Steelhead fillet

Steelheads are a type of sea-run rainbow trout native to the Pacific Northwest. The flesh is very similar to salmon; pinkish-orange, with the same sort of flake, though not as meaty as salmon.

I got a half-pound fillet, skin on, and baked it. Once I got it home, I patted it dry with paper towels, and laid it in a casserole dish with a little olive oil on the bottom. I sprinkled a little salt and pepper over the top, and baked it at 350 for about 20 minutes, until it was glistening. I squeezed a little Meyer lemon over the top and that was it.

If you wanted to get really decadent, you could melt just a little butter over the top immediately before serving.

Scallops with blood orange gastrique

Part 2 of the Pike Place-inspired seafood feast, and definitely the fanciest dish I've made in a while. Four enormous fresh sea scallops, with a blood orange gastrique (sauce made from sugar and vinegar and reduced down), and a blood orange and parsley salad over crispy fried brussels sprout leaves.

Oh yes.

The blood oranges were the best oranges I've seen since I lived in California, fresh and tender and dripping with juice. After I cut the peel off, I sucked all the lingering orange bits off just because I could. I also saved some long twirls of blood orange peel to use as drink garnishes. I'm definitely going back and getting more.

It's essentially this recipe from Bon Appetit, cut in half, with rose vinegar instead of sherry vinegar (that's rose as in the wine, not the flower). Instead of mint and tarragon in the salad, I used more parsley plus thyme and basil, because that's what I had.

Keep the gastrique warm while you fix the other stuff, or it will start to harden to the pan.

blood orange gastrique:

3 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon Sherry wine vinegar
1 cup fresh blood orange juice (from about 6 oranges)
1 1/2 cups low-salt chicken broth

scallops and brussels sprouts:

2 blood oranges, peeled, separated into segments
1/4 cup each (lightly packed) fresh parsley leaves, fresh mint leaves, and fresh tarragon leaves
4 tablespoons olive oil, divided
Coarse kosher salt
8 ounces brussels sprouts, leaves removed from core, core discarded
20 large sea scallops, side muscles removed

blood orange gastrique:
Place sugar in heavy medium saucepan. Heat over medium heat until sugar begins to melt. Stir until sugar dissolves, then cook without stirring until deep golden, about 5 minutes. Gradually add vinegar (mixture will harden). Stir until caramel melts, about 1 minute. Add orange juice; boil until mixture begins to thicken, about 5 minutes. Add broth; boil until gastrique coats spoon and is reduced to generous 1/2 cup, about 15 minutes.

scallops and brussels sprouts:
Mix orange segments, parsley, mint, and tarragon in medium bowl. Drizzle with 1 tablespoon olive oil; toss to coat. Season salad with coarse salt and pepper. Heat 1 tablespoon olive oil in heavy large skillet over medium-high heat. Add brussels sprouts and toss until just tender, 3 to 4 minutes. Transfer brussels sprouts to bowl. Add 2 tablespoons olive oil to same skillet. Sprinkle scallops with salt and pepper. Add scallops to skillet and cook until browned and just opaque in center, 1 to 2 minutes per side. Arrange scallops and brussels sprouts on plates. Drizzle gastrique over scallops. Garnish with salad.

Golden beet risotto with Dungeness crab

I'm so over budget for this month it's not even funny. But I'm rebuilding my pantry from scratch--and the extra cost amortizes out over all those months when we weren't buying anything, just using up all the pantry stores.

In the spirit of being way over budget, I got some amazing stuff at Pike Place Market, and made us a fresh seafood feast. First up: golden beet risotto with Dungeness crab.

I made a golden beet risotto, with about half of the beet greens, and topped it off with handfuls of fresh crab meat. I bought a whole cooked Dungeness crab, picked all the meat out, and made crab stock with the shell. Some of the crab stock went into the risotto (the final product was about two-thirds chicken stock), and the rest went into the freezer.

I drank a Laughing Stock Pinot Gris with this feast, and in the spirit of generosity, gave a tiny scrap of crabmeat to each of the cats.

Scallop ceviche

Another thing you can do with fresh, good-quality scallops is make a quick "scallop ceviche." Which is really just raw scallops, thinly sliced, on a plate with a squeeze of fresh lime juice. Maybe some sea salt.

