The Barefoot Kitchen Witch

Impromptu Live Blogging and Twittering Sweet and Tangy Scallops for Tonight's Dinner...

For dinner tonight I'm using one of the recipes in this cookbook.  I'll be updating it on Twitter, so you can follow along there if you'd like to.  And I'll update photos in this post as I go along, so keep checking back.

Or, if you'd like to cook along (if you haven't planned your evening meal yet), here's the recipe for you: 

Sweet and Tangy Scallops

from Weight Watchers in 20 Minutes

Serves 4

2 tsp olive oil

1 onion, chopped

2 garlic cloves, minced

1/2 tsp ground ginger

Pinch crushed red pepper

1 red bell pepper, chopped

1 cup reduced-sodium vegetable broth

1/4 cup dark raisins

1 T lime juice

1/2 tsp salt

1 pound sea scallops (about 24)

1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro

1.  Heat the oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat.  Add the onion, garlic, ginger, and crushed red pepper.  Cook, stirring until the onion is softened, about 3 minutes.  Add the bell pepper and cook, stirring occasionally, until crisp-tender, about 2 minutes.  Add the broth, raisins, lime juice, and salt; bring to a boil.  Reduce the heat and simmer about 5 minutes.

2.  Add the scallops to the skillet and simmer, covered, until just opaque in the center, about 5 minutes.  Stir in the cilantro.

Per serving (about 6 scallops and 1/2 cup broth with vegetables); 136 Cal, 3 g Fat, 0 g Sat Fat, 0 g Trans Fat, 32 mg Chol, 580 mg Sod, 13 g Carb, 1 g Fib, 14 g Prot, 98 mg Calc.  Points value: 3.

~~~

Okay, preparations to begin in oh, ten minutes or so.  Right now, it's quality after-work time with Bill...

  

Okay, fun's over.  Bill's playing War with Julia ("I don't want to play "Go Fish, Daddy, I want to play WAR!") and it's time for me to get going on dinner.

Here are the assembled ingredients, prior to my measuring and chopping:

And now, the gallery of prepped ingredients...

The olive oil,

 

Red pepper, onion, and garlic,

 

 

 

The ground ginger,

 

The crushed red pepper,

 

Vegetable broth (sorry, I don't think it's low sodium) -

 

Dark raisins,

  

Am I supposed to be hitting "save" after each photo is added?  I'm new to this Live-Blogging business...

Okay, hitting "save" now...

Next up, the lime juice,

 

Salt,

 

The chopped cilantro,

 

Oh, yeah, and the scallops.

  

Okay, I've also got some couscous made and keeping warm, so I think it's time to cook up these scallops.  It shouldn't take long at all. 

First task - Heat the oil in a large, non-stick skillet.  Well, I fail here, because I don't HAVE a large NONSTICK skillet.  Just the sticky kind.  But I think I can manage.

After the oil is hot, I add in the onion, garlic, ginger and crushed red pepper.  I'll be back.

 

Three minutes later...

 

The onion is softened.  Time to add the chopped red bell pepper.

 

When the pepper is "crisp-tender" it's time to add the broth, lime juice, raisins, and salt.

Here's the "crisp-tender" peppers -

 

And then I added the other ingredients...

 

Now I'm waiting for it all to come to a boil.

Meanwhile, Julia got whacked in the face "on accident" with a toy Alex was playing with, and while I tended her with ice and sympathy, Softie chose my momentary distraction to jump up onto the counter where the scallops were.  Fortunately I was able to leap across the kitchen, grab the cat and throw her to the ground before anything bad happened.

Phew!

(Isn't this EXCITING???)

Here's the mixture as it starts to boil...

 

And after it all has simmered for five minutes.

 

Yay!  Time to add the scallops -

 

And simmer, covered, til just opaque in the center, about 5 minutes.

Julia's setting the table while the scallops simmer.  Sometimes she's such a big help.

Julia is now singing a song that she's making up as she goes along, and Bill is singing backup.

By the way, the scallops are taking a bit longer than five minutes.  More like seven.  They're BIG scallops.

And here they are - nicely cooked but not over done.

  

Add in the cilantro, and you're ready to go.

 

Time to eat!

(This man thinks I'm nuts, by the way.)

 

But he'll revise that opinion once he eats dinner.

I'll be back later with opinions.

~~~

Okay, time for feedback.

Bill loved it.  Pure and simple.

The kids?  Well, while I was uploading pictures, and the kids and Bill were digging in, I could hear Julia saying "EEEW!"  She'd expressed a similar sentiment when we bought the scallops at Whole Foods earlier today ("I HATE scallops!") but when I asked her "Since when?" she couldn't come up with an answer.

Turned out, she liked the scallop dish and ate most of hers.

 

(She's saying "yes" in the above picture, not hissing at the camera.)

And my little boy?  Well, despite his love of seafood, he came to the conclusion that he still doesn't like scallops. 

He did try them, however, which is all we ask.  I made him a sandwich of leftover taco meat from last night and he was happy.

And me?

I enjoyed the dish.  It was quick to prep, quick to cook, and tasted just fine.  There was some sweetness from the raisins, which plumped nicely in the broth, but as for "Tangy" - well, I'd have made a few changes.  I might have upped the red pepper (OH - and I just realized I used ground instead of the crushed that was called for.  Sorry!) and maybe used some fresh ginger instead of the powder.  But that's just me.  My opinion aside, it's a nice, simple, healthy and satisfying dish.

I served it with some couscous and a salad.  Very good-for-you.  I feel rather virtuous.  I'll probably spoil that virtuous feeling later somehow, but for now, I feel all sorts of healthy.

And rather jazzed and tired at the same time.  Posting, chopping, prepping, cooking, photographing, uploading, and posting like that - it was pretty intense (for what it is).  Fun, but not something I'd do every night.  But every now and then?  Definitely!

Anyway, if you like the sound of this meal, and want to enter the giveaway, head over here to enter!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Clampancakes

Or Clam Pancakes.  Or Clammycakes. 

Take your pick.  I don't know what to call them.

Here's how they came about.

The other day, Bill took the kids fishing and thanks to Julia's playing around in the muddy sand, they disovered that there are clams in that thar mud.

So they didn't bring any fish home, but they did bring home about a dozen clams - most of them cherrystones, and two were a bit bigger.  They're in Julia's hat, by the way. 

 

I was originally going to make clamcakes, but I really didn't feel like heating up oil - and my kitchen - and then having to clean up the splatter.

So I thought about it while I was doing other things, and I thought, well, it's a batter with clams in it, right?  So why not cook them on the griddle? 

So that's what I did.  Bill shucked the twelve clams and I diced them and strained the juice. 

I made the batter while I heated up my griddle.

First, whisk together 2 ^_1/4 cups flour and 4 t baking powder.

In another bowl, combine 2 eggs with 1 _^1/2-1 _^3/4 cups clam juice.  I had about a cup of clam broth, so I added water to bring it to the cup and a half mark.  I wanted them on the thicker side, since they were going onto the griddle rather than into the oil.

I mixed the dry with the wet and then stirred in the chopped clams.

And here's what I ended up with:

They were really good - kind of like thick pancakes, but with the flavor of fresh clams throughout.  I just sprinkled a bit of salt on them and that's how we ate them, although Bill and Alex both tried them with bits of smoked bluefish on top, too.  You could make a sauce for them, maybe a tartar sauce or cocktail sauce - whatever you like with your clamcakes or fried clams would probably work. 

They didn't have the crispy (and sometimes greasy) outer layer of a traditional clamcake, and depending on your preference, that could be a good or a bad thing. 

Everyone around the table (Bill, the kids, me) liked them, and that's good enough for me.  I'm thinking of adding some fresh corn to them next time.  Or maybe garlic.  Or scallions.  Or....

Smoked Bluefish

  

There are few foods that bring me as much joy as smoked bluefish.  Specifically, smoked bluefish on a Ritz cracker with a little dollop of sour cream in between.

And not just ANY smoked bluefish.  Certainly not store-bought smoked bluefish.  No, if you really want to appreciate smoked bluefish, you need to catch it and smoke it yourself.  I realize that some of my readers don't live near the northern Atlantic, and may never get the opportunity to catch and smoke a bluefish filet, and for that I am sympathetic.  Please forgive me while I go on and on and on, unfettered.  I can't help it.

There are a lot of people who turn up their noses at bluefish.  They say it's too oily, too strongly flavored.  I've never felt that way, but smoking the fish is certainly one way to eliminate any oily or strong fish flavors.  But it also depends on the size of the fish. 

The babies - the skipjacks - are just little guys, ranging from about six to ten inches.  The flesh is delicate at this age, and we usually just dredge them lightly in flour and pan fry them very quickly.  When they're about two to three pounds, that's the best size to eat them without smoke.  Especially if you bleed them immediately after they're caught.  A lot of the undesirable flavor probably comes from the blood, so if that's drained off before it has a chance to settle, the fish tastes cleaner.  At this size, I usually bake the filets with a seasoned cracker topping.  It's also good for various Asian-style whole fish dishes.  As the fish get up to four pounds and over, that's when we smoke them.  The filets are a nice size, the flesh is thick and can stand up to hours of smoke.

I mentioned yesterday that my husband brought home three nice-sized blues, mixed up a brine, and put the filets in to soak overnight.

That was early Saturday evening.  The fish hung out in the brine, in the fridge, until late Sunday morning.

Bill topped the brined fish with a variety of seasoning combinations.  Several were done with a blend of lemon pepper and salt, and one of those also had paprika.  One had salt and curry powder.  One had salt and garam masala.  And one had a chili garlic paste and some paprika for additional color.  And salt.

At noon, he set up his Little Chief electric smoker (our grill wouldn't be able to accommodate all six filets)

and got things going.

 

Every hour, we added some more smoking chips,

and about six and a half hours later, Bill took out the two bottom filets, which, because they were closest to the heating element, were done first. 

 

He left the rest of the fish in there until nine at night.

Here are those two filets.  The red one has the chili paste, as you may have guessed.  The other one had the garam masala. 

I don't know when or where we started eating smoked bluefish on Ritz crackers with sour cream, but that's our tried-and-true recipe and we seldom deviate from it.   

 

The kids, naturally, have their own individual preferences.  Alex leaves off the sour cream - he doesn't like the texture.  Julia?  Well, for some reason Julia hasn't been her usual fish-loving self the last few days, so she just ate sour cream on some crackers and Bill ate her fish.

We gave the kids the fish with garam masala, figuring (correctly) that they wouldn't like the chili pepper heat on the other one. 

Bill and I both agreed we really liked the chili paste on the fish - the little kick is nice mixed in with the smokey taste, and both are balanced out by the cool, tart, creamy sour cream. 

And, of course, everything tastes great when it sits...well, you know.

 

I guess it's sort of like a poor man's version of caviar and sour cream on a blini. 

Keep your money - I'll have the bluefish.

Ginger-Scallion Red Snapper - Whole, and on the Grill

The other day Bill brought home a 2 1/2 lb whole red snapper from our local Whole Foods.  (And yes, in case you were wondering, those are Julia's little fingers on the left.  When Bill told her what he had, she asked "Can I have the eyeballs?!")

Anyway.  Bill's brother and sister-in-law were coming to stay with us for part of the week, and were due in later that day, and we'd planned a feast of fish, grilled vegetables (zucchini, pattypan squash, and kohlrabi) from the garden, and the remaining goat cheese ravioli I had in the freezer. 

