Another fish dish from our Hawaiian Feast.

Juicy, delicious, succulent scallops.

Everyone has friends, but do you have a “foodie friend”? A foodie friend is a friend who loves anything to do with food as much as you do, loves cooking shows, cookbooks, loves to food shop and can make up a recipe on the spot. A foodie friend when traveling with you will search out “must eat at” restaurants, and markets that we must see and will track down either a good walking food tour or a cooking class that we will talk our husband’s into taking with us. Food is a hobby for us, an obsession. We love cooking and everything we cook isn’t necessarily gourmet; we just like to use the best and freshest ingredients we can buy. I’m not particularly fond of the word “foodie” because it does sound kind of snobbish. I would just say that we have a deep admiration for food and eating good food.

This dish was made by my friend, Peggy. I can always depend on her to help cook anything and she is always up for a challenge. This night she did her nephew’s Bitter Greens with Yuzu Dressing salad (he had to return to Austin) and also her scallop dish plus still have time to hang out and drink some MaiTais and enjoy all the food.

If you can get fresh scallops where you live I think this recipe has to possibly be the fastest fish dish you can prepare.

You say how do I cook a perfect scallop. Well. Have your pan piping hot, add a little vegetable oil (higher smoke point that olive oil), get the oil hot, season your scallops. Put first scallop in your pan (you want to hear a nice sizzle) at 12:00 location then go around the pan 1-2-3-4- etc. season again, then with a spoon and a finger, start at top (12:00) and turn the scallops. Do not overcook. They will cook about 1 minute per side. It is crucial that you get a nice golden color before turning. So if your pan is hot then you will achieve this in 60-90 seconds per side.

Scallops toughen easily when overcook. As soon as they lose their translucency and turn opaque, they are done. They can be served on a pasta or on top of a simple green salad with an herb-butter sauce. I hope you will try our recipe.

Porcini Dusted Sea Scollops with Tomato Compote
(adapted from recipe at italianfoodforever.com))

12 large sea scallops
2 Tbsp. dried Porcini powder (see note below)
4 Tbsp. unsalted butter
salt and pepper to taste
pea shoots or micro greens
Balsamic Glaze (purchase or make)

For Relish:
6 Ripe, Plum tomatoes
1 clove garlic, peeled and minced
1 Tbsp. olive oil
salt and pepper
1/2 tsp. chopped fresh thyme

Cut the tomatoes in half, cutting away the core end, then carefully squeeze the tomatoes to remove most of the seeds trying not to damage the pulp.

Cut the tomatoes into a small dice (1/2″ pieces) and place in a bowl. Add the garlic, olive oil and thyme, and then season with salt and pepper. Mix well and set aside.

Lightly pat the scallops dry, and sprinkle on some of the porcini powder on both sides.

Heat the butter in a heavy frying pan until it is sizzling and just beginning to turn light brown.

Add the scallops, and cook on medium high heat for about 3 minutes on each side. (The scallops should have a light, crisp outer crust, but remain tender inside. Once they have all been cooked, place three scallops on each plate with a little of the tomato relish on top to serve. Use pea sprouts or micro greens on plate under the scallops.

Delicious coconut shrimp from Hawaiian feast night.

I’ve blogged a coconut shrimp recipe before but this is a little different and one of the recipes from our Hawaiian feast on Thanksgiving weekend.

My first recipe was coated in an almond meal which can be pretty expensive to buy. This recipe has some Cajun seasoning (I used Tony’s) and hot sauce which spices it up a bit.

For my course on feast night I did three coconut shrimp per plate and then a little puddle of the orange marmalade dipping sauce. I have made orange marmalade before so I knew that part of my course was going to be easy. In fact, I did the orange marmalade a week before. The recipe for the orange marmalade just called for one orange but I used four because I wanted some extra jars of marmalade in my pantry for this winter.

One thing about making the orange marmalade though is it will only be as good as your oranges. I used Texas oranges when I made mine and they had a lot of seeds to pick out and they were not as orange color on the inside as I would have liked them to be. Look for naval oranges and I don’t think you can go wrong. I have been wanting to try blood oranges for this recipe; the color would be beautiful for a sauce or on your toast, scones or morning bagel. OR, even easier, just buy a good orange marmalade.

I think this would be a nice little appetizer to do during the Christmas holidays.

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Greens for feast day. Bitter, but oh so good.

Hawaiian Feast Day — An all day rain did not dampen our Hawaiian get together. Rigging up a method for cooking our pig and organized chaos in the kitchen ended about 11 p.m. and all the food, drinks, and wine being enjoyed by all.

We Americans seem to always want to put our salad at the beginning of the meal or even right along with the main course. If you are like me, and I love salad, I tend to fill up on that course before the main event even makes its appearance. In Europe salad is often served after dinner and is a refreshing finish to the meal before dessert arrives. (I will not be turning down dessert in France)

This is a simple looking salad that had a pleasing punch of flavor and definitely did it’s job as a bridge between courses.

A salad does not have to have a hundred ingredients to be delicious and this recipe proves just that. Don’t get me wrong, I like lots of ingredients in a salad, but this salad was perfect for this meal.

We were looking for a palate cleanings salad and my friend Peggy’s nephew, Pal, came up with this recipe he was going to make. He ended up having dog problems and had to return to Austin and missed our feast. But, we did not miss his salad because his Aunt had all the fixings and recipe to produce this wonderful salad. This salad will freshen your tastebuds and leave you wanting more of what’s to come next to your table.

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Creamy awesome bisque!

For our feast night meals usually everyone is responsible for a course (or two) My husband was suppose to be doing this bisque but he was out in the rain with the pig most of the day with our son; so, Paul with my help (he did most of it) made this deliciously creamy bisque.

Paul, never follows a recipe exactly, if he follows one at all. So we started with a basic recipe which is below and he added the poblano pepper and tweaked it somewhat. So, when you start this recipe, just know that you can make whatever changes you want. Originally we had pureed all the soup with all the corn in it already. Luckily I had some frozen (fresh) corn that I had bought back in the summer and we added that at the end for some texture. It turned out wonderful. I think we all would have liked to have more than the little espresso cup portion that we were given; but we knew we had much more food to come.

Paul was also responsible for putting together the menu, buying the pig, rigging the cooking equipment with his dad, doing the pork belly, brining and cooking the pig (with dad’s help) and making the sauces to go with the pig. So we depend on him a lot for our feast meals. He whipped the bisque together (with my gophering help) in no time.

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Two dishes from the newlyweds!

While in Kauai we first discovered poke (pronounced  “po-keh”) at the Hanalei Dolphin restaurant in Hanalei Bay. Poke means to “to slice or cut” and is a popular appetizer or snack throughout the islands. I renamed the dish “deconstructed sushi” as it is essentially all of the familiar sushi ingredients: raw, fresh fish (usually tuna or whatever fresh fish is available) and sticky rice and sometimes avocado, Maui onions, seaweed and nut relish, seasoned with sesame oil and soy sauce. After I had my first first taste, I think I ordered this dish every time I saw it on a menu.

One of my favorite places to have poke was at the local Kilauea Fish Market in Kilauea, Kauai. We popped in here to grab some poke and macaroni salad to bring on the road. The fish market was barely large enough for a few people to stand in line inside and there were a few scattered picnic tables outside for people to hang out. It was BYOB too, which helps makes eating out in Kauai much more affordable! I’d have to say my least favorite place for poke was poolside at the Westin in Maui. A few hours later I had a pretty bad stomach ache and I figured I should probably have been a bit more discriminating in my restaurant choices..

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