Scallops!

Last night's notable restaurant leftover haul included some enormous fresh scallops. These were easily three inches across, at least. I LOOOOOOOOOVE scallops, so naturally the first thing I did when I got home was pop those bad boys into a pan.

Good, fresh scallops need nothing more than a little butter and a hot pan. Get the pan hot, melt the butter, sear them for not even a minute on each side. Done. Delicious!

Try to avoid the temptation to cook them "all the way through." That will just make them chewy and tasteless. You want them a little raw in the middle. Quality seafood can, and should, be eaten raw.

Crab and corn empanadas

I know I've said it before, but I love restaurant leftovers.

This week, I got several containers of crabmeat, several of sauteed mushrooms, a couple more containers of fava beans, and at least a pound of cooked brisket.

I see more crab cakes in my future; but I also made crab and corn empanadas with puff pastry.

1 cup crabmeat
1 cup corn
Juice of 1 lime
Old Bay seasoning
Scallions
4 sheets of puff pastry, thawed and cut into four squares each

Mix together. Place a spoonful or two in the middle of each puff pastry square, and fold over to form a triangle. Seal the edges with a little water, and crimp with a fork. Bake at 400 for 20 minutes or until the puff pastry is golden brown at the edges.

Serve with a Sriracha aioli (Sriracha + mayo).

Crab cakes

A well-made crab cake is a beautiful thing. It should be mostly crab, with just enough mayo/other to keep it from completely falling apart; with enough fried coating to give it texture, but not so much as to disguise the crab flavor.

I got a container of crab meat from the restaurant the other night (they were going to throw it out! Can you imagine?) and used it to make some yummy crab cakes. I use a combination of oil and butter to fry mine; you can go all oil if you'd rather. I also coated mine in panko instead of bread crumbs, to make the outside crispier, but bread crumbs are fine too.

1 lb crab meat
1/2 cup finely diced onion
2 tablespoons butter
1 egg
1/4 cup mayo (or less)
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
Old Bay seasoning
1/4 cup minced fresh herbs (parsley, cilantro, dill)
Fresh bread crumbs or panko

Saute the onion in 2 tablespoons butter until soft. Set aside.

Mix the crab meat with the egg, mayo, Dijon, Old Bay to taste, and fresh herbs. You can up the amount of Dijon and cut back on the amount of mayo if you'd like a less mayo-y crab cake, like me. Stir in the sauteed onions.

The mixture should just barely hold together at this point, still very loose. Form into loose balls, coat with bread crumbs or panko, and place on a sheet of wax paper. Refrigerate for a couple of hours (this will help them hold their shape).

Fry in 1/4 cup butter/oil, a few minutes on each side or until browned, over medium heat.

Crab omelet

Best of all, you don't need fresh crab meat for this.

Canned crab works fine--in fact, better, as the stronger taste comes through more.

I first had this in Annapolis, MD, and I've been making it at home periodically ever since. It's your standard omelet--eggs, maybe some milk or cream, seasonings like fresh parsley and/or chives. With a can of drained crab meat mixed in, as well as some Old Bay seasoning.

Cook just like a standard omelet. But it'll have a wonderful crabby flavor, like a breakfast crab cake.

Seafood pasta

I discovered another perk to working in the restaurant on Sundays (in addition to the free leftover food, which I'll write about in a minute).

I usually work doubles on Sundays, brunch plus dinner. For brunch, they bring in a selection of newspapers for people to peruse, including the New York Times and the Boston Globe. They throw away the inserts, so I helped myself to the coupons and the sales flyers.

Between the coupons and some judicious shopping at CVS, making full use of the ExtraBucks program, I scored $120 worth of stuff for $45. So you can bet I'll be snagging the coupons from now on.

(Disclaimer: I don't usually shop with coupons, because generally coupons are for over-processed name-brand crap food; the kind of stuff I don't buy. But, if you can combine a coupon with a store sale, and/or some other sort of store promotion, like Double Coupon Day or CVS' ExtraBucks, you can walk away with some amazing deals. So I'll start using coupons and watching sales for things I'll buy anyway, like shampoo and toothpaste. Don't worry, I still won't buy frozen pizza or Lucky Charms, even if I can get it for free.)