Bill was entirely in charge of the grilled items - all I did toward the meal was cook the ravioli.

And here's what he did with the fish.

First thing, he told me the fishmonger at Whole Foods scaled it for him, which was a great time-saver.  Next, he cleaned out any stray bits of guts left in the cavity. 

He took a couple of scallions from the garden, and a good-sized knob of ginger and sliced them up. 

He mashed some of that up with a mortar and pestle and set that aside, and saved the rest for later.

Then he cut several slits down both sides of the fish - down to the bone, but not through - and filled the slits and the cavity with the mashed mix of ginger and scallion.

Then he combined soy sauce, rice vinegar, the rest of the ginger and scallions, and some salt and pepper and poured that over the fish in a 13 x 9 inch pyrex baking dish. 

He marinated the fish for about 4 hours, turning it over once about half-way through.

When it came time to grill, he did the vegetables first, and by the time they were done, the coals had cooked down and the temperature was lower.  The coals were on one side of the grill, and Bill placed the snapper on the other half of the grill, put the lid on, and let it cook.  Flipping it over was a bit stressful, but the fish stayed intact.  In all, the fish took about half an hour to cook over indirect heat, and it came out perfectly.

(Those little round things are the grilled kohlrabi, which were arranged on the platter above the fish.)

Bill had cooked down the marinade while the fish was on the grill, and before serving he drizzled that over the fish.

The meal was fabulous - and there was not a bit of fish left to eat.  Including the eyes.

So get a whole fish and grill it up this summer - you won't be sorry! 

Fluke Roll-Ups

When I was a kid, I remember my mother taking thin filets of flounder, topping them with a thin layer of some sort of ritz cracker stuffing, and then rolling them up individually, filling a pyrex baking pan with them and baking them.  We'd have them with rice, usually, and whatever vegetables and salad she had planned for dinner.

Recently, my brother-in-law, Jacques, gave us a gallon-sized plastic freezer bag crammed with frozen fluke filets.  The fish were caught by a fisherman friend of his.  Anyway, we stuck the bag right back in the freezer until we knew what we were going to do with the contents.

This past Sunday, I cooked them up.  I also utilized some of the pak choi we recently harvested from the garden.

(It was that one posing in the front of the photo.)

The other elements that inspired this dish were the Heat and the Humidity.  I didn't want to bake anything in the oven, and we didn't want to grill, so that's when I remembered the rolled up fish filets my mom used to make, and I thought "Aha!"

So here's what happened after I thought "aha."

First, I made a stuffing.  I don't really have an exact recipe - I just threw things in as they occurred to me.  But basically the stuffing was as follows:

Leafy parts of one head of pak choi, roughly chopped up into inch-size pieces (reserve the stalks - they'll be used, too, but later)

One sleeve of Ritz crackers (or other buttery-style crackers.  I am loyal to Ritz, personally.)

About a quarter cup of plain bread crumbs.

The juice of one lemon

About half a stick of butter, melted

The leftover cup or so of clam chowder that we brought home from the restaurant we ate at after we went to the zoo a day or so beforehand.  It was the white, or New England, style of chowder.

Salt and pepper to taste

I mixed the ingredients all together and set them aside.

Next up, I roughly chopped up one onion and the stalks from the pak choi.  I poured some olive oil in my big 14" saute pan and tossed in the onion and stalks and cooked them gently (lid on) til they were soft.

While they were busy softening, I got my fish out, rinsed it off, patted it dry.

These are three of them - there were...um...seven in total.

And then I started to roll...

I placed a filet on the board, lengthwise, patted some of the filling on most of it, and rolled from the end closest to me to the far end.  Why did I leave part of the fish filling-free?  Couple reasons.  For one thing, as you roll the fish up, the filling kind of gets smushed along and ends up filling in that empty spot.  If it was totally covered, you'd have filling squirting out the end.  (Lovely image, huh?)  But also, truth be told, I think my brain slipped into either maki roll or cinnamon bun mode, with the notion that I'd need a blank section to use as tape, kind of, to bind the roll together.  You know, like you would do making the maki rolls or cinnamon buns.  Yeah, sometimes the compartments in my brain smash together and the contents get mixed.

Anyway, I did that with all the fish and then I carefully set them all on top of the softened onion and pak choi stalks in my pan.

Like so:

I put the larger two in the center, where they'd be directly over the burner, and placed the smaller ones around the edges.  And I chose to set the fish on top of the onions and stalks so there would be no fish stuck to the pan anywhere.  I also, as you can see, had a bit of the filling left over, so I topped the fish with it.

Next, I placed the lid on the pan, set the burner on high, and set my timer for five minutes.  When the timer went off, I shut off the heat and set the timer for another ten minutes.  I DID NOT TOUCH the lid or the pan.  I just went about my business and let the heat and moisture work their magic.

When the timer went off, I took a peek at my fish (perfectly done - yay!) and made some couscous (which takes about 6 minutes).  Once the couscous was done, I dished it up.

Very simple, and very tasty.  Best of all, I only used one burner on the stove, and it was only on for 15 minutes.  (I nuked the couscous.) 

So next time you've got some fluke filets you don't know what to do with, and it's hot, and you don't want the oven on and you don't want to grill...give this a try.  Be creative with the stuffing, too - you just want to make sure it's moist.

And let me know how it turns out!

Scupcakes

Earlier this week we went fishing off the rocks - the East Wall in Point Judith.  Bill actually did most of the fishing, as it's a little dangerous for the kids to be reeling fish in and standing on the wet rocks while the waves crash against them.  But the kids played on the sand and calmer water on the other side of the wall and occasionally Alex would get to reel in a fish part way, and then Bill would take over so the fish wouldn't smash and scrape against the rocks.

Most of the fish we caught (okay, I say "we" but like I said, Bill did most of the actual fishing and I took pictures and kept an eye on the kids) were too small to keep, but there was one scup that, at 10 1/2 inches from lip to tip of tail, was a keeper. 

Scup (Stenotomus chrysops, if you want to get technical), also commonly called porgy, are a mild-tasting fish found along much of the Atlantic coast.  They're usually found along the ocean floor or alongside rocky areas, and they are pretty agressive little feeders.  Fun to catch and nice to cook - you can do just about anything with them.  We've even had scup sashimi with our own freshly caught fish.

Back to this lone little guy... 

Bill cleaned it while we were there,

and on the ride home we were trying to figure out what we'd do with the small amount of actual flesh we'd have to eat.  I suggested fish cakes, because that's what I tend to do with any small amounts of leftover fish (or lobster) we have on hand.  And then I thought "they'd be scupcakes!" and that was pretty much that.

 

And here's the recipe I came up with:

1  1/2 cups white cornmeal

(I used Kenyon's, which I use for johnny cakes, because it's produced right here in RI and it's what I grew up with.  Hm.  I need to do a johnnycake post, don't I?)

1 cup all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

a few grinds of black pepper

a sprinkling of dried tarragon

1 cup boiling water

3 eggs

and the diced flesh of one scup

The water needs to be boiling hot in order to soften the stoney-hard cornmeal.  I should have waited before adding the baking powder to it, as moisture and heat activate the powder, but it didn't seem to affect the outcome, so maybe not.

Anyway, whisk all the dry ingredients together,

add the boiling water and let it sit for a bit to soften the cornmeal.  Stir it around a bit to cool it down, and then mix in the eggs. 

Spoon the batter into greased muffin or cupcake tins (I used mini-muffin tins)

and bake at 400 degrees F until a toothpick or sharp knife inserted in the center of one comes out clean.

Mine didn't brown as I was hoping they would, but they browned a little.  I also brushed the tops with some melted butter partway through the baking. 

I mixed up a quick "frosting" of mayo and ketchup and red pepper relish and some finely diced onion, though they didn't really need a sauce - they tasted pretty good on their own.  Kind of like a cornmeal muffin with bits of fish mixed in.  Only not as sweet as a muffin.  (I know, my descriptive powers are stunning.)

Not a bad way to use a single small fish!

Grilled Halibut with Baby Shallot, Garlic and Ginger Marinade

 

We're growing shallots in the garden this year, and above are the seedlings that were thinned from the rest of their siblings in their square plot of ground outside.  They look like tiny scallions or chives, and taste similar. 

I'd picked up a just-over-two-pounds piece of halibut at the store on Friday, and we were planning to grill that Saturday night when my sister's kids slept over.  And so at the last minute, I thought - hey!  Baby shallots!  I could use them with the halibut somehow!  (I'm clever like that.)

So all I did (it's in the 90s here and I'm doing as LITTLE as possible in the kitchen, including prep work) was to cut the root ends off the baby shallots, and chop them up, mash up about 5 cloves of garlic, and grate an inch-sized knob of ginger.  I combined all of that in a bowl...

and added the juice of a lemon, a slug of olive oil, and some salt and pepper.  I slathered the flesh side of my lovely halibut with this mixture and let it sit while the coals heated up outside. 

Bill grilled the fish to perfection, and here's the result:

We ate the whole thing, between the 6 of us, along with salad made with some of my greens from my Farmers' Market haul on Friday plus red leaf lettuce, and green curly leaf lettuce from our own garden, a little assortment of cheeses, and some Italian bread (also from Friday's haul).  It was a simple, pleasant meal.  Perfect summer fare.

2 People. 1 Lobster - 3 Ways

I bought two lobsters at the Farmers' Market yesterday.  I bought other things, too, but they are not the topic of this post, so I'll save them for later.

They were about a pound and a half each, and while I could happily eat both all by myself (shades drawn, doors locked), I figured the kids could split one and Bill and I could split the other one.

Bill had a long day yesterday - up earlier than usual and away on a field trip with his chorus students.  That's something like 150-160 middle school kids, plus chaperones.  4 busloads of people.  They participated in a music festival (got two golds) and then went to an amusement park near by for the rest of the day.  I know, gee, tough life, a whole afternoon at an amusement park.  But it's the music festival first, and that was the big thing for my husband.  These were his students.  His teaching on display.  So a lot of stress built up over the past months - he needed an afternoon of riding flumes and eating hot dogs to recuperate from that.

Anyway, he was due home somewhere between 8:30 and 9:00 last night, and I wasn't sure if he'd be hungry at all, or how hungry.  But I figured half a lobster wouldn't be that hard to consume.

But I was also thinking...only one lobster, divided between the two of us.  Yeah, it's lobster...but it needed to go beyond mere lobsterhood. 

I could make lobster salad sandwiches...they'd be good.  But there's something simple and special about just dipping the lobster meat in melted butter.  Another option was to make lobster cakes - I make a lot of seafood cakes out of bits and pieces of leftovers, so this would be easy.

But I couldn't decide which way to go...and so I figured I'd do all three. 

(You didn't see that coming, did you?)

So here's what I did.

First, I boiled both lobsters and when they were cool, I picked out all the meat.  I gave the meat of one lobster to the kids as part of their dinner.  (Alex enjoyed his, Julia had fallen asleep and ended up going to bed early and didn't eat hers til this morning as a sort of breakfast appetizer.)

With the other lobster, I kept the big claws intact (the meat, I mean).  Those pieces went into a small bowl of melted butter to hang out until later.  I turned them now and then to coat the meat with the butter.

I cut the tail into chunks, cut a piece of celery into very small dice, and combined those with a bit of mayo.

