Birthday Scallops

Careful readers of this blog will know that on our birthdays, Hayes-Bohs get whatever they want for dinner and dessert. Or pretty close to it. They will also know that throughout the year, our culinary choices are increasingly influenced by the National Day Calendar. Pam's birthday dinner this year was a result of a confluence of these tendencies, though with a fairly flexible application of the calendar.

A couple weeks before the blessed event, Pam noticed that May 16 is National Coquilles Saint Jacques Day. Because it fell on a weekend this year and she noticed it ahead of time, we seriously thought about celebrating this heretofore unknown holiday on its actual date. But the recipe highlighted on the National Day site seemed a bit complicated and more worthy of a birthday celebration.

Bonus: waiting also meant that our visiting son could both be part of the celebration and part of the brain power needed to overcome one challenge we faced: this appetizer (or appetizer-as-meal in our case) is traditionally served on a scallop shell. I hoped our local fishmonger might have them -- as it is located in one of the world's premiere scallop-landing harbors -- but no such luck. Way too late in the planning, I realized that I could get scallop plates online. 

In progress but not in focus -- note
Harvey's skillful potato piping

Here is where our Harvey's creativity came in: the recipe calls for piping mashed potatoes around the edge of the shells, like icing at the edge of a cake. We could therefore use potatoes as the base of this appetizer. We essentially created a seafood version of twice-baked potatoes, following the recipe above to a tee, except that we began by slicing and partly baking potatoes, scooping them out, and then using that for an edge that our artist was able to create using his mad dexterity. He also rightly suggested brushing with olive oil and dusting with paprika before the broiling stage.

Grey-on-gray food made a bit more
photogenic by salad and cool nautical
pepper shaker

While I followed the rest of the recipe carefully in terms of ingredients, I did not do so in terms of sequence. I thought the sauce would take longer than the bouillon and the potatoes longer than either of these, so I did things in an awkward order this really complicated what should have been a very basic white sauce. If I follow this recipe again, I would still start the potatoes early, but I would complete the  bouillon starting the sauce.

Image: Holy Art

On May 16 next year, however, I will be prepared in two ways. First, I will have purchased the correct plates, harvested in the British Isles. Second, curious about the word "coquille" I found out that it means any appetizer of this sort involving a wine and cream sauce. I found several other recipes that do not involve potatoes, and I think they will be easier.  One of those recipes is in Scallops: A New England Coastal Cookbook, which also includes some remarkable information about the natural history of bay scallops. Incidentally, this was my first time cooking with bays -- I had always been intimidated.

DESSERT

We musn't forget dessert! Key lime pie is usually Pam's first choice and I have often managed to make a decent one including, apparently, in May 2017. (For the record, she has been to Key West just once; I have not yet gotten to any of the Florida Keys.)

For this year, however, enter another hero: we won a pair of key lime pies in our church auction, offered by McKayla, a fellow church member, my former student, and (most importantly for this post) a Florida native. Prepared and delivered with care the day before, it was PERFECT.

Lagniappe: That Saint

The adjectival form of James is Jacobian, and my name means "usurper" after Esau's greedy brother Jacob. So the conflation of Saint James and Saint Jacques are familiar to me. What was not familiar is the identity of St. James as the patron of scallopers -- he is sometimes depicted with shells around his neck and Crusaders sometimes adorned themselves with the shells as well. 

Quiche La Poodle

Notice: No actual poodles were involved in this dinner. Rather ... 

As regular readers of Nueva Receta will have realized, we often let the National Day Calendar inspire our culinary choices. The pandemic has affected this tendency in two somewhat contradictory ways. We are more likely to have spare time to browse the site, but we are also less likely to dash out to grab ingredients for a last-minute recognition of a made-up holiday. (Additional notice: all holidays are made up, but that is a discussion for, well, another day.)

Fortunately, Pam noticed National Quiche Lorraine Day before I set out for our weekly grocery run, so I I managed to get all the bacon and chives needed to do complete the main version found on the Simply Recipes Quiche Loriaine page. Writer Elise Bauer suggests several options for the crust (including a crust-free variation), so we of course turned to Deborah Madison's tome for a basic recipe.

