nice blend of genres that go really well together. In between each band, we hired the Hubbub Club to do Second Line. They will march through the crowd and play New Orleans jazz.”
If you’re throwing a barbecue in your own back yard this weekend, Guenther shared some of his secrets to grilling oysters - it’s all about sourcing them fresh and local - and a few recipes for savory sauces and sides to round out the menu.
“We use the medium-size Miyagi oysters for our grills from Tomales Bay Oyster Company,” he said. “We use an extra small for our raw oysters, with a lemon-honey-jalapeno mignonette.”
For the grilled oysters, it’s nice to have a rainbow of sauces lending the bass note to the oyster’s briny treble. The chef likes to serve a tasty trio of Garlic-Butter, Pesto-Butter and Louisiana Hot sauces.
“We build a hot sauce using Frank’s Red Hot as our vinegar,” he said.
“We start with onion and garlic sauteed in butter, and then we add some white wine, some Worcestershire and hot sauce, and finish it in the blender with butter. That’s our most famous sauce.”
For the Pesto-Butter sauce, he said home cooks can make their own by mixing a store-bought pesto with butter in a 50-50 ratio.
You simply plop a teaspoon of sauce on each oyster after you’ve cooked them to soft, sweet perfection on the grill.
For the main course, Guenther suggested going straight to the heart of California with a Santa Maria barbecue staple: the ever-popular tri-tip steak.
At Rocker Oysterfeller’s, the chef makes his own dry rub for the steak, but you could save time by picking up Tony Chachere’s Original Creole Seasoning.
“That’s one of my favorites,” he said. “Let that set on your beef at room temperature for about an hour. That way it cooks more evenly.”
Because it’s a thicker cut of meat, the tri-tip - also known as sirloin tip in other parts of the country - needs to be grilled fairly low and slow.
“If you grill it on high, it gets charred on the outside and is raw in the middle,” he said. “If you turn the grill down to medium or medium low, you leave it on longer and let the skin caramelize and the inside slowly cook.”
or a tri-tip steak, Guenther said he would set the grill to 400 and cook the tri-tip for about 25 minutes, using a thermometer before pulling it off (120 degrees for rare, 140 degrees for medium rare, and 160 degrees for well done.)
“If it’s not getting caramelized fast enough, you just turn the heat up at the end,” he said. “It’s called a reverse sear.”
With the tri-tip, Guenther would serve elotes, a Mexican-style grilled corn-on-the-cob that is slathered with crema, cotija cheese and hot sauce.
“We’re doing an elote grilled corn at Oysterpalooza,” he said. “It’s really fun and easy for people at home.”
And, since it’s spring and you can still source delicious, California-grown asparagus, just toss some fat spears on the grill that have beem doused in olive oil, salt and pepper.
If you want to head to the beach, you can take a tip from professional caterers like Guenther and wrap up the cooked tri-tip, asparagus and corn in foil and pack it into an ice chest.
Throw a towel over it and shut the lid, and it will stay warm. The oysters can be grilled up at the beach.
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