If I were going to the Outer Banks this year, as our family often does some week in summer, I'd be as busy poring over my pantry and cookbooks right now as I would be figuring out how many bathing suits to take. Which spices would be best with fresh seafood? How many packets of yeast would I need to slip into the luggage to try a new recipe for cinnamon rolls?
And I'd be dreaming of meals out, too: Wouldn't the barbecue at the Duck Deli taste comforting after our six-plus-hour drive from Baltimore? Would we somehow find a sitter and slip out to a nice dinner at the Left Bank in Sanderling, N.C., or Elizabeth's Cafe in Duck, N.C.?
Alas for us, this year the beach is not to be. Like thousands of Americans feeling the pinch of the economy and the pull of increasing work demands, we're "staycationing" - vacationing in place. Watching for dolphins in the ocean will be replaced by the dolphin show at the National Aquarium in Baltimore; building sandcastles will have to happen on the "beach" at the local pool.
But we can still eat like we're really on vacation. For our family, that's always meant cooking in a rented kitchen, viewing the often less-than-ideal equipment as license to find shortcuts and simple ways of eating well. We've also seized the extra free time as an opportunity to try something new. And if the experiments don't work? There's always great takeout pretty close by.
Fortunately, The Outer Banks Cookbook recently came out, with recipes from some of the places would-be vacationers like to eat along these North Carolina barrier islands.
Author Elizabeth Wiegand writes that when she's anticipating a visit, her thoughts go to eating "crisply fried oysters from Rose Bay, soft-shell crabs shed on Collington Island on the full moon of May, or fresh yellowfin tuna brought into Hatteras Village Harbor, grilled rare and served with a mouth-burning wasabi sauce. Or maybe warming up with some classic Outer Banks clam chowder, or firing up the grill for bacon-wrapped scallops, or peeling green-tailed shrimp, fresh and succulent from the waters of Pamlico Sound." Her husband dreams of reeling in a big striper from the beach.
We like our stripers around here, too, so in that spirit, I adapted a recipe from another new shore cookbook to make a simple grilled striped bass (also known as rockfish). Grilling is usually a staple technique of our beach trips - nearly every beach rental has a basic grill available, and it's hard to go wrong with grilled seafood, spritzed with fresh lemon.