The other good part of working Sundays, as I've mentioned, is that they throw away all the unused food on Sunday nights, and I'm welcome to help myself to any of it. This week was an especially good haul. I got three large pieces of Tasmanian sea trout, a container full of cooked mussels and whelks, a container of squid ink anchoiade, some scallions, some lemon juice, and some ramp puree.

So I whipped together a seafood pasta, using all of those things.

I cooked some penne and caramelized an onion. To the onion I added a little of the squid ink anchoiade and some of the pasta cooking water. To that I threw in the mussels and whelks, then the pasta. When everything was mixed together, I added the Tasmanian sea trout, cut into large pieces. Then I turned the heat off, added chopped parsley and scallions, and waited until the sea trout was just warmed through.

Then I ate it. It was awesome. Free food never tasted so good.

Tasmanian sea trout

As the restaurant was emptying the kitchen on Sunday night after work, I managed to score three very nice pieces of Tasmanian sea trout. (I love free leftovers!)

Tasmanian sea trout is similar to salmon--it has that same orangey-pink color, and the same sort of texture and flake. However, the flavor is much creamier and more intense than salmon.

I did nothing more than gently sear one side in a little butter and olive oil; just enough to warm the entire thing up a bit. Slice, bit of salt, done. A wonderful mid-afternoon treat. If you find some, I highly recommend buying it; it's much tastier than salmon.

Dill risotto, with smoked salmon

My salmon toasts kick from last week is almost done--I'm just about out of salmon. This leaves me with most of a bunch of fresh dill, just a little smoked salmon, and most of a container of sour cream. The sour cream I'll use in a sour cream coffee cake--the dill was more problematic, as it's such a pungent herb, and doesn't have universal applications like parsley.

So I made dill risotto, and topped it with smoked salmon.

Follow the standard risotto recipe (without the butternut squash and chard, of course); at the end, add a bunch of chopped dill and a big scoop of sour cream. (Adding parmesan cheese at this point is strictly optional.) Salt and pepper to taste.

Smoked salmon toasts

When I go grocery shopping, I tend to do it big. I used to do it once every three months; now that budgeting isn't quite as tight, I do it about once a month (sometimes once every six weeks). Because I have a long list, I'm not tempted to buy frivolous impulse things. That said, I like to treat myself to one special thing each time. Sometimes it's a fancy cheese; sometimes it's exotic fruit; sometimes a pork roast or lamb chops.

This time I got smoked salmon.

I've been having smoked salmon cravings lately (I don't know why). So I made sure I also had the appropriate smoked salmon fixin's: sour cream, fresh dill, crusty bread, and capers.

If you have smoked salmon, or really any kind of smoked fish, that's the best way to eat it. A piece of crusty baguette, a slice of smoked salmon, a smear of sour cream, a piece of fresh dill, and a couple of capers. In that order. 10 or 12 of those makes a fine lunch.

Kampachi

Kampachi is the greatest fish you've never heard of.

It's not easy to find, and most of what's in the market is sold directly to restaurants. So if you can't find it in the stores, look for it on menus. It's rich, succulent, almost buttery, and makes the tastiest sashimi ever. It's grown ("grown") by Kona Blue Water Farms in Hawaii; it's a Hawaiian yellowtail that's sustainably raised in open ocean water. Not only is that good for the environment, it means the fish are high in omega-3s with no detectable mercury.

I got a small piece on Sunday night, courtesy of my restaurant. They use it for sashimi, but as the piece sat in my car for an hour on the way home, I figured I shouldn't risk it. I cooked it instead.

By "cooked," I mean I got it warm on both sides. I got some olive oil and butter hot in a skillet, and dropped the piece of kampachi in just long enough to sear it.

It tasted rich, dense, and sweet. Definitely one of the tastiest fish I've ever eaten.

If you can find some, snap it up.

Monkfish

Monkfish is also known as "poor man's lobster." Thick, meaty, not nearly as flaky as other white fish, and sweet. And I came into possession of two choice fillets--how, you ask? Why, because I couldn't stand to see them thrown away.

In the restaurant world, a lot of perfectly good food gets thrown out at the end of the night, and it hurts my soul to see it happen. A lot of that is because of health codes, but a lot of it (in my opinion) is perfectly preventable. Then again, I don't work in the sort of restaurant that's likely to serve bread pudding from stale bread and fish soup from scraps. Nevertheless, it still hurts my soul.

