I can cook scallops!

Day 65: Recipe 13

My goal is to be at 45 recipes by the end of March, so that at least I'm halfway caught up.

So I love scallops whenever I eat them in restaurants, but I've been really anxious about making them myself because they're expensive and everyone says they're really complex. However, last night during my grocery store visit I decided, what the heck?

So I went to the seafood counter and asked for 2 scallops. "Only two?" the guy asked. "Only two," I confirmed. "I've never cooked them before, so I'm just experimenting." "Makes sense," he said, and wrapped them up for me. "Two scallops, that'll be $300."

And THAT is why I only got two. (I should probably clarify that they weren't really that much.)

I was really nervous about cooking them. If my boss didn't read this, I might admit that I spent about an hour this afternoon watching videos about how to cook them online. But since she (and her mom) do, I won't tell you that.

There's this dish from one of my favorite LiveJournal communities ever, Food Porn, that I've been wanting to try for a while, so I figured I'd try to throw that together, even though there's not a real recipe, but instead just ingredients.

And it worked!

Red Pepper Scallop Pasta from here
serves 2

at least 2 scallops (though next time I'm totally using more)
14 oz of spaghetti
1 red pepper
1 onion
1 clove of garlic
oregano
basil
olive oil
salt
pepper

The night before, cut up the onion and pepper and put it in a container. Dump some olive oil, salt, and pepper in, and let it sit overnight. (Mix it or flip it over a couple of times so that all of the veggies get marinated.

The next day, cook up the pasta.

Put the veggies in a pan and saute them over medium heat in the olive oil with the garlic, oregano, and basil (and other herbs you think would work if you have them) until the onions are relatively clear. Once they're cooked, dump them and most of the olive oil into the pasta.

Put the pan over high heat and tend to the scallops. I cut them in half horizontally, so I ended up with 4 discs. Season one side with salt and pepper, and then put them, seasoned side down, into the pan. Let them cook and sprinkle the up side with more salt and pepper. Flip them when they're nicely browned - it took me about a minute and a half. After another minute and a half, you're done!

Serve up the pasta and veggies, then top with the scallops.

You can cook scallops, too!

Survey Says
Overall, we really liked it! One thing I'll change next time is that this time I cut the veggies in strips, next time I'd dice into small squares. Also, I'd use more scallops now that I know I can cook them and make them taste yummy.

My husband wanted something to balance out onions and peppers, but isn't sure what he's looking for. It might be that they needed to cook for a little longer so that they weren't as strong tasting, but we're not sure if that's it. Any suggestions?

But yes, we're definitely making it again.

Pollo Rosa Maria knockoff and Alfredo sauce

Day 1: Recipes 1 & 2

I figured I might as well get ahead on the first day, so tonight we had a chicken dish and pasta alfredo. The chicken dish is meant to be similar to Carrabba's Pollo Rosa Maria, and the pasta is supposed to be an alfredo, but we made some modifications, so a purist might argue that they're not really.

I'd made the chicken a few years ago, but I've never tried to make my own alfredo sauce. Both of these are incredibly unhealthy, which means that they're kind of amazing.

Pollo Rosa Maria knockoff (modified from here)
serves 2

2 skinless, boneless, chicken breasts
2 slices prosciuto ham
1/4 cup fontina cheese
1/4 cup clarified butter - see Notes, below
2 small cloves garlic - minced
1/4 sm. yellow onion - chopped
1/8 cup dry white wine
3 sliced mushrooms
2 Tbls. butter
1/4 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. pepper
1/4 cup chopped fresh sweet basil (we used 1/8 cup dry basil because the grocery store was out, but fresh'd be better)
1 Tbls lemon juice

Butterfly the chicken breasts and cook them in a pan over medium heat. If you have pan that's not non-stick that'd be better because you're going to deglaze the pan in a bit, but we didn't and it turned out fine anyways.

While that's cooking chop up the onion and mushrooms, and minced the garlic.

You need to let the chicken cool a bit and then stuff the inside of it with a slice of prosciutto and half the fontina cheese. If the all cheese doesn't fit, just stick the rest on top. Then find a way to keep it warm - I just wrapped it in foil and put it in a warm oven.

The chicken had left all sorts nice little brown bits on the pan, so take it off the heat and add the white wine to deglaze the pan. Then toss in the clarified butter, the garlic and the onion and saute it over medium heat, until the onions are clear.

Add the mushrooms, butter (the non-clarified bit), salt, and pepper, and then saute it a bit more, until the mushrooms are tender. Stir in the basil and lemon juice and stir a bit more. Maybe 2-3 minutes.

Pour the sauce over the stuffed chicken and you're done!

White Alfredo-ish sauce (modified from here)
serves 3-ish

1/4 cup butter
1 garlic clove, minced
1 cup heavy cream
1/8 tsp pepper
1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese
1/2 cup shredded fontina cheese

Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium-low heat. Then add the garlic, cream, and pepper, and bring it all to a simmer. Make sure you stir it often. I just put my husband in front of it, and told him to stir it constantly.

Once it's simmering, add the parmesan cheese and simmer again, stirring regularly, until the sauce has thickened a bit, and is smooth.

When that's done, add the fontina cheese bit by bit and stir constantly, until it's smooth.

Voila! White alfredo-ish sauce.

Survey says...

The chicken was a little dry, so I'll have to try this again and find a way to keep that from happening. It might have been from the time in the oven, or it might have been from the fact that I didn't cook it with anything. We'll work on that for next time.

The alfredo sauce was a little grainy, but I don't know if that's because of the alterations I made or something wrong with all the cooking. That just affected the texture, though - not the taste.

Overall? We'll definitely make the chicken again, though I'll probably follow the recipe exactly for the alfredo sauce next time, and see if that fixes the issue.