The "we" in the previous sentence is a bit different this time -- our wonderful kid Harvey is here for a long visit. Since he watches British baking shows a lot, I pressed him into service! He made the pie crust with both wheat and white flour, salt, butter and a tiny bit of ice water. We put it in the fridge in our Pyrex pie plate, because I have learned that even on a mildly warm day, "room" temperature is the wrong temperature for a pie crust. I sat down to read the recipe with more care, and realized that we needed to put the pie in the oven earlier than I thought -- Bauer calls for it to bake for 40 minutes ahead of the filling. We came pretty close to this by the time we had other ingredients ready; we ignored the suggestions for pie weights, foil (which I do not even understand), and whatnot. The crust was beautiful, though Harvey thought it not quite as thin and uniform as he would have hoped.

I started cooking the bacon in our indispensable cast-iron skillet. In just the past year I have finally gotten good at this -- starting at medium high and gradually reducing the heat, removing each piece to drain when it reaches perfect doneness. While I did this, Harvey made the custard -- whisking five eggs very fresh from our friends at Maribett farm (the recipe calls only for three) and then adding the seasonings, milk, cream, and chives.

I shredded cheddar and Monterey jack cheeses together (Gruyere would have been even better, but we already had a lot of cheese in the house and decided we should use some of it) and put a small amount in the bottom of the crust. I then cut the bacon into 1/2-inch bits and distributed it evenly in the crust. We carefully poured the custard over this and put it in the oven. I turned around and discovered I had left most of the freshly-shredded cheese on the Gilligan (our kitchen island). I panicked a bit, because it should have been in the pan before the custard, so that the entire pie would be cheesy. Harvey advised calm, and suggested it might even be nice to have the cheesiness concentrated at the top. 

So I carefully added the cheese and set the oven timer for 30 minutes. At that time, the top looked perfect as Harvey had predicted, but I could tell that the custard was still a bit jiggly. Worried about over-cooking the top, I reduced the heat from 350F to 325F and set the timer for 15 more minutes. 

#RoundPieSquarePhoto

The ding-ding sounded again just as Pam finished a (rather dumb) Zoom meeting -- perfect timing! And this was the perfect meal to enjoy on our deck with some apple sauce on the side and Chardonnay in our glasses.

We followed this with some raspberry Entenmann's in honor of the attainment day of Pam's father Jack, who would have been 99 years old.

So what about that poodle, anyway?

I played the B52s song at the start of preparing this meal because it was not just a day to celebrate eggy custard pie (aka quiche), but also National Rescue Dog Day -- and this is a song about the singer's complicated relationship with his dog. As the people belonging to a rescue dog, we can certainly relate!

Slow Cooker Chicken Ragù with herbed ricotta.

 

I rarely use the slow cooker. James uses it a few times a year, mostly to make chili, but I don't think I've used it myself more than a handful of times since we received one as a wedding gift 34 years ago. However, when this recipe showed up on my Facebook feed a few weeks ago I decided to give it a try. And I did so, once I remembered to get out the slow cooker early in the morning on the day after I remembered to thaw the chicken. I followed the recipe mostly as written, although I was surprised to discover we were out of tomato paste, so I didn't use it. The only tomato product was a can of crushed tomatoes. I also skipped the carrot. We didn't have any and it seemed unnecessary to go out just to pick up "one small carrot".

As with slow cooker meals once everything goes in, the cook's job is mostly to wait (and salivate) as the cooker does its thing all day. There was a little labor at the end shredding the chicken, but as the recipe suggests it was quite tender, so it wasn't difficult. Topping with the herbed ricotta, along with a sprig of fresh basil made for a lovely presentation. 

Another winner from the New York Times cooking pages.

There is just no end of stuff you can put in a frittata

This recipe fo Mushroom, Goat Cheese, and Herb Frittata showed up on my Facebook feed last week. I had some goat cheese leftover from making some goat cheese quesadillas (an old favorite) last month so I picked up some mushrooms the next time I went to the grocery store so I could make this tasty dish. The recipe calls for either fresh or dried herbs; I used dried. I also halved the recipe and used our smaller indispensable cast-iron skillet since I was only cooking for two. The other deviation I made from the recipe was that after I sautéed the onions, mushrooms, and herbs I left them in the pan and just added the egg/cheese mixture to it. I couldn't understand the reason for removing the veggies and adding them to the egg, wiping out the pan, adding more oil to it and then pouring everything back in. Maybe it would have been even better than it was if I had done it, but I'll never know.