I took the rest of the meat - from the little legs and the body, plus the tomalley, and chopped it up a bit, added a sliced garlic scallion and some crushed Ritz crackers and some melted butter, mixed it all together, and let it sit so the crackers could absorb the butter.

I put all three bowls of lobster in the fridge until much later.

Bill called me a little after 8:00.  They had arrived back at the school, and he was waiting for a few parents to arrive and pick up the last of the kids.

I took out the bowls of lobster incarnations and started thinking about plating (yes).  I put the bowl with the big claw meat in the microwave and gently warmed it up.  Didn't want it hot, but I wanted the butter (which had solidified in the fridge) to melt and I wanted the meat warmed through.

I took two slices of white bread, trimmed the crusts, and cut each resultant square into two triangles.  I melted some butter in a pan and very lightly grilled the toast triangles until they were golden.

I went out to the garden and picked two green curly lettuce leaves, two leaves of arugula, and some chives and chive blossoms.

I got out two plain white rectangular plates and I also took out a wedge of camembert from the fridge, just in case we were hungry after the lobster was gone.  Always prepared, that's me.

I didn't want to make everything and then have it sit around getting cold or soggy, so I stopped about there until Bill arrived home.  He started to tell me all about his day, but I shooed him from the kitchen and told him he could talk later.  Go downstairs, I told him, and watch the ball game.  I'll be there shortly.

Okay, time to roll.

I melted some butter (yeah, all I do is melt butter, it seems.  But - it's lobster.) in a pan and formed the lobster/Ritz cracker mixture into two equal sized balls.  I rolled them in flour, and when the butter in the pan had melted, I placed the lobster/cracker balls in the pan and pressed down a bit to transform them into cakes.

While those were browning, I made sure the lobster claws were warm (they were).

I flipped over the lobster cakes, and mixed up a little sauce for them of mayo, sesame oil, lemon juice, and chopped chives.

I put the piece of curly lettuce down on one end of the plate, set the lobster cake on it, and draped some sauce over the cake.

I put the claw in the middle of the plate and garnished it with a chive blossom.

And I put a piece of arugula on one of the bread triangles, topped that with a generous spoonful of lobster salad, and then put the other triangle atop the salad at a jaunty angle.  (Yes, jaunty.  For the photo.)

And here's how it looked.  (Forgive the quality of the photo - lighting conditions were not the best.)

Bill said if he'd known he was having this when he got home, he'd have cut the trip short by a couple of hours.  I think that's a pretty good compliment. 

It was just enough for a small, late dinner/snack.  And it was fun to put together, too.   

First Harvest, Two Ways

All of our gardens this year seem, at this point, to be more lush and productive than they were at this time last year.  Maybe it's the weather.  Maybe it's the super awesome compost we put down.  Maybe my husband's green thumb grew THREE SIZES that day.  I don't know.  But we've got a lot of green stuff out there.

We've been picking asparagus for several weeks now, and here and there a leaf of something, but yesterday, we actually harvested some things.  In a collander (so you know we mean business).

Here's the take:

Four pak choi, two more asparagus, and about 6 broccoli rabe plants.  Part of the reason we pulled these (except the asparagus) was because they had grown so tall they were blocking light from some smaller plants behind them.  The broccoli rabe can really go a bit longer, but, again, they were blocking light, and I was hungry.

My initial plan was to cook all the greens together, probably in some kind of pasta dish.  But something in me resisted that plan and so I figured, okay, I'll make two dishes.  I thought it would be fun to make these two dishes kind of similar, but with different ethnic influences.

No real recipe - I didn't measure things - but here's what I did:

Spaghetti with Broccoli Rabe and Asparagus

I poured some olive oil in a pan, added two crushed, sliced cloves of garlic, and about two tablespoons of tomato paste.

To that I added a good slug of Blueberry Wine (yes, blueberry) from Cellardoor Vineyard in Lincolnville, ME (not far from Camden).  Why Blueberry Wine?  The bottle was already uncorked.  And it's red.

I whisked all that together and let it simmer for a bit, and sprinkled some oregano in there, too.  While all that was going on, I also had a big pot of water on the stove, coming to a boil, for the spaghetti.

I rinsed the rabe (and trimmed off the roots) and the asparagus...

I also thawed some shrimp and sliced them in half, lengthwise.

Once the spaghetti was cooking, I sliced the rabe, broke the asparagus into pieces, and added them to the tomato paste and garlic mixture.  When that had cooked down, I added the shrimp pieces, and then, when the spaghetti was cooked, I combined the spaghetti with the sauce/shrimp/greens mixture and served.

A little freshly grated parmesan on top, and my kids were both quite happy to eat this for dinner.

While I was doing all that, I was also concocting this:

Thai Style Rice Noodles with Baby Pac Choi

 

First up, I trimmed the roots from the pak choi leaves.

And then I rinsed the dirt off...

And sliced the leaves cross-wise, about an inch wide, and set them aside while I assembled some other ingredients...

And they are:  ban pho (rice noodles about half an ince wide), zest and eventually juice of one lime, 3 dried thai chilis (sliced later), sliced fresh ginger, two cloves of garlic, and some shrimp. 

I also had on hand some fish sauce (nuoc mam) and soy sauce.  I think that was everything.

I immersed the noodles in a large bowl of boiling water to soak for about ten minutes.

Once the spaghetti had been added to the sauce in the first recipe, I had my power burner free and set the wok above that.  I poured some vegetable oil in the wok and heated it until it started to smoke.

To that I added the garlic and ginger, sauteed them briefly, then added the chopped chilis, and the lime zest, and the fish and soy sauces.  I'd say to taste, but it was more to see and to smell.

Next in went the shrimp, and on top of that, the sliced pak choi, and the lime juice.

After the pak choi was wilted, I drained the rice noodles and added them into the wok and tossed the mixture together. 

Because of the heat from the thai chilis, Bill and I ate this and didn't give any to the kids.

Both dishes were good, though there is certainly room for improvement.  But for a quick, impromptu pair of noodle and fresh greens dishes, they were pretty tasty.

I love spring.

   

Opening Day Salmon Cakes

They're named "Opening Day Salmon Cakes" because they were made with the last of the salmon that Bill and Joe caught on Opening Day of Trout Season in RI. 

We had most of the 21" salmon left, and I carefully picked all the flesh off the bones (and picked the smaller bones out of the flesh) and broke it into smallish pieces.

All told, there were about two cups of fish to work with.

We also had leftover wild rice from the previous night, so I mixed that in with the fish.  There was about a cup and a half of the rice.

I also used a shallot, the juice of one lemon, and some Ritz crackers (about 8-10) that Julia helpfully smashed up for me with a meat tenderizer.  I worked all of that together and then melted about 5 T butter and mixed that in to help moisten the crackers and add a little more flavor.  Then I tasted it, added some ground black pepper, and finally, added in two eggs to help bind it all together.  I let the mixture sit for about five minutes to let the crackers finish absorbing the liquids, and then I rolled the mixture into balls roughly the size of small lemons (only round). 

**If you find that the mixture is too goopy and can't be rolled, add a little more cracker crumbs or bread crumbs.  If the mixture is too dry and crumbly, add some more liquid - lemon juice, melted butter, another egg, water - it's up to you.

I rolled the balls in flour and set them aside while I heated about a half inch of vegetable oil in a large pan.  When the oil was hot enough (flick some water into the oil - if the oil sizzles immediately, it's ready) I put some of the balls in the pan, leaving plenty of space around them, and pressed them down a bit to form patties (or cakes).  After a few minutes, once the undersides were nicely golden brown, I carefully turned the fish cakes over to finish cooking on the other side. 

Once they were cooked through, I transferred them to a plate with several layers of paper towel to drain, and kept the plate in the warming drawer of my oven until all the fish cakes had been cooked.

I have to say these were really tasty.  The smoky flavor from the grilled salmon and the bite of the minced shallot worked nicely together.  The kids ate them dunked in ketchup, or with a dollop of guacamole on top.  I also made a little spicy sauce for Bill and I, which consisted of some mayo, lime juice, sriracha, minced basil in olive oil (from my freezer, from last year's garden), salt, and pepper. 

 

The heat from the sriracha, sweetness from the basil, the smokiness of the fish, chewy texture of the rice, and the creamy, mild flavor of the guacamole... 

...it was divine.

Risotto with Artichoke Hearts, Crabmeat and Shrimp

I made this last night.  I first made risotto about 4 years ago, I think, and kicked myself for not making it sooner.  It's ultimate soft starchy comfort food, and once you've got the basic procedure down, you can be as creative as you want.

My favorite risotto is with mushrooms.  But Alex doesn't like mushrooms, and I was trying to make something he would like.  (It didn't work.  He's not big on starchy comfort food.)  So I thought he'd like something with seafood.  I also had a can of artichoke hearts and thought they'd go nicely with the seafood.  They did, and would have gone even better if I'd used fresh.  Same with the crabmeat.  Ah well.  It was still pretty yummy.

Here's what I did...

I got 3 cloves of garlic

and cut them into skinny slivers.

And I cut a chunk of red onion

into small pieces, but not too small.

I got the rest of the fresh basil that was in the fridge

And gave it a rough chop.  And I opened a can of artichokes - plain, not marinated -

rinsed them,

and quartered them.

Next up - two cans of lump crab meat. 

I dumped the meat and the liquid in a measuring cup.  Next time I think I'll leave out the liquid - it tasted of can.

I also got out some chicken stock and put it in a pot on the stove over a medium flame to keep it warm.  I used about 6 cups of the chicken stock (roughly)

and 2-3 cups of dry white wine (just grabbed something I had on the rack)

and - no, this is not traditional, but I had some left and wanted to use it up - some of this (inexpensive) caviar spread -

it's got a nice mild salty fish taste.  I had about 2-3 tablespoons of the stuff, and I used all of it.  Obviously this isn't required.

I used two types of cheese - asiago and aged parmesan.

some butter (which I didn't photograph), and, of course, olive oil.  Extra virgin.

2 cups of Arborio rice

salt and pepper (to taste)

and about a pound of shrimp - 51/60 size.

I put the shrimp in some water to thaw (so I could peel them)...

Then I got out my big 14 inch saute pan, put it on the power burner on my stovetop, on medium high, and drizzled on some olive oil.

Once the oil was hot, the first thing I did was partially cook the shrimp.  I wanted some of the shrimp flavor to infuse the oil.  I didn't want to cook it all the way, because I wanted it to finish cooking in the risotto, but I also didn't want to leave the shrimp in there for the whole cooking process, because it would get tough.  So I went the half now/half later route.

I cooked the shrimp until they were just pink on both sides (I'm about halfway there in this picture)

Once the shrimp were where I wanted them, I removed them from the oil and set aside in a bowl.  Then I added my onion and garlic to the oil and sauteed til they were soft.

Next, I poured in the rice

And stirred it around in the oil until the rice was translucent.  (Below - almost there!)

Next up - a ladle of the chicken stock, that has been warming in a pot on another burner.

And I stirred and stirred until the liquid was just about absorbed.  Next up - a cup of the wine:

And more stirring. 

(Making risotto (at least, this way) is kind of like that song

"To ev'ry thing (turn, turn, turn)

There is a season (turn, turn, turn)"

Only the Making Risotto song would be more like this:

"Pour in your stock (stir, stir, stir)

Then add some wine and (stir, stir, stir)")

Um, yeah.  Anyway...

