Charleston: Out and About

Sitting on the beach at Folly Beach just outside of Charleston. The beach is completely empty because the house we rented is so far and the end of the beach.

This was the view from our deck.

Each section of beach was broken up by large line of rocks. The beach itself was different from other beaches I've been to. The entire beach gets covered at high tide so its entire surface is flat and "slick".

Hurricane Irene ripped through here and took with it a good amount of the beach. Folks are out today pulling out planks and rebuilding stairs to the beach. That seems to be the easiest of what needs fixing up.

Here is what the beach walkout from the house we rented looked like. All of the walkdowns were in similar shape far down the beach.

Of course, some of the damage was worse than just a walkdown. Where the black of the house ends and the concrete begins with all the exposed wires was all covered by beach before. Hurricane Irene took away a good bit of sand and the houses at the far end of the island lost their supports. In some places, the house is stable like you see here. In others, floors have collapsed or air conditioning compressors that were elevated on poles are now just dangling.

We passed this Tokyo Crepes a few times and it was a hot topic of conversation. To me, anyway. The logo is cute, some furry animal with a cape! Anyway, we didn't try the crepes. I just admired the sign whenever we drove by.

Saturday
We stopped at the Piggly Wiggly for supplies (69 cents per lime!!) and also at Crosby's Fish and Seafood, a local place to get fresh seafood. They had two kinds of local snapper, along with local flounder, grouper, swordfish, and shrimp. The swordfish looked amazing. They also had some non local stuff. But us being who we are, we got a local vermillion snapper and three pounds of 41-45U shrimp.

To start, H fileted the fish and cut up some of it for ceviche and then filets. She also cut up some shrimp for the ceviche. While that marinated in lime juice, she cut up red onion, jalapeno, cilantro, avocado, and some small cherry heirloom tomatoes. It was delicious.

Then she made a court bouillon with spices they brought from home. Added lemon. Then boiled the shrimp for like a minute. We feasted on it.

Then I prepped the snapper to try to recreate the Eric Ripert dish I had made at Rosemary Beach. The lime zesting didn't go well and the fish was so thin... It came out as a completely different dish, one I wasnt that happy with and would have never reattempted it if was the first one. Thicker filets next time! Also, I forgot to take a picture.

For dessert, L brought out the dark chocolate cookie dough and brought from home and baked off a dozen. I enjoyed two with some Sparkman's 2%.

Sunday
Ten hours of sleep and still up at eight. L+H brought bacon that a neighbor cures and smoke himself. Too salty. H cut it up, and I fried it. L heated up H+F cheese danishes. We made Sumatran coffee which turned out weird. Time for beach!

Lunch was two slices of super salty bacon with some very good tomato, Duke's mayo on H+F multi-grain bread.

Then shrimp salad that H made with the leftover shrimp with sweet pepper, red onion, cilantro, and mayo. Ate that was some H+F French boule. Now, hanging out on the deck until it's time to get ready for dinner at Husk!

Monday
Breakfast was an H+F everything bagel with plugra butter and coffee. Not very exciting.

H and I made a run to the Earth Fare, which, if you were wondering is FAR from where we are, to get some cheese. They look just like a small Whole Foods and H was very disappointed in their lack of local cheeses. We did pick up a ripe French Brie (my pick), a Comte, and a Fontina from Val D'aosta.

All during the ride, I talked about these big cacti we were passing and how much fruit was in them. Granted they were all green, but the prospects of prickly pears was exciting! Then, we passed one with lots of ripe fruit! After picking three and gdting prickly pear needles stuck in our fingers, we went back to the house for tongs and a bag.

We picked most if the ripe fruit and headed home. Back at the house, H carefully peeled the fruit, and we mashed it up and we collected the juice.

Josh mixed up prickly pear margaritas. Not worth all that effort. I found the flavor of the prickly pears to be very very subtle, not at all like the "all-natural bubblegum" crossed with watermelon that I read about. It mainly just tasted like margarita, though one with a brilliant color.

For lunch, cheese (mainly Brie for me) and french boule.

We decided to head into Charleston to explore. We walked up and down touristy Market St. Before we left, we stopped in at Fig for drinks and a bite. I got a Pimms cup but L + H both got drinks off the menu. They both thought the drinks were better at Fig, but I still preferred the balance of my drink at Husk.