On Sunday night, a whole container of monkfish and kampachi fillets was saved from its trash fate, and last night, I cooked everything up.

Monkfish should be cooked all the way through, but just. I got a cast-iron skillet good and hot, melted some butter and olive oil, added some minced parsley, and seared the monkfish until it was cooked all the way through. That's it. Took three minutes, tops.

I served them with some peas and buttered rolls.

The kampachi was even better--more on that tomorrow.

Thai whole baked tilapia

When confronted with the choice to buy either fillets or whole fish, I usually go for the whole fish. A) it's cheaper, B) you can use the scraps to make stock, and C) any meat cooked on the bone will be more flavorful, fish included. Fillets by comparison are far more expensive by pound, and dry out so much faster.

So I picked up some whole tilapia the other day, and decided to do something Thai-ish.

First I thawed two fish, and sliced three vents into the side of each. Then I made a marinade:

1 tablespoon Sriracha
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon fish sauce
2 tablespoons lime juice

Line a baking sheet with a big piece of aluminum foil, and lay the fish on that, cut side up. I poured half the marinade over the fish, and pulled the foil up to make a sealed tent over the fish. (Don't let the foil touch the top if possible.)

Bake at 350 for 20 minutes, or until the flesh inside the vents is opaque. Remove from the oven, open the foil, and pour the rest of the marinade over the fish.

Broil for another 5 - 8 minutes, or until the top part is blackened. Serve with fresh cilantro and lemon or lime wedges.

To eat, remove the top layer of skin, and grab the head and pull. The head, spine and tail will all come off in one piece. Eat or remove the top layer of fish, down to the layer of bones in the middle. Remove the bones, and eat or remove the bottom layer of fish from the skin. Use the skin and bones to make a fish stock to use in seafood soups.

Squid ink spaghetti with anchovy sauce and fried bread crumbs

Right now I'm sure you're thinking, "Squid ink spaghetti? With anchovy sauce? That sounds nasty." In fact, it is quite tasty. It's counter-intuitive, but squid ink pasta is actually not fishy-tasting at all; it's got a lovely subtle umami to it, and a startling color, but no fish or ink aftertaste. Ditto the anchovy sauce--no fishy taste, just a lovely depth of flavor.

Combine the two, and this is one of the best--and simplest--pasta dishes I've had in some time. I had a package of squid ink spaghetti in my cabinets, from a rather expensive trip to a gourmet food store (what? You don't walk into a cheese shop and buy $140 worth of cheese, oils, fennel pollen and squid ink pasta?). Such things are not usually in my budget, but you know, sometimes you just need some cheese.

Anyway, it wasn't that expensive ($8.95 for a pound of squid ink pasta, which is less than it would cost to buy some squid ink and make it from scratch), and a tin of anchovies is maybe $1.69. This could be a great fancy party dish, that looks and tastes expensive and complicated, when in fact it took less than 10 minutes (and $12) to throw together.

1 lb squid ink spaghetti
Half a loaf of stale bread
Olive oil
Zest of 1 lemon
Fresh parsley, chopped
1 tin of anchovies in oil

Cook the pasta until just al dente. While it's cooking, place the stale bread in your food processor and whiz it until it's in varying sizes of crumbs. Heat some olive oil in a skillet, and add the bread crumbs when it's hot. Cook until golden and crunchy, and place in a bowl. Add half the lemon zest and the parsley, and mix well.

Then add the anchovy oil to a skillet, along with some olive oil, and mix well. Add the roughly chopped anchovies, and stir over medium heat until the anchovies dissolve into the oil. As soon as it becomes a smooth sauce, remove from the heat, and add half the lemon zest.

Drain the pasta well, mix well with the anchovy oil, and add the bread crumbs mixture.

This won't be a sauce-y dish; the oil just coats the pasta. But that's okay, because you want the flavor of the squid ink pasta to come through. It's also a surprisingly light dish, for pasta--because there's not a lot of sauce or cheese. It'll go smashingly with a nice frappato.