Next, I thought I'd add my artichokes.  I wanted them to absorb flavor from the wine and onion and garlic.  So I moved the rice to the edges of the pan and sauteed the artichokes in the middle for a little bit. 

I'm not sure if I'd do the same thing next time.  For one thing, I'd go with fresh artichokes or leave them out.  For another, maybe I'd sautee the artichokes with some onion in a separate pan and add it in later.  Just some thoughts.

I stirred the artichokes into the rice and then, what the hey, I thought, I added another cup of wine.

More stirring until the liquid was just about absorbed...

And I took a look at the rice to see how it was coming along. 

You can see the rice is still partly translucent in the above picture.  I chewed a few grains, just to see how far along things were, and the rice was still pretty crunchy.  So - more chicken stock and more stirring.

It's a slow process; a labor of love.  It really doesn't take an eternity, and to me, there's something meditative about stirring the rice and watching (and feeling) it change.

Here it is a little later - very little translucency at this point.  It's still not finished, but it's more than halfway there.  Oh, and I added in the basil, too.

I figured this was a good time to stir in the caviar spread.

Once the rice is al dente - or softer if you prefer - it's time to finish things up.  Turn the heat off and stir in some butter (I used 3 tablespoons) (the butter is optional)...

 

And finally, the cheeses.  I didn't measure. 

I'm guessing I used about half a cup each of shredded asiago

and parmesan.

And that was it.

Next time - nothing canned.  Or I'll find a way to rid the canned items of their canned taste.  But otherwise the risotto came out just fine - creamy and comforting.

So We Bought a Whole Frozen Octopus

Every year when we get our taxes done by the same man who's been doing Bill's family's taxes since who knows when, we stop at this seafood place as we're leaving (it's in Massachusetts) and splurge on something (or several somethings) for dinner.

I think we started doing this in defiance the first year we were married - when we found out we had to PAY a couple thousand dollars in taxes that year.  We were stunned, to say the least, and then figured what the hell, we'll pay it in installments over a few months.  In the meantime, dammit, we need to eat.

This year we noticed that the name had changed.  Originally "Ocean Fresh Seafood," the name had now changed to "Fresh Catch Seafood & Butcher."  (I just looked all this up online and found out that Ocean Fresh is no more.  Aha.  Well that explains things.)

But regardless of the name above the door, tradition dictated that we stop there after taxes and get some goodies.  I also wanted to get something to bring to my sister, who looked after my kids while Bill and I had our Taxes and Seafood date. 

We went in and while the layout is pretty much the same, it wasn't the same.  First of all, it's not just seafood - it's "Seafood & Butcher."  So over where all the shellfish and smoked fish used to be, it's now assorted cuts of beef and pork and lamb.  (Didn't see the "Butcher" himself - guess we missed him.)  It all looked good, but in my opinion it was space that could have been better used for shellfish.  The lobster tanks were over in the far corner, just like they used to be.  And the main strip of display area, which used to be filled with ready-to-cook things like baked stuffed shrimp and the like, and fresh fish in a multitude of cuts and sizes, was all in the same place, but now the shellfish was crammed in, too, so overall there was less variety. 

Ultimately, we were disappointed.  Not with all of it - the steamers were great, the mussels I got for my sister looked good - she said she's cooking them tonight, so I'll find out tomorrow - the stuffed clams (frozen) were fine, and - hey, cool!, whole frozen octopus!

We also got a dozen oysters and they were a waste of money.  Bill shucked them all and I served up a warm half of a baguette and some cheeses to round out the snack.  The oysters were...flat.  They SHOULD taste of the sea, briney and fresh.  These were...lackluster.  Blah.  They did not dazzle.  We each ate two and gave up.  They weren't going to give us food poisoning - they just weren't worth eating raw.  I ended up frying the remaining eight the following night, and that was a much better use for them.

The other thing we were not happy about - and this is probably the biggest reason why we won't go back - was the response we got when Bill asked if the tuna was sushi grade.  First of all, it's not a far out question to ask in a seafood place.  But the guy behind the counter looked around and bounced a bit on his feet, like he'd been called up to the blackboard to solve an algebra problem and he was thinking maybe he'd wandered into the wrong classroom.  He had no idea.  Maybe he'd heard wrong.  "What?"  So Bill repeated the question.  Still no idea.  So he asked another guy who looked older and had, perhaps, worked there a bit longer than the first guy.  Second guy's face tightened into a no-nonsense and no-sushi frown and he started shaking his head.  First guy felt better - he relaxed a bit and bounced some more on his toes and said "Management might say it's sushi-grade, but it isn't."heh heh. Thanks.  Really.

Just the fact that the question had to be taken up in committee was enough of an answer, really.  But what spoke louder was the smirky "us against the boss" attitude of those guys behind the counter.  Back when the place was Ocean Fresh Seafood - same ownership for 30 years - I don't think we ever got the feeling that the guys behind the counter were just showing up so they could get paid.  Maybe they were, but IF they were, they hid it behind knowledge and professionalism - at least on the one day a year that we showed up.

So next year we'll go someplace else for our celebratory seafood purchases.

But at least this year we got an octopus.

I didn't get a picture of it when it was frozen, but the whole thing was smushed together in one hard lump about the size of a bowling ball. 

When we got it home, Bill put it in a big bowl of water to start it thawing.

He consulted a couple of books about Japanese methods of cooking a whole octopus and settled on bringing a big pot of water to boil and slowly lowering the octopus, tentacles first, into the pot.

(If you're easily creeped out by such things as whole dead octopi, you might want to just stop reading now.  The upcoming pictures are not pretty.)

Octopus Ceviche, Nobu Style

We used the recipe for "Seafood Ceviche, Nobu Style" from Nobu the Cookbook.  You don't have to use only octopus - you can use it in combination with other fish or shellfish, or not at all.  But we had that whole octopus, so that's what we went with.

Ceviche is basically seafood and citrus in combination with other salad elements - onions, tomatoes, herbs, etc.  But the citrus is important - it's what cures or cooks any raw seafood you might be using, and it's also bright and refreshing.  This is a great summer dish.

There are two components to this dish - the dressing, and the salad ingredients.

Here's how you make the dressing.

Nobu's words are in bold, my notes are in italics.

Ceviche Sauce

4 T lemon juice

2 teaspoons yuzu juice (yuzu is Japanese citron - I didn't have any.  I used pink grapefruit juice, though yuzu is actually LESS sweet than lemon.)

1/2 tsp sea salt

1 tsp soy sauce

1/2 tsp finely grated garlic

1/2 tsp finely grated ginger

1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper

1 tsp aji amarillo paste (a fruity, dried chili, orange in color.  We had a dried habanero from the garden - I used that, minced, and without the seeds.  I didn't make a paste - I just added the minced pepper to the rest of the sauce.)

Combine all the ingredients. 

Yield:  5 Tablespoons and 1 tsp.

Pretty simple, right?  Let me tell you - it's a bright, intense, delicious powerhouse of a sauce.

Now, on to the salad...

Seafood Ceviche, Nobu Style

6  1/2 ounces of seafood (delicate-flavored varieties such as fresh white fish and shellfish, boiled octopus, boiled shrimp), cut into bite-size pieces

4 tsp finely chopped cilantro

1/4 red onion, thinly sliced

1/2 cucumber, peeled (if necessary) and cut into thin round slices

4 each red, yellow and orange mini tomatoes, halved (I just used red grape tomatoes - it's not tomato season at the moment)

5 T plus 1 tsp Ceviche Sauce (see above)

Mix all the seafood and vegetables together well.  Combine with Ceviche Sauce and transfer to a serving dish.  Top with a cilantro sprig.

And that's all you do.  We made it this evening after the kids' swim class and I think, working together, Bill and I had it done in less than fifteen minutes.

We did a less intense version for the kids, because they wanted octopus and I thought the Ceviche sauce would be too spicy for them. 

I was wrong.  They both ate the less spicy version Bill put together, and then wanted more octopus.  They were told that all we had left was the spicier stuff - didn't matter.  Alex ate some of the octopus in the ceviche, and Julia went all out and had a piece of the red onion, too.

And they liked it.  Which is why we keep telling them - all we ask is that you TRY it. 

So go ahead - you try it, too!

Broiled Salmon with Honey-Mustard-Almond Topping

This is what I made for my husband's birthday earlier this week.

We had gone in search of whole snapper, but no luck there, so Bill picked out a nice piece of Wild Caught Alaskan Salmon and a dozen oysters, and I took it from there.

For the salmon - I combined the last of some nice grainy mustard, several generous spoons of Gray Poupon, and a bunch of honey.  Pretty easy.  Just tasted it as I went along to make sure the ratio of honey to mustard was good.

Later on a also added some crushed sliced almonds, because I thought they'd add a nice crunch.  They did.

Next, I measured out some black rice into a pot and added water according to the package directions. 

Here's what it looks like - it's pretty cool.

And here's how it looks while it's cooking -

While that was simmering (the rice took the longest to prepare - bring to a boil then simmer 30 minutes), I put together a simple salad of mixed lettuces and crumbled bleu cheese and raisins.

Then it was time to cook the salmon.

I got my honey/mustard/almonds mixture...

And slathered it on top of the salmon.

 

I cooked it on a grill pan on top of the stove for a few minutes while the oven heated up, and then I put it under the broiler for about 5 minutes at the most.  When it came out, it looked like this.

Pretty soon the rice was ready, too...

As were the oysters Bill shucked while I was cooking the other food.

And then it was time to eat.

A pretty simple meal, but quite good.  The thickest part of the salmon was medium-rare, and the rest of the fish was moist and tasty.  Try it!   

 

Valentine's Day Ideas: Littlenecks and Lobsters

I think this is my personal favorite of all the meals.  I love seafood, first of all, and as far as preparation goes, a boiled lobster is pretty easy. 

Littlenecks on the half-shell are easy too - especially if you're not the one shucking them.  Bill usually does that here, which is good because I can't take pictures and shuck a clam at the same time.

Anyway - get nice-sized lobsters - the ones above were a pound and three quarters - plenty of meat per person.  We had two dozen littlenecks, but we also had to share with Alex.  Julia doesn't like them yet.

As far as side dishes, well, we didn't have any.  Bill and I had some cheese and a baguette after the meal, but if you require a vegetable, I'd suggest something else easily eaten with your hands - corn on the cob, while ideal, isn't as readily available in the winter.  Edamame would be my choice.  Or you could start things off with a salad.  But really, it's okay to just have an entire meal of seafood once in a while. 

Oh, and why littlenecks?  Why not the obvious choice - oysters?  In this case - because the place we buy our seafood from was out of them, oddly enough.  But I actually think I prefer littlenecks anyway.  Keep them cold until you're ready to shuck them, and don't shuck them too far ahead of time, either. 

 

Once shucked, keep them on ice.

Here's how you do it -

Hold the clam in one hand, your clam knife in the other.  Insert the knife right near the hinge of the clam and gently but firmly and with authority, twist the knife until the shells separate.  Hold the clam level, so all the liquid doesn't spill out, and scrape the meat from one shell into the other.  Discard the empty shell, and run your knife under the meat in the other shell so you don't have to fight with it when you try to eat.

If you don't like the briney, oceany taste, you can squirt with lemon juice or top with a bit of hot sauce or cocktail sauce...but if you have to cover up the taste, why are you eating them at all?