For snacks, we started off with the coddled egg with mushrooms, blue crab, peas, and a sweet onion soubise. So delightfully good. Apparently, Fig gets hand-picked blue crab which hardly anyone gets anymore.

Next up was the wagyu carne crudo with pecorino and walnuts. The abequina olive oil really made this dish. It was so clean and fresh. Delicious.

Lastly, we got the arugula salad, which our bartender had mentioned was awesome. So it was an arugula salad with warm black-eyed pea vinaigrette with chanterelles and pork belly. The salad was good, though not amazing in my book but it was the acid that made it great. Also, the black-eyed peas were perfect.

We high-tailed it out of there to pick up our seafood at Crosby's before they closed at 7.

For dinner, we stopped off at Crosby's again and picked up pink snapper, more 41-45U shrimp, and some gorgeous swordfish. For the pink snapper and a good bit of shrimp, it was ceviche time again. Much the same preparation and yet different. Very good, but the prior day's batch had had a freshness I missed.

The swordfish was really beautiful.

Cooked simply with s+p and olive oil.

H also reduced some shrimp stock and tomato, mounted with butter. There was also a large saute of Pine St poblano sausage, shrimp, okra, zucchini, onions, and tomato which was tasty.

Tuesday
Tuesday started off with half of an everything bagel (with butter and salt) and some gently cooked eggs with Comte. Very tasty. I spent a decent part of the morning tentec on the check to get some sun. Then we headed into Charleston.

Josh had researched lunch spots so we headed over to Amen Fish and Raw Bar. I started off with the she crab soup to which I had a small amount of sherry added. It was delicious. The best she crab soup I've ever had.

Then I had a half dozen raw local clams, which no one wanted to join me in eating. Just a spritz of lemon each.

For the main part, half an oyster po'boy. Not bad, but the soup and clams were better!

Then we walked around a lot in the Charleston heat. Surely I walked off most of that soup. We stopped in at Charleston Cooks and Ted's Butcher Block. We spent hours at the Heritage Book Company searching through old cookbooks. I finally bought Eileen Yin-Fei Lo's The Chinese Banquet which is out of print.

Then we headed to Goat. Sheep. Cow. which is a local cheese shop. We tried a few Charleston cheeses and got some of each of them. In fact, in thinking about the, I went and put them on a board and turned on the oven to crisp up the french boule. We picked up some Charleston New which is a demi-hard cow's milk cheese. Apparently, Charleston I'd mainly gost's milk but this is a three month old cow's milk that tastes like goat's milk. We also bought some Battery Park and Wild Boar which are both bloomy rind, my favorite. The former has more of a funk, and when you eat the rind as I do, it was a bit strong. The Wild Boar has Oregon truffles, but the truffles had a light hand and I found it to be the lightest of all the cheeses.

I picked up a cool apron while I was there. I figure I might actually wear a black one. And it has cute animals on it!

Then we headed to Wild Flour Pastry which H had on her list of places to check out.

Josh and I picked out two chocolate creme pies, plus the red velvet and chocolate/sea salt cupcakes. And a ham n cheddar scone for tomorrow's breakfast.

In our way out, we noticed a goat cheese cheesecake the owner was prepping for a restaurant. She gave us a free sample to take home with some pistachio crust!

On the way home, we stopped at Crosby's again. This time: local grouper and more 41-45U shrimp for, I hope, ceviche and crudo. And that cheese. So I sat on the deck with a good breeze and my second bourbon smash. Time to check on the oven.

I ate a lot of cheese and bread. That shouldnt be a surprise. I also had a lot of cocktails and wine.

In this picture, that's the Wild Boar on the top left and the Battery Park on the top right. The Charleston New is centered at the bottom.

The grouper looked mighty fine. That's H posing with it. :) The grouper ended up being a pretty big ceviche but I wasn't super hungry after all the bread, cheese, and alcohol. In the end, we didn't eat our sweets so we'll bring them home with us.

Wednesday
On our way off Folly Beach, we stopped off at Taco boy. I got the grilled fish taco and the sauteed shrimp taco, both of which were surprisingly clean and refreshing. Not bad!