Well last night was a little slow for a ladies night. I felt kinda weird all night. It wasn't really busy, but we were busy enough for a while to make it seem busy, yes and no. Make sense?lol
About 2:30pm I texted LJ and asked him to please start a fish stock for me. He did and when I got there it was smelling good. I chopped and added the last couple scallops from the line and some other things. The fish stock was made with water, salmon trimmings, scallop, shrimp, onion, pepper(red and green), celery, bay leaf, rosemary and thyme.
I wanted to use a fish stock in my seafood special for a nice deep flavor.
If you want to make a stock of any sort but your not sure how, just collect the bones or carcass of a chicken, beef rib bones, fish bones, pork bones and scraps of each of the those as well. You should always save your carrot, celery, pepper, and onion scraps at home(the ends, the peelings) in a freezer bag in the freezer.
Anyways, your going to want about an 8 quart stock pot(just a big ass cooking pot). If you don't happen to have the veggie scraps on hand then you will need one large onion(yellow or red) roughly chopped, 2-3 entire stalks(with leaves) of celery chopped, 1/2 red pepper, 1/2 green pepper, 1 small carrot roughly chopped. Put all of that into a bowl and set aside.
Pour a 1/4 cup of olive oil into the hot stock pot, then about 2 oz minced garlic, 2-3 oz minced shallot and let cook for 1 minute. Then drop in your bowl of vegetables(or an equal amount in weight of saved veggie scraps) and cook until the olive is gone. De glaze the pan with a little water and just a splash of wine if you prefer. Now dump in your 6 quarts of water into the pot and add any extras you wish to add. In this case I added thyme, rosemary, and bay leaf which worked perfectly to make my stock much more hearty and rich.
Now depending how strong you would like the flavor to be, you may opt to just throw the bones into the water, or you could(ahead of time) broil the bones in the oven for a bit. This is what I do at home. Have to cook those bones before they go into the water. As I said though, it is based on your personal preference. dump in any meat and skin scraps you have along with the bones.
Now you just bring it all to a boil and stir every few minutes for until the liquid has reduced to half in the stock pot. At this point, I would just let it simmer a bit longer, perhaps an extra hour. Then you just strain out all the muck that will be leftover and the juice you see is your stock!
When Amanda and I were living together we would always have like 5 quarts of chicken stock and 5 quarts of beef stock and freezer baggies of veggie scraps and bone scraps at all times. A little production kitchen for two.LOL
Anyways, my fish stock was done. I took one large diver scallop, scored and seasoned it and pan seared it. While that was happening, in a hot saute pan I squirted about 2 tablespoons olive oil, dropped in a teaspoon of garlic and one of shallots as well. I then drop 4 fresh mussels into the pan and small squirt of white wine and let it cook a minute. I then dropped in 1 diced scallop, 2 oz of rock shrimp, 1 oz sliced Davina(roasted) tomatoes, then ladled in 4 oz of fish stock and about 2 oz of cream. While that is cooking I slightly seasoned (salt,pepper,cayenne,cumin) two of our medium to large 16/20 shrimps and oil and grilled them. While the sauce is starting to simmer, I set aside my pan seared scallop, along with the four mussels from the pan. I go back to my pan and start to toss it up. I add sea salt, pepper, and a pinch of cayenne. I then add 8 oz of fresh linguine and toss thoroughly.
I then threw 2 pieces of fresh sliced ciabatta into the oven for a couple minutes. While that is happening I use tongs to pull the pasta out of the pan and into the bowl as well as the shrimp and scallop. There is a couple ounces of sauce left in the bottom of my pan. I set it aside for the moment and place the mussels in around the plate like a compass-like formation. I then placed the pan seared scallop in the middle and a shrimp leaning against each opposite side of the scallop. I used the remaining sauce to drizzle across the mussels and once across the middle(the scallop and shrimps). I take the two pieces of crostini(ciabatta in this case) and spread a tiny smear of fresh garlic herb butter(I made here and there while doing the rest.LOL) across each and place across the bowl from one another facing opposite directions.
It tasted very good I thought. It sold like 3...maybe 4. I know the servers made it vanish rather quickly so I felt pretty good about it. Apparently some people thought it sounded fantastic but just couldn't see paying the price for it. WHAT? Seriously? It was priced about 8 dollars below what it would easily sell for in other restaurants with similar menu's to ours. What can I say?lol
Some people are way too busy being "experts" to enjoy anything in life. Hopefully the people that did order it, enjoyed it immensely. I don't recall any feedback at all last night so who knows.lol
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