Okay.  For the lobsters.  Half fill a pot (large enough for however many lobsters you have) with water and bring it to a boil.  Add salt, and then put your lobsters in.  Some people don't like this part, and yes, it's a little unpleasant, but hey, guess what, if you're going to eat fish or meat or chicken - anything that was alive, well, guess what - it had to die before it was cooked.  Sorry to sound harsh, but, well, that's reality.

So, remove a lobster from the bag it came home in.  Hold it by the carapace, or body.  It will probably arch and splay out all its claws and legs and tail - basically to intimidate you - but it will relax this pose in a moment and then you plunge it into the water, head first (somehow that seems more humane to me - I don't know) and get the next lobster.  Get them in quickly and put the lid on.  Cook them for about 15 minutes.  This may sound pompous, but I can usually tell if they're cooked enough by the smell.  Keep in mind that the more lobsters you have, the longer it will take for the water to come back up to temperature, and therefore the longer you will need to cook them.  I cooked these 4 lobsters for 17 minutes, and they came out perfectly.  Like all seafood, you don't want to overcook the meat.  But with lobsters, you don't want them undercooked, either, because the meat will be kind of mushy.  I think the rule is something like ten minutes for a pound, and then another minute for every quarter pound beyond that.  But again - the number of lobsters in the pot will also be a factor.

I just serve boiled lobster with melted butter, plain and simple.  And I don't even use that at times, because the lobster meat is so sweet it doesn't need anything else.  If you prefer to get fancy, chopped tarragon is a nice addition to the butter.  Or minced garlic.

Okay, now a word about the colorful stuff inside the lobster body.  First of all, I know some people who DO NOT eat anything but the claw and tail meat.  The rest is just too much work to get at.  While I may love these people as friends, I shake my head at them in private because there is so much meat they're missing out on.  And where do you have to be in such a rush, anyway, that you can't hang out and pick meat out of the body or squeeze it with your teeth out of the skinny little legs?  That's part of the whole lobster experience, in my book.  And so are the coral (eggs, or roe) and the tomalley (exploded liver).  The coral is the red stuff - and not every lobster will have that, obviously, since only the females carry the eggs.  Every lobster will, however, have that soft green liver pate-like stuff and okay, maybe it looks gross, but it tastes divine.  I think it's my favorite part of the lobster, truth be told.

And, I discovered, it's really good on a warm slice of baguette.  (There's a little of the coral in there, too.)

The main point, I think, is not to rush through this meal.  Take your time, and take the time to get every bit of meat from that lobster. 

Linger over a good bottle of Chablis. 

Talk. 

Connect.

Valentine's Day Ideas: Grilled Sockeye Salmon with Asparagus and Wild Rice

I hadn't even planned on this "menu" but I was in the grocery store and saw some beautiful Sockeye Salmon filets and at that point I had no choice any more. 

So I bought a filet that was a little over a pound,

(look at that gorgeous color!)

and a couple bunches of asparagus,

and this blend of rices and grains:

Bill actually did most of the cooking on this - he is the Grill Master.  I cooked the rice (according the the package directions, only I used chicken stock instead of water) and annoyed him by taking pictures, especially while he put together the marinade:

First some of this heavy-duty soy sauce....

                                                              And some of this lighter soy sauce...

A little olive oil...

                                                                                                      A little honey...

Some sesame oil (yum!)...

                                                                         A splash of rice wine vinegar...

A shallot, minced...

                                                                                A clove of garlic, minced...

 

And a little knob of ginger, peeled and minced.

                                                                                   Now, whisk it all together,

And there it is.  No measurements - just a splash of this and a bit of that, all done to taste. 

And then you just pour it over the salmon, which I'd placed in a 13 x 9 baking pan.

Flip the fish over so the flesh side is down in the marinade. 

And while this sat, I got the rice started and Bill got the coals going outside.

And while we waited for the coals to heat up, we had a bit of this:

 

I'd never had it before - it's carp roe in a sort of mayonaise-like spread.  A bit more mild than I'd expected, but it was nice on these little rye crackers.

After about fifteen or twenty minutes, Bill started grilling the fish, and I prepped the asparagus.  And that consisted of rinsing them off and cutting off the ends of the stalks...

and then coating them lightly with a mixture of olive oil, salt and pepper.

Now, you don't want to over cook fish.  Ever.  So basically what you really want to do is under cook it just a bit - or however undercooked you are comfortable with.  This salmon is hard to judge for doneness if you're going by color - the gorgeous red color doesn't lighten all that much when it cooks.  I go by feel - it should be soft and springy to the touch, and just starting to flake if you check it with a fork.

Ideally you should serve it straight from the grill, but the rice wasn't done yet and the asparagus hadn't been done either.  So the best thing to do with fish is to cover lightly in foil to retain the moisture.

The fish cooked for about 8 minutes, I think, and the asparagus for about the same length of time.  Once the rice was ready, it was time to dish it up.

 

And there you go.  Very simple and very healthy.  And, of course, delicious. 

Steamed Crabmeat Dumplings

This recipe comes from a Time Life-Books series - "Foods of the World" - published in 1968.  I think my mother had (or maybe still has) all of them.  They came two books per part of the world - one large hardbound book that had a lot of historical and cultural information and recipes, and then the smaller wire ring-bound volume that just had the recipes.  Bill's mother had the two volumes for Chinese Cooking, and now we have them on our shelf.

Bill had picked up a can of fresh crabmeat when he was shopping for the Soft Shell Crab Roll and other things we made a couple weekends ago.  The grocery store he was in didn't have soft shell crabs, so he figured any crabmeat would do.  Then I mentioned where we could get frozen soft shell crabs (at Dave's Marketplace - their East Greenwich location is the one I use most) and so we didn't end up using the crabmeat for the rolls.

So.  Bill thought we could make these dumplings with the crabmeat at some point.  It took a while to get done - there's a bit of a time committment, and for one reason and another, it didn't get done. 
At last, I made them Friday night.  Actually, I started things on Thursday - I was going to include them as part of our dinner - but I didn't have time to put them together, so into the fridge went the filling and the dough.

Oh - and another thing - I changed the recipe.  Or, rather, I used a different dough than the one called for, mainly because I didn't have tapioca flour.  So I found another dough recipe - a yeasted bread dough, actually, that was used in other recipes (same book) for other steamed dumplings.  So you're getting my rendition of the recipe, actually, and not the exact on in the book.

Is that enough of a back story?

Here's the recipe.  You'll have approximately 4 dozen dumplings, and because I used a different dough recipe, you will have some left over.  Freeze it, or get creative.

Steamed Bread Dough:

1 pkg dry active yeast - I had a jar on hand - a package is about a tablespoon.

1 T sugar

1/4 cup lukewarm water

1 cup milk, heated to lukewarm

4 cups all purpose flour.

Very simple - sprinkle the yeast and the sugar in the 1/4 cup of water and blend.  Set aside to allow the yeast to become active.  Then combine with the milk, and add the flour.  If you're doing it by hand, add the flour a cup or so at a time, stirring well to incorporate.  Once the dough is too stiff and sticky to stir, pour it out onto a board and knead in the rest of the flour.  Continue to knead until you've got a nice, firm ball of dough. 

Place the dough in a very lightly greased bowl and cover with a damp towel.  Set in a warm place and allow to double in bulk - about 1-2 hours, depending on the environment.  Punch the dough down, and allow to rise again for 20-30 minutes.

While the dough is rising, you can put the filling together.  Here's what you need:

2 dried chinese mushrooms, an inch to an inch and a half in diameter.

1/2 lb fresh crabmeat or a 7 1/2 ounce can of crabmeat

3 tablespoons peanut oil or other flavorless oil

1 tablespoon finely chopped, peeled fresh ginger root

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/8 teaspoon ground white pepper (I used black.)

1/4 teaspoon sugar

1.  In a small bowl, cover the mushrooms with some warm water and let them soak for 30 minutes to rehydrate.  (It helps to place another bowl or something on top of the mushrooms, to help keep them submerged at first.)  Then, remove the mushrooms, discard the water, and remove the stems.  Chop up the caps as fine as possible.  Set aside.

2.  Pick through the crabmeat to remove any bits of shell or cartilage.  Shred it and set aside.

3.  Place the oil, ginger, salt, pepper and sugar within easy reach.

4.  Set a wok or skillet over high heat for about 30 seconds.  Pour in the oil, swirl it about and heat for another 30 seconds, reducing the heat to moderate if the oil begins to smoke.  Add the ginger, then the mushrooms and crabmeat and stir-fry for 2-3 minutes.  Then stir in the salt, pepper and sugar, stirring for 30 seconds longer, and transfer the entire contents of the pan to a bowl.  Cool to room temperature.

To Assemble:

Cut the dough into quarters.  Cover three sections while you work with the first one.  Lightly oil your work surface and roll the first piece of dough into a log about an inch in diameter.

Next, take a knife or bench scraper and cut the log into pieces half an inch or so wide.

Next, the directions say to "lightly oil one side of the cleaver blade and, with the palm of your hand, firmly press the blade down on each slice of dough, flattening it into a 2 1/2 inch round."  So I did that.

(My hand looks freakishly wide and the freckles on my arm somehow seem to my paranoid eyes like liver spots.  Just so you know.)

Anyway, that worked, but it was just as easy to flatten the dough with my fingers, and faster.

Whatever method you choose, after you get them all flattened, take one in the palm of your hand and place a teaspoon of the filling in the center.

Fold the circle of dough in half and press the edges together...

And as you're sealing the edges, you want to sort of pleat the seam edge by making little folds as you go along.

This particular dough seemed rather soft and floppy while I was doing it, so the pleats weren't very sharp.  And I'm also not a professional.  The main thing is, seal them up so nothing pops out while they're cooking.

After you've pleated the edge, set the dumpling down on a lightly oiled platter or plate while you make the rest of them.  Press the dumpling down a bit so it's "sitting" with the pleated edge up.

To cook:

If you've got a bamboo steamer, you want to get a shallow pan wider than the steamer and pour in enough boiling water to come up about an inch on the side of the steamer.  (Sorry - I didn't take pictures at this point.)  Place the dumplings in the racks of the steamer - not too close together, as they expand somewhat while they cook.  Set the entire bamboo steamer and lid on the water in the pan and let steam (water still boiling) for 5 minutes.  Keep a kettle of boiling water handy, in case you need more during the cooking process.  We have two steamers, with two racks each, and that worked perfectly for the 46 dumplings I made.  You can keep the first batch warm by just keeping the lid on the steamer while you cook the other batch.

Bill made a little dipping sauce for them, too.  He used soy sauce, sesame oil, fresh ginger and garlic, and rice vinegar, and maybe some sugar. 

 

Soft Shell Crab Roll

I love soft shell crabs.  Fried, so the legs are crunchy and the body is crispy on the outside and soft on the inside.  They're seasonal items - you can only get them fresh some time in the spring, but one of our local grocery stores has them flash frozen year 'round, so every once in a while I get some and make sandwiches.  Usually with some arugula and a spicy mayo on a soft roll.  Aahhhh.  Good stuff.

Another favorite of mine is any sort of maki roll made with soft shell crab.  You can get them at just about any sushi bar, I think.  I can get them at a couple of local grocery stores that have mini sushi stations near the seafood counter. 

Or, we can make them at home.  Which, if you saw this post a few days ago, you already know.  I just figured I'd discuss the preparations in a bit more detail today. 

