Last week I placed an online order for oysters, mussels and clams at Farm 2 Market. The name of the company describes exactly what you experience with their product. My order left the Farm via FedEx standard overnight shipping and arrived some 3000 miles later on my doorstep within 24 hours. I live in New England and I often can not get seafood this fresh.
By the time "fresh" shellfish arrives at some local seafood stores or supermarkets, it might be out of the water for a one day, a few days or even longer. By the time you go to a store to purchase it, it is possible a few more days have passed. Even if you place an online order from Farm 2 Market in advance, your seafood doesn't leave the water until the day before when it is packed on ice-packs for shipment.
The freshness of the seafood is amazing and immediately evident when you unpack the cooler. The shellfish arrived clean and packed in mesh bags, sorted by type and labeled. I ordered the "five dozen Cultured Oyster Sampler" which included: Kumamoto, Pacific Oyster Evening Cove, Stellar Bay, Deep Bay, and Penn Cove Select. Another benefit of ordering oysters online is that it allows you to try different oysters or oysters you can't get locally. Every oyster arrived alive and fresh, filled with their natural liquor, and excellent on the half shell. We simply shucked and ate them all, as we shucked them. They were the perfect start to the feast we had yet to enjoy.
If you don't have an oyster shucking knife, no need to panic as reading my blog has benefits. When you place an order with Farm 2 Market, type GOSHUCK in the promo code field and a quality oyster knife will be included with your order. My order came with two Dexter knifes, they have a short blade perfect for shucking (opening) all types of oysters.
Our next endeavor were the Manila clams, 5 lbs to be exact. We cooked the clams into a pasta dish, which was delicious. The clams were clean and sweet, and were perfect in the Rachael Ray recipe, Spicy Fettucine with clams and chorizo.
The Penn Cove mussels were our favorite, perhaps the best mussels any of us have had! Restaurant owners take note, get your mussels from Farm 2 Market! They were large, dark and fresh. They were ready to cook, after a quick rinse and a little debearding. They were incredible cooked with just a simple sauce of butter, garlic, wine and herbs.
As a special treat, a tuna steak was included with my order, in a separate cooler. The tuna was sushi-grade tuna loin, about 2.5 lbs. It was so fresh it barely needed cooking. Some of us wanted to eat it raw or sashimi-style, but we elected to serve it lightly seared. It was incredible with just a little salt and pepper, and some sesame seeds.
Ordering online is easy. As you enter the website, you may even be greeted by a web greeter or fish expert. Jenny was my fish expert and she offered to help me with my order. I chose to try to navigate the website on my own and found it to be an easy experience but it was nice to know that help was a click away.
Given it's holiday season now, I will share a tip with you that the folks at Farm 2 Market informed me of. If you place an order, for something like the Oyster Sampler, when you receive your confirmation email, you'll be invited to add clams and mussels to your order at a discount. So place your fresh seafood holiday order today and enjoy a discount and a free oyster shucking knife. Don't forget the promo code GOSHUCK.