My buddy Greg Brooks was kind enough to haul a 700 lb. birthday prezzie for my babycakes across town to our house a couple weeks ago. So to thank him, I prepared a seafood extravaganza for him and his pretty wiffy Suzee.
Can you believe this thing is 700 lbs? I barely believe it. In fact, I was told by the hardware store cockbags:
I don’t think you really understand how heavy this thing is.
My head is still spinning from the raw incomprehensibility of the weight of this tool cabinet.
I borrowed a recipe from chowhound.com: Seared Scallops with Fava Bean saute. Sounds like it’ll do, right? The recipe creator was Amy Wisniewski, who consistently has solid recipes, and this one did not disappoint. I absolutely LOVE scallops and was eager to prepare fava beans for the first time. I bought 4 lbs of bean pods for 4 people, which sounds like a lot, but it turns out they’re mostly packaging. The pods, when split open, are super squishy and dry, like a fuzzy blanket or really thick hairy mold. It was a long process to open the pods, remove, then blanch the beans, remove the skin of the beans, then separate the 2 pretty bright green halves which are actually eaten. It was worth it in the end, but favas are not likely to be a regular menu item.
Favas with sweet peas, shallots and bacon, nom.
Pan-fried HOT in bacon fat
To start the evening, we had salmon sushi and unagi, from Central Market. They sell frozen vacuum-packed-at-the-source sushi grade fish. I was a little nervous, but it ended up being delicious. It’s exciting to have a home sushi option that is cheap and easy and yum. The unagi is pre-cooked and comes with sauce , so you just pop it in the oven for 15 min and it’s ready to be cut and plopped onto some sushi rice.
This did not suck.
Nom, nom.
EDIT:
Here are a some keys to cooking scallops:
Piggy Goes To Market 