My husband is usually the sushi maker in our house.  We both can do it, but for whatever reason, he has taken it on as his job.  I'm the fry cook.  So anyway, we wanted to do an all-Japanese meal over the weekend, and Bill was looking through the gorgeous Nobu: The Cookbook, by Nobuyuki Matsuhisa. 

What a beautiful book.  And it's well written, and well illustrated, with plenty of step-by-step photos to show how to, for example, assemble a maki roll.  The autobiographical section of the book is quite detailed as well.  He's had quite a life thus far.

But anyway - on to the crab roll. 

The most interesting thing about this one to us was the use of a very thin sheet of daikon radish as the outer layer of the roll.  Typically it's nori, or rice, in the case of an inside-out roll.  But we haven't seen daikon used before.  (Which means nothing - we're certainly not sushi experts over here.)

Here are the directions for Nobu's Soft Shell Crab Roll:

Ingredients:

1 cup vinegared rice

1 sheet dried nori, toasted

grated wasabi to taste (we use a paste, since we don't have fresh here)

1 T asatsuki chives, chopped into fine rounds.  (we used the chives from our garden)

1 T flying fish roe (we didn't have that available; we used whitefish roe)

1/12 avocado

vegetable oil (for deep frying)

1 soft shell crab, cleaned (we made two rolls, so we have two crabs.)

potato flour (I used regular flour - it's what I had in the house)

1 straight and uniform daikon radish, with ends trimmed, peeled.

Method:

1.  Spreading the rice.  Spread the vinegared rice on the sheet of nori.  Using your left hand to make sure the rice doesn't spill over the left side of the nori sheet, spread the rice out evenly toward the left by pressing - but not squashing - the rice with the fingertips of your right hand.  Repeat, using opposite hands, for the other side.  You should make the rice a little thicker at each end of the nori in order to form a "bank."  Leave about 3/8 inch of the nori sheet free of rice at the side furthest from you.

2.  Adding the wasabi and filling.  When the rice is thoroughly and evenly spread over the nori, apply an unbroken streak of wasabi across the middle with one finger.  Then, using a spoon, spread the chives and the fish roe evenly over the wasabi and across the rice.  Add the avocado on top.

3.  Bring about 3 inches of oil in a small saucepan to 355 degrees F.  Dust the soft shell crab with flour

and deep fry for 3 to 4 minutes.

Drain. 

Cut the crab in half and add it to the roll while the crab is still hot.  Because the crab is the bulky part of the filling it should be firmly compressed before rolling.  This will make rolling easier.

4.  Rolling with nori.  Lift the end of the nori nearest you and carefully roll it over the filling, pressing down as you go. 

(Bill is using a makisu, a bamboo mat, to roll it.  He covers it in plastic wrap to prevent food from sticking when he's making multiple rolls.)

5.  Making the daikon peel.  Holding an 8-inch knife firmly, move the daikon against the knife, turning the daikon gradually to cut the flesh into a paper-thin ribbon. 

This is called katsura-muki.  You should end up with a strip 4 inches by 12 inches.

* Much easier said than done.  But Bill did really well considering he's never done it before.  And when he'd cut the two sheets, he just trimmed the thicker sections with a vegetable peeler, to give it a uniform thinness.  It wasn't paper thin, but it was still pretty damn thin:

6.  Rolling with the daikon peel.  Place the nori on top of the strip of daikon and roll away from you.

7.  Cutting.  Press down on the roll again at both ends to settle the filling, and trim the ends with a knife to tidy the shape.  Starting from the middle, cut the roll into 6 pieces of equal size.

(And you'll probably notice that the ends of the roll weren't trimmed - we kind of like the extra bits of crab and so forth sticking out of the ends.)

Like I said, Bill made two crab rolls, and truthfully, I could have eaten both of them by myself (hidden in a corner of the kitchen so no one would see me until it was too late).  The daikon gave them an extra level of crunch, along with the crispy portions of crab.  In contrast, you have the creamy texture of the avocado, the pop of the fish roe, and tangy thin bite of the chives.  All of this wrapped in perfectly cooked morsels of rice and the sea-salty sheet of nori. 

Actually, I could probably eat three of these rolls, if I was really hungry.

 

 

Shrimp and Avocado with Wasabi

And while I'm looking at the book Taste of Japan by Masaki Ko, I HAVE to share this recipe with you.  I landed on it while I was flipping through the pages to find the Daikon recipe in my previous post, and this is one of our all time favorites from the book.  SO easy and SO yummy.  If you like shrimp and avocado and wasabi.

We need to make this one again soon, I think...

Here's what you need:

2 avocados, halved, pitted, and scooped out of their skins.

8 ounces cooked shrimp, shelled

For the dressing:

4 teaspoons usukuchi soy sauce (it's lighter in color and saltier than dark soy sauce)

2 T rice vinegar

2 teaspoons wasabi paste (available at grocery stores.  If you buy the wasabi powder, you mix it with water in a 1:1 ratio to make the paste)

Okay.

To make the dressing - whisk the three ingredients together well. 

Cut each avocado half into 3/4 inch cubes.

Cut the cooked shrimp into pieces about an inch long.

Put the shrimp and avocados in a bowl, toss well with the dressing, and serve promptly.

See????  How easy is that?  And it's so yummy you won't want to share with anyone else.  This recipe serves 4, according to the book, but I think Bill and I can polish the whole thing off between the two of us.

We also added scallops one time, I believe...and you could use lobster instead of shrimp if you want. 

Go ahead.  Try it!  You know you want to....

Recipe for Thai Spring Rolls

From Keo's Thai Cuisine, by Keo Sananikone.  I mentioned the Spring Rolls in this post earlier today.  Here's my version - slightly different but basically the same.  Mine are larger - like egg roll size - and the actual version has them smaller - little bite sized appetizers. 

These are the ingredients:

1/2 lb fresh ground pork

1/2 lb shrimp, chopped

10 dried Chinese black mushrooms (available in Asian markets and some grocery stores)

1 ounce bean threads (avail. in Asian markets and some grocery stores)

1 medium onion, finely chopped

1 carrot, shredded

1/4 lb bean sprouts

1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper

1-2 teaspoons fish sauce (Asian market or sometimes Asian section of grocery s tores)

1 teaspoon sugar

1 cup lukewarm water

14-16 rice papers - round ones, medium size (about 8" in diameter) (found in Asian markets in greater variety - sometimes in grocery stores.  They're used for spring rolls and nime chow, among other things.)

6 cups oil for deep frying

Got all that?

Place the dried mushrooms in warm water for 20 minutes to rehydrate.  Remove the stems and dice up the caps.

Soak the bean threads in warm water for 20 minutes as well.  Drain, and then cut them into roughly 1-inch lengths.  

Place the shrimp and pork in a large bowl.  Add mushrooms and bean threads once rehydrated and chopped up.  Add onion, carrot, bean sprouts, black pepper and fish sauce.  Mix well and let stand for fifteen minutes or so.

Place the teaspoon of sugar in the cup of lukewarm water to dissolve, then pour into a shallow pan wide enough for the rice paper to lay flat in it.  I used a small frying pan.

This is what the rice paper looks like when dry -

They're brittle and they crack easily.

Once you've got the sugar and water in a pan, place one of the pieces of rice paper in and submerge it. 

Let it sit for a few seconds, then remove it and place on a plate or other dry work surface.  Give it a minute or so to allow the rice paper to absorb the moisture.

Place some of the pork/shrimp mixture on the rice paper, like so:

Actually, this is a bad picture - the mixture should be closer to the edge of the rice paper, so mentally move this mixture closer to the bottom of the picture.  Now, fold up the bottom edge over the mixture, then fold over the right side and the left side - it's like making burritos and things like that - and then roll tightly to seal.

Continue until you've used up the pork/shrimp mixture.  When you're about halfway through the whole process, put the 6 cups of oil in a deep pot and set on a medium high flame.  If you've got a candy thermometer, attach it to the pan and keep an eye on the temperature.  You want to heat the oil to 375 degrees F.

Once you've got all the spring rolls made, assemble them and a few other things near the stove so you'll be all ready once the oil reaches temperature.  You'll need a large slotted spoon, two plates with several layers of paper towels, and the spring rolls and tongs.  Keep everything close by so you aren't dripping hot oil all over the place.

Once the oil is hot, carefully lower 4 of the spring rolls into the oil.  Don't splash them - the best way is to place one end in and lay the rest of the roll in gently.  Because of all the water in them, these will bubble up and make a lot of noise for a little while.  It's kind of fun.

Roll them over so they brown evenly.  This might be kind of difficult, as air pockets form inside the rolled rice paper and the rolls will stubbornly roll right back the way they were after you flip them so the pale side is down.  Don't give up.  Worse comes to worst, you can just hold them submerged in the oil until they cook evenly, but I don't like doing that because they seem to soak up too much oil that way.  It may take some trial and error.  But that's part of the adventure.

When they're golden brown, remove from the oil with a slotted spoon and drain excess oil into the pan before placing them on one of the plates with the paper towel layers.

Let them cool a bit and then slice one in half, just to make sure everything is cooked through.  Let it cool a bit more, and have a taste.  You've earned it.

Let the oil temperature come back up (if necessary) and then place 4-5 more rolls in and continue frying in batches until they're all done.  If necessary, keep warm in a low oven or a warming drawer until it's time to serve them.

~~~~~

The book suggests a Spring roll sauce, but this is the one we made -

1 cup hot water

1/4 cup sugar

1/2 tsp salt

2 T lime juice

1 T white vinegar

1 T fish sauce

Dissolve the sugar and salt in the hot water.

Combine with remaining ingredients.

~~~~~

And that's that.  The tighter you can roll them the better they fry - the loose ones tend to have bigger air bubbles.

And you don't have to use that sauce - you can use a hot sauce, soy sauce, whatever you want.  I used some of the green curry sauce that we had with the chicken at that same meal.

Give it a try - frying's fun!

Surfish and Turfish

I've been trying to dig out forgotten food items from the depths of the freezer so we can utilize them before they get freezer burn and become inedible.

I found a large square plastic container with something brown in it, so I figured I should thaw that just to see what it was about.  Turned out to be leftover beef stew. 

And Bill had mentioned that we had one remaining frozen bag of soft-shell clams in their broth, plus another bag of clam broth. 

So I thawed the bag with the clams in it and decided to make clam cakes to accompany the beef stew.  Weird combination, I know, but, well, sometimes that happens.

The clamcake recipe was Bill's mom's - it's written on a little torn-out page from a notebook; the fringes along one edge where it ripped through the spiral binding are discolored and raggedy looking.  The first part of the word "Clamcakes" is torn off - it's more like "lamcakes."

Clamcakes or lamcakes - they were pretty good.  And pretty simple.

First, in one bowl, whisk together 2  1/4 cups of flour and 4 teaspoons of baking powder.

In another bowl, combine 1  1/3 cups clam broth with 2 eggs.

Chop up the clams.  (Ours were already cooked.  Normally you'd use quahogs anyway, but hey, any port in a storm.  Or something like that.  Steamers worked just fine.)

Fill a large pot about a third to half way with vegetable oil and heat to 360 degrees F - 375 degrees F.

As the oil is heating up, combine the clam broth and egg with the flour and baking powder.  Whisk together to get rid of any lumps.  Then stir in the chopped clams.  Set aside until the oil has reached temperature.

Also, have a couple of plates ready with several layers of paper towels on them and some salt, and a large slotted metal spoon.