Pasta with smoked salmon, capers, and cream sauce

I had some leftover smoked salmon in my fridge that needed to be used up. (Not a common occurrence, I assure you.) I was also feeling lazy, and didn't want to deal with cooking anything fancy. So I made this.

Five minutes to throw together, a bare minimum of ingredients, and it TASTES fancy--like I spent a lot more effort on this than I actually did.

I may have to start keeping smoked salmon around, just so I can make this periodically.

1 lb penne, cooked and drained (save the water)
1 lb smoked salmon, cut into strips
1 onion, diced
4 tablespoons capers
1 cup cream
Salt and pepper
Chopped parsley (optional)

In a skillet, saute the onion in olive oil until soft. Add the salmon and cook until just opaque, 1 to 2 minutes. Add the capers and cream, and stir; add the cooked penne and blend well. If there's not enough sauce, add a tablespoon or two of the pasta water (or more cream) until it's the consistency you want. Salt and pepper to taste, parsley if you have it, and serve.

A scallop, live and whole

A scallop in the shell looks very little like a "scallop."

The other night, the restaurant got in a bag of super-fresh, super-awesome live scallops. They ran a special on them, $4 each, for a scallop that was steamed in its own juices. They took a scallop (see top picture, that thing was easily the size of my hand) and put a ring of dough around the shell to seal it shut. They then roasted it for a few minutes, to steam the scallop, and then presented it just like that.

I ordered one, just for the sheer novelty, and dissected it. You had to crack off the dough ring, break the two halves of the shell apart, and then pick through the scallop insides (various membranes, a bag of black stuff, some muscles and connective tissue) to get through to the actual scallop. You know, the part that looks like a scallop.

Pretty tasty. A lot of work. But it was worth it, just for the experience. When was the last time you dissected a scallop still in the shell?

Crab bread pudding

I got this recipe from the latest issue of Food and Wine, but I adapted it right away. I used canned crab instead of fresh (didn't have any fresh, couldn't afford any, already had the canned), and I threw in a few extras. The day before, my husband made me an omelet with sundried tomatoes, parsley, feta cheese, red onion, and capers, and he chopped too much stuff--there was about a cup of that combination left over. So I threw that in, too. Quite honestly, I think more of that combination would be quite tasty.

3 cans crabmeat, drained
Chopped fresh parsley and chives
2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice
Pinch of cayenne
1 stick butter, softened
1 baguette or loaf of homemade bread, slightly stale, sliced
4 large eggs
1 cup milk
1 cup half and half
Optional: diced sundried tomatoes, red onion, feta cheese, capers

Butter a 9 x 13 dish. In a bowl, combine the crab with the parsley, chives, lemon juice and cayenne, plus sundried tomatoes etc., and season with salt and pepper. Butter each slice of bread and stand up in the 9 x 13 dish. Tuck the crab mixture between each slice.

Whisk the eggs with milk and half and half, seasoning with salt and pepper. Pour over the bread and let stand for 10 minutes. Bake at 350 for 30 minutes, and let stand for 10 minutes before serving.

It's really good--crabby and eggy and bready all at the same time, a rich and decadent breakfast.

Fried gator

That's right, fried alligator. I'm cool like that.

I had a couple of package of gator meat in the freezer, from our trip to New Orleans. (In Louisiana, you can buy gator in the supermarket. How could I pass that up?) I decided to experiment.

Gator meat, for those of you not in Louisiana, is like a cross between chicken and fish. Imagine meat the color and consistency of raw chicken, but flaky like raw fish. (When cooked, it tastes like a really, really meaty white fish.) It comes in boneless fillets, from the tail, which then flake apart.

To make the fried gator, I soaked the thawed meat in buttermilk with a little hot sauce added. Okay, it wasn't really buttermilk, because I didn't have any--it was regular milk with a little vinegar added. For these purposes, you can go either way.

Then I breaded the meat in seasoned flour (all-purpose flour, cayenne, salt, pepper) and fried them until golden brown.

I used my home deep fryer, with vegetable oil, set at 350, but you could use a skillet too. Just make sure the oil (or lard, or whatever) is at 350.

I made a batch of hush puppies, too.

Then I served everything with Sriracha aioli (Sriracha + mayo).

I can feel my arteries clogging as I speak, but I feel so Cajun. So that's okay.