These are the scallops I mentioned earlier, and there are a couple of non-scallop things worth mentioning about the dish.
Category: Seafood
On assignment, I have been privileged to spend some time with Zak Pelaccio, his wife Jori Emde, and their crew as they prepare to open Fish & Game, their new restaurant, in Hudson. As part of my diligent, thorough, and extremely professional research, just like a real journalist would I went ahead and obtained a copy of his recent cookbook from the publisher, because getting occasional review copies of cookbooks from publishers is one of the few perks in the fast-paced, glamorous world of food writing; they’re the in-flight reading as I flit and glide through the rarified atmosphere of culinary relevance like Dumbo one of those dinosaur things the Nazgûl rode a wounded TARDIS.
I like his book a lot; it’s personable, usable, and does a good job of communicating his unique and prodigious gifts for turning good ingredients into the kind of great food that makes a person want to have a lot of sex. If you read this blog, especially more than once, you should buy it.
Freshness is of course the quality in seafood that we prize above all others, with the place of origin in second. I had a friend ask me recently where I buy my fish, since he spends a lot of time in Maine and is thus used to surpassingly fresh fish. Out here in the sticks it can be hard to find anything even approaching that quality. I told him that befriending the fish guy at a decent market is a good start, because they will usually order something for you specially and call you when it comes in on one of their two or so delivery days in a given week. That way, you know you’re getting something that’s as newly out of the ocean as it’s possible to get when you live away from the coast. You can also find out when their shellfish arrive and grab a bag of mussels on that day, rather than after they have sat on crushed ice for a week. I once bought mussels and every single one in the bag was dead.
The other good strategy is to check out their freezer. I always do, and often walk away with some treasure or another that is both sustainably sourced and very good to eat. Plus, I can toss it in the freezer when I get home and not have the pressure of needing to it right away that one has with beautiful fresh seafood. Besides these lovely blue crabs, I can get squid and sardines that are quite nice for Thai-style stir fries or escabeche, to give an example for each one. Once I found Alaskan king crab legs for next to nothing; I have no idea if they were mislabeled or just on sale, but I snapped them up. These blue crabs were nine bucks for a bag of three. Not exactly cheap, but far from extravagant divided by three people.
Upon returning home from the store with a nice mahi-mahi fillet, I was greeted by a big box on the front porch. The last in the four-part deliveries of free food for the Lambs and Clams contest, which I am quite decisively not winning, this particular box contained two pounds of ground lamb and 25 clams. I’m going to use the lamb for the contest post, so I just incorporated the clams into the evening’s fish dinner, transforming it into a two-course delight.
It’s always a joy to find sushi-grade tuna, especially out here in the sticks where the seafood is not renowned for its freshness. I do love raw fish, even though large pelagic species like tuna contain more and more mercury, courtesy of coal-fired power plants, making it less and less safe to eat with any regularity. Since canned tuna is thus more or less absent from our diet, the occasional indulgence in some number one ahi can be justified. But since it’s chilly, and cold food is not indicated for such conditions, I put a little spin on it to make it seasonally appropriate, and followed it with a real winner of an accidental discovery.
For the second entry in the Charleston Wine and Food Festival contest thingy, the Rappahannock River Oysters company sent me a box with a big bag each of their oysters and clams. I had been thinking about what to do with them for a while, and worked out a couple of ideas that I was excited to try. Then, of course, Sandy hit, taking our electricity for most of a week, so I had to modify both recipes to require only the stove top and grill.
The cooler weather (crystalline and perfect in these parts lately) combined with the explosive home stretch for the garden—the damn peppers always hit their stride right before the frost—can be inspiring to the point of madness, especially when the farmers’ market throws in even more treats like mushrooms and fish. To wit: yesterday, when as a result of all the bounty I thought it would be a good idea to make tapas. You know, six different dishes, in an attempt to duplicate that wonderful restaurant experience of having a table crowded with plates, all boasting varying colors, textures, and tastes that showcase the best of the season. And the nightshade-heavy late summer bounty positively screams Spain.
I do enjoy a vacation from blogging sometimes. There has been no shortage of cooking, both here and in Vermont, but not so much documentation. Among other memorable events, I taught a bread class, cooked for 75 or so people at a charity benefit, and fed my family daily as is my wont, but just wasn’t feeling the writing about it part. With an average of a post every other day for six and a half years, I don’t feel bad about taking a break. So now, as regular content resumes—subject to an impending deadline and how well I stave off the cold that Milo caught right before his birthday, torpedoing a weekend’s worth of fun—I’ll begin lazily simply with a few shots of How I Spent My Summer Vacation.
It’s a little-known fact, but meal planning is made so much easier when friends call up and offer to bring you a dozen soft-shell crabs and help you eat them.
Normally I flour and fry crabs and make tartar sauce, because that’s how Milo loves them and it’s hard to argue with the merits of that preparation. But this time around I had a hankering for Malaysian flavors, and a quick rummage in the fridge produced everything I needed to make a convincing, if utterly inauthentic, facsimile.