Here's how the batter will look after it has been sitting a few minutes:

When the oil is at the right temperature, get a large spoon (tablespoon or bigger), or, if you have it, a 2 tablespoon size measuring spoon.  Scoop up some of the batter with your big spoon and lower it to just above the surface of the hot oil.  Scrape the batter into the oil with another spoon.  Scoop 4-6 clamcakes-to-be into the oil.  You want them to have room to move around a bit, and you'll need move to turn them over so they brown evenly.

Here are some partway through the frying...

They're still too pale, but they're getting closer.  All those little straggly bits of batter can be scooped out and discarded. 

As they reach a dark golden color, take one out and cut it in half to make sure the batter has cooked all the way through.  If it has, pull the other clamcakes out and set them on one of the plates with the paper towels to drain.  Sprinkle right away with a little salt - it will stick better while they are still hot and a bit oily.  You can keep them warm in a low oven or under a dish towel.  You don't want to wrap them in foil - that will steam them and they'll lose their crispness.

Here's a tantalizing close-up of some of the finished ones from last night:

They go nicely with leftover beef stew.

Shoosi

A few days ago I made tacos for dinner, but I'd also picked up a package of barbecued eel maki rolls from the little sushi area in the grocery store.

I believe I've mentioned this before, but in case you're new here, or in case I am mistaken in what I think I remember...my son, who is five and a half...LOVES SUSHI.  Loves it.  He can eat any adult under the table, particularly if we're talking tuna. 

Anyway, I picked the eel rather than anything raw because it had to wait in my car for an hour or so (I was shopping on my lunch break), and although it was pretty cold outside, I still don't mess around with raw fish.  So I just got the 8 piece cooked maki roll.  As long as it's eel, cooked is okay with my son.  Tuna and salmon and other fish must be raw. 

We had our taco dinner as a picnic on the floor in our basement living room (the one with the tv and most of the toys), and when I brought down the little plate with maki rolls on it, Alex's eyes grew wide and he seriously thought they should all be his for consumption.

We were able to convince him to share, but it took a lot of clever adult thinking and tricky verbal maneuvers to do so.

Anyway, the next day, when I was driving the kids home from daycare, Alex started talking in his "mature" voice.  This is the voice he uses to pronounce dinner excellent and to express boundless love for whichever parent cooked it.  It is the voice that goes with this face:

It's the food critic face.

So, with THAT voice, he told me that I needed to go to the store again and buy more sushi.  "This time, Mommy, you need to get ALL the sushi.  Because I love sushi.  I LOVE sushi, Mommy.  I could eat a hundred sushis." 

He went on like this at length.  He also told me that the sushi would be for "me and Daddy.  Because we love sushi."  And I said "Oh, yeah?  Um...I love it too, kiddo.  And so does Julia."   He actually GROANED with disappointment.  Julia, after agreeing that she liked sushi, took uncharacteristic pity on her brother and said "okay, no" - she didn't like it after all.  At one point Alex was so engaged in telling me how much sushi he could eat and how much he really really loved sushi, that his mouth couldn't keep up with his brain and he told me how much he loved "shoosi...shoosi...I mean sushi."  Seriously.  We can't go to a Japanese restaurant with him because we'd have to take out a second mortgage to keep him in tuna sashimi. 

So instead, we'll pick up a little something for a treat now and then, or sometimes we will by a good, sushi-grade piece of tuna or salmon, and Bill will put together a feast like the one we had last night.  My sister's kids spent a good part of the weekend at our house - 'twas the annual cookie-decorating weekend, more on that in another post - and my niece, in particular, loves sushi and sashimi, too.

Bill bought up a piece of tuna, a piece of salmon, some shrimp, avocados, and cucumber.  He made a batch of sushi rice, and got out the sheets of nori and one of our bamboo sushi mats and went to town....

That's Alex's hand up there at the top of the picture, presenting the feast to the camera or something.  He spots the camera in my hand and suddenly he's hosting an Iron Chef competition. 

And yes, look at all that food.  We ate and ate til we were stuffed.  Except Julia.  She had eaten so many cheese puffs before dinner that she really wasn't interested in much else.  She dissected a maki roll and picked out the salmon and avocado and cucumber, but that was about it for her. 

Alex, on the other hand, informed us within minutes that apart from the few pieces we had just placed on our plates, the rest was for him.  He said it so calmly, so matter-of-factly, that we all kind of stared at him for a moment before laughing.  To be fair, he ate more than I did.  I'm pretty sure he ate more than anyone.

Only two pieces of shrimp and 13 assorted maki rolls remained after we'd all finished and Alex had reluctantly left a lump of rice on his plate.  His belly full, he was forced to admit defeat.

For lunch today I cut up and cooked up the remains of last night's feast in some soy sauce, wasabi, sesame oil and rice vinegar. 

Alex refused to eat any.  "I don't like it when it's cooked," he said haughtily. 

He ate gingerbread cookies instead.   

The Rest of the Fish Story

The same night Julia was playing "Eye Spy" with the grilled red snapper, we also had maki rolls.  I had picked up a rainbow roll and a barbecued eel roll on the way home.  After the four of us consumed the two whole fish and a lot of the noodles Bill had made, Alex was still hungry.  So Bill told Alex to sit back in his seat and just wait.  And then he brought the maki rolls in.

Alex loves him some raw fish.

He's quite the connoisseur.

Hey, I want some of that!

(Nothing can distract him at this point.)

All was blissful...

until...

Julia?  What is this?

There's still some eye goop left, Daddy!  Want some?

Yum! 

Again With the Fish Eyes

I was trying to come up with some clever title to this post that wouldn't give away what it was about.  Something that would make you (or someone) want to read more to find out what I was eventually getting at.

Nothing really worked.  So I gave up. 

We had fish last night.  I bought a couple of whole red snappers and Bill marinated them in ginger and garlic and soy sauce and rice vinegar and who knows what other wonderful stuff.

Here's how they looked while marinating:

And then he grilled them.  He also made this delicious concoction of pan fried rice noodles and spinach and shredded beef...and three different condiments for the noodles and/or the fish.

It was a fabulous meal.  I'll post recipes for the noodles and condiments some other time.  My main focus in this post is really about my daughter and her fearlessness in the face of fish eyes.

Yep.  She did it again.

Unbidden, unprovoked.  She just saw that they were there for the plucking.  And so, she went for them.

Yep.  That's the fish's head.  The body meat has been removed from the spine and consumed by the four of us.  But Julia does not believe in letting anything go to waste.

What?

Nothing left on this one.

I not eating the bones!  Bones are yucky!

After she'd scooped and slurped the eyes from one fish, Bill asked, in a voice numb with horror, "Julia, do you want the eyes from the other fish, too?"

Well of course she did!

She put the eyeless carcass back on the platter and pulled the other one toward her plate.

If you happen to have some lobster left over from your clambake...

Try this:

Pick the lobster meat from approximately two lobsters.  Chop into small pieces.  Don't forget to pick the meat out of the body.  And for goodness' sake, don't forget to include the coral and tomalley.  They are FLAVOR!

Slice the corn off of two cobs, preferably corn that you included in your clambake. 

Finely dice a small section of onion, about the size of a ping pong ball or so.

Chop some fresh chives from the back yard garden, and some fresh tarragon.

Add the vegetation to the lobster in a large bowl.

Crumble one sleeve of saltine crackers into the bowl.

Melt some butter (you have to ballpark this - and it will depend on how much liquid you included with your lobster meat, and the humidity, and so forth.) - maybe half a stick to start with.  Pour this over the ingredients in the bowl and mix it all together.  The crackers should soak up the melted butter. 

Crack a couple of eggs into the mix and stir everything until combined. 

Now - here's what I plan to do NEXT time - I didn't do it the first two times, but I think it would be wise:  let the mixture sit for ten minutes or so and then add some more liquid - butter if you want, or clam juice, or maybe another egg, or some milk.  Combine once more and let sit a few more minutes.  Get a plate ready, get a pan ready, get some vegetable oil ready, and get another plate ready with some layers of paper towel on top.  And get a spatula.  Okay?

Now, take a golf-ball sized lump of the lobster mixture in your hands and roll into a ball and place on the first of your two plates.  Continue in this manner with the rest of the mixture until it's all used up. 

Now pour a layer of oil in your pan and heat on medium high heat until the oil sizzles when you flick some water on it.  Okay, now carefully (hot oil is hot) place one of the lobster cake balls in the pan and press it down a bit to flatten.  Don't press too much or it might fall apart. 

Place several more lobster cake balls in the pan, pressing slightly.  If you've got an 8-10 inch pan, you just want 4 or 5 of the lobster cakes in the pan - you need plenty of space between them so you can slide the spatula underneath without breaking one next to it.

Check the bottom of the first lobster cake - you want it to brown nicely.  It should be about two minutes.  You may want to turn the heat down a bit, too.  Carefully turn over the lobster cakes and press down again, GENTLY, this time with your spatula.  Cook until the other side is browned - maybe another two minutes, and then remove and set on the paper towels on your second plate.  Brush some more oil on the pan if needed, and repeat the whole process again, until all the lobster cakes are done.

You can keep them warm in a low oven or a warming drawer, depending on what you have available.  You could also just cover them with foil.  Whatever works.

When I made these most recently, I made a little sauce out of about a third of a cup of mayo, some "coriander chutney" that I bought at the grocery store recently - it's basically sort of a cilantro pesto, chipotle tabasco sauce, salt, pepper, and lime juice.  Mayo with tarragon, chives and lime would be nice, too.

And there you go - a nice way to use up lobster leftovers - if you are fortunate enough to have them.

Give it a shot - it's really pretty simple, and you'll impress the hell out of your dining companions.   

Clambake - An All-Day Affair

A couple of Saturdays ago, Bill and I took the kids and some clam rakes and metal baskets and gloves and the kids' plastic gardening tools and my camera down to Galilee to dig clams.  Bill had bought about four pounds of soft shell clams, or steamers, earlier, but in order to do the clambake we needed rockweed (a type of seaweed) and since we had to get that, we might as well dig for more steamers while we were there.

I've posted all of the pictures on flickr - you can click on the link over in the right column, or click here for the entire set of pictures, start to finish.  I've written a little narrative to accompany most of the pictures. 

But I'll hit the highlights here...

This is where we went to dig:

The area is referred to as "the mud flats" because the sand is actually a mixture of mud and sand.  We got there as the tide was going out - perfect for our purposes.  We could work our way farther out as the tide went out, and our chances of finding fresh areas where no one had dug yet, and the clams would be closer to the surface.  You can see plenty of people already out there digging.

Here we go....

Julia's legs are kind of short, so she started to lag behind...

Here we are at the first spot.  In order to decide where to dig, we stomp around on the sand and watch for water to squirt out through tiny holes in the sand.  This tiny little fountain is an indication that there's a clam hiding down under there. 

Bill's digging with a clam rake, but you can also dig with your hands, or whatever else works.  I use my hands - I don't have as much finesse with the rake as Bill does, and I tend to jab the tines through the delicate clam shells.  I didn't dig on this day - I was busy playing Pioneer Woman of the Mud Flats of Galilee and taking a zillion pictures so I could chronicle the adventure.  (I must credit Pioneer Woman with unknowingly reminding me that I have been taking pictures since I was very young and I have a great camera so WHY aren't I doing more of it???  Thank you, Ree, for the slap upside the head!)

Anyway, while Bill stomped and raked and moved along and stomped and raked and so on, the kids were on a mission to find the rockweed needed for the actual clambake that we would put together later.

This is rockweed.  You can also see a little crab scuttling away in the upper middle portion of the image.  This type of seaweed attaches itself to rocks (hence the name) but comes off easily.  It was primarily Alex's job to locate the rockweed and bring it back to the baskets.

He gathered nearly all of the rockweed himself.  Julia helped some, but it didn't hold her interest for very long.

She just wanted to play.

Meanwhile...

Bill kept digging....

Alex's other job was to rinse off the clams and place them in the baskets with the rockweed.

I don't even know how long we were there, but it got to be a bit too long for Julia.  She had to go potty at one point and since there were no bathrooms out there, I kind of helped her go off to the side near the deeper water.  She ended up sitting in the sand and was rather uncomfortable from that point on.

At one point, after whining about wanting to go home, and Bill saying "just one more hole" and me trying to convince Julia that LOOK!  What's Daddy going to FIND?! Isn't this EXCITING??!!, Julia had finally had enough of clams, sun, seaweed, and sand in her shorts.  She stood as tall as she could, her clenched fists at her sides, and shrieked, through clenched teeth, in a horrifying voice I have never heard before, "I WANT TO GO HOOOOMMMMME!"  She actually shook with anger.  Really.

So, finally, we did.

And once home, the preparations began...

Variation on a Theme - Shrimp and Fettucine

(from my old blog...)

I've got this idea of making a pesto with the leaves from our nasturtium plants. The flowers and leaves are edible, and both are kind of peppery. No, not kind of, they are peppery.

Anyway, tonight's dinner was sort of an easing into that idea. I figured I'd cut the nasturtiom peppery-ness with the traditional fresh, bright flavor of basil. So, out to the garden with my scissors....I snipped a bunch of basil and several big nasturtium leaves. Brought them inside, rinsed them off, and proceeded to make this dinner:

Couple of handfuls of frozen shrimp, thawed and peeled. (Save the shells in the freezer to make a seafood stock some time.)
Olive oil
Butter
Salt
Red pepper flakes
About 10 cloves of garlic, peeled, smashed, and minced
A handful of shelled walnuts, finely chopped
About...um...6 big nasturtium leaves, and about 30-40 leaves of fresh basil, assorted sizes
A slug of white wine (mine was a pinot grigio/pinot bianco blend - Luna di Luna, because that is what we had in the fridge)
Freshly grated Parmeggiano-Reggiano cheese to taste
A pound of whole wheat fettucine

Okay.

Start water boiling in a pot.

While that's working, put about 2 T of butter and about the same amount of olive oil in a pan and warm it to melt the butter. Add the minced garlic to soften.

While the garlic is softening, chop the walnuts. Add them to the garlic, stir, and increase the flame a tiny bit.

Chiffonade the nasturtium and basil leaves: Lay the leaves (do one kind at a time) on top of each other, roll tightly, and then finely slice. They'll be long, thin green strips. Mix the basil and nasturtium leaves together and set aside.

When the water in the pot comes to a boil, throw in some salt and then put in the fettucine.

While the pasta cooks, heat the oil/butter/garlic/walnut mixture so it's bubbling, throw in a slug of wine (probably about 3/4 of a cup) and cook to reduce and burn off some/most/all of the alcohol.

When the liquid has reduced and the mixture doesn't smell so obviously of wine, add your shrimp and coat with the mixture in the pan. Cook slowly, stirring and tossing the shrimp, until they are almost completely cooked. Add the nasturtium and basil, some salt, some red pepper flakes, toss to combine, reduce flame to the lowest setting, and cover with a lid.

Drain the pasta (when it's cooked to your taste).

Uncover the shrimp mixture, grate the cheese onto it, and serve over the pasta.

It was pretty good.

Next time, I'm making a straight pesto with mostly the nasturtiums...just to see how that is.

I'll let you know.

Grilled Shrimp

(from my old blog...)

This is for my cousin, Susan, who asked for a copy of this recipe. It's one of the dishes Bill cooked for me on my birthday...It's from "Betty Crocker's Mexican Made Easy" - which, despite the "made easy" aspect of it, is actually a pretty good, authentic-ish Mexican cookbook.

Anyway - here it is:

1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/4 cup tequila or lime juice
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
2 T lime juice
1 T ground red chilis
1/2 t salt
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 red bell pepper, finely chopped
24 large raw shrimp, peeled and deveined (leave tails intact)

Mix all ingredients except shrimp in shallow glass or plastic dish; stir in shrimp. Cover and refrigerate 1 hour.

Remove shrimp from marinade; reserve marinade. Thread 4 shrimp on each of 6 8-inch metal skewers. Grill over medium coals, turning once, until pink, 2 to 3 minutes on each side.

Heat marinade to boiling in nonaluminum saucepan; reduce heat to low. Simmer uncovered until bell pepper is tender, about 5 minutes. Serve with shrimp.

Serves 6.

(or two gluttons...)

Two Scallop Recipes

(from my old blog...)

I made both of these for the clambake. Did each with about a pound and a half of fresh sea scallops....

A note about searing - scallops cook rather quickly, so at most these should be on each side about two-three minutes, depending on the individual size of each scallop. Overcooked seafood is a sin.

Sea Scallops with Lime

You'll need:

A pound and a half of sea scallops
A lime (all the juice and about a teaspoon of zest)
Some oil
Some fresh chives for garnish (optional)
A pan
A pair of tongs to turn the scallops over when you sear them

First, heat some oil in a pan
Place the scallops in the oil, not too close together, and sear, first on one end, then the other. (Scallops are shaped like little cylinders, if they're not smushed.)

When you finish the second sear, pour in the lime juice and swirl it around in the pan. Stir the scallops around a bit in the lime juice as it warms up, then remove scallops, place in a bowl, pour the pan juice over them, and sprinkle with the lime zest and the chopped chives.

We served these as appetizers at the clambake, but they'd also be nice divided between two hungry people, with some rice on the side and a green salad and the cold beverage of your choice.

Blackened Sea Scallops With Sauteed Bell Peppers

This recipe was adapted from a recipe for bluefish in the book Miss Ruby's American Cooking by Ruby Adams Bronz. I was going to link to it, but apparently it's now out of print. The bluefish recipe is called "Provincetown Bluefish" - and it's very good also*. But for another party we had once, I thought I'd try it using scallops instead, and it was very popular. I've lessened the amount of heat per scallop - but if you like a lot of heat, blacken both "ends" of the scallop instead of only one as I do in the recipe.

Here goes -

A pound and a half of scallops
Two green bell peppers and two red bell peppers, seeded, julienned, and minced.
1 T paprika
1 T black pepper
1 t cayenne pepper
1/2 t dried thyme
8 T olive oil (half for the peppers, half for the scallops)
8 anchovy fillets, drained and chopped
4 t balsamic vinegar

Okay.

First, combine the paprika, black and cayenne peppers, and the dried thyme. Set aside.

Pour 4 T oil in a large skillet, and sautee the bell peppers, stirring occasionally, until soft. Stir in the chopped anchovy and cook until it dissolves. Shut off the heat, and stir in the balsamic vinegar.

In another pan, heat the remaining oil. Tap one end of each scallop into the paprika/peppers/thyme mixture, and set, that side down, in the hot oil. Sear on one side, then turn over and sear on the other.

Arrange the bell pepper mixture in a large bowl, Then arrange the scallops, paprika/pepper/thyme side up, on top of them. I garnished this with a couple of dried red chili peppers, just to let people know they were spicy.

Again, we served these as appetizers, but they'd make a nice meal too.

* To make the bluefish recipe, just julienne the bell peppers, don't mince them. And substitute 2 1-lb bluefish fillets, skinned, for the scallops.

Trout for Lunch

(from my old blog...)

Pretty simple - all I did was this:

Heat some oil in a pan - about a quarter of an inch or so.

While it is warming up, mix about two parts flour to one part cornmeal in a bowl. Add some salt and pepper. If you want to season it more than this, go right ahead.

Pat the filets dry with some paper towel. Dredge each filet in the flour mixture and place on a clean, dry plate.

When the oil is hot (it sizzles immediately when you flick some water into it), place a few filets in the pan. Watch out for the splattering.

When the edges start to look opaque, turn the filets over and finish cooking. They should be a pale golden brown on each side.

Remove the filets and place on paper towels on another plate. Keep the plate and fish warm in your oven (on very low heat - about 200 degrees. You don't want to dry out the fish.)

Repeat the frying with the rest of the fish.

Serve with tartar sauce, lemon wedges, hot sauce, or whatever you like on your fish.

You can also serve other things with this, like rice or fries or potato salad, but there's also something kind of cool and fun about just having the fish by itself. Especially when it was caught just a few hours earlier.

We gave Alex some little bits of fish (double-checking for bones, first) and he loves it. He had already had his lunch, his fruit for dessert, a teething cookie, and a few Cheerios. But after the first little taste of fish, he wanted more. And more. He liked it with tartar sauce, and also with the lemon. He can try hot sauce a bit later on in his life.

Anyway - we had a very nice lunch. And there's more fish in the fridge

Shrimp Recipe

(from my old blog...)

Last night I was going to make shrimp fajitas, but I didn't have flour tortillas and I didn't feel like going to the store on my lunch break or on the way home, so this is what I did instead:

Smeared 1/3 of a can of tomato paste in the bottom of a baking dish (not a 13 x 9 - it's smaller, maybe 11 x 7 or so).

On top of that I put chunks of cream cheese - used a whole 8 ounce block. (No, this isn't diet food.)

Peeled and deveigned some shrimp. (There were 28 left in the bag of frozen, so that's what I used) Put them in a bowl, and sprinkled some "Essence of Emeril" on top. (Yes, really, I have a bottle of it. It's handy.)

Mixed together a can of black beans (rinsed) with a package of frozen corn, a chopped onion, the rest of the can of tomato paste whisked into a cup of chicken stock, salt and pepper, and a bit of lemon zest (about a teaspoon). (I used lemon zest because I had some left from the dessert I made on Sunday, and because I didn't realize I still had some limes. I would have used the juice from half a lime otherwise.)

One by one, I heated up small corn (white corn in this case) tortillas and when they were warm and softened, I put two shrimp lengthwise at one end and rolled them up in the tortilla. Like a flauta, I think. Anyway, placed these, as I made them, down the center of the baking dish. They fit perfectly - I made 14 of them, there were 10 down the center, and 2 along each side. Nice and snug.

Poured the beans and corn mixture over the top, covered it with foil, and baked for about an hour at 350 F. Actually, to be honest, I started it at 325 but it wasn't coming along fast enough (trying to time it for when my husband got home from work at 7), so about halfway through I bumped it to 375. So, averaging it out, I'm saying 350. But it also depends on the individual oven, so it should be checked periodically.

Served with a dollop of sour cream and some cubed avocado. We also sprinkled some green Tabasco on it. I would have made it spicier, but I'm trying to share more of our "people food" with Alex, and I don't want to frighten him with chili peppers just yet.

My husband loved it. I thought it was good. But then I am always more critical of my cooking than he is. I think it could have used more liquid - maybe half a cup more of the chicken stock.

P.S. Tonight I pureed some of the leftovers and fed that to Alex for dinner. He loved it too.

Except for the avocado.
Posted by: Jayne / 8:38 PM