As a result, tonight we decided to double up on our assignments and dined on bread, butter, and both of the bivalve courses: Coquilles St. Jacques à la Fondue d'Endives and Moules Mariniere.
'Moules Mariniere
- Selecting/Storing the Shellfish. Going into Ranch 99, we were prepared to follow some of the standard selection tips on the Web as well as request all live ones per Agnes' post, but they only sold them in bunches of purple, mesh bags that were on ice, so we took our chances - I would say about 20% of them were DOA. Also, I believe they were probably farmed, as we didn't need to clean or debeard them all that much. We had originally been planning on cooking them Saturday evening, but that didn't happen so we ended up storing them in a bowl near the bottom of the refrigerator, covering the bowl in a damp towel.
- Missing Minutes. Like Andrew & Yurah, we found that three minutes wasn't enough time to cook the mussels fully, especially over low heat, and we were working with a halved recipe (2 lbs.)...now if only we had read their post prior to preparing this! ;) If we were to do this again, we'd likely cook them for a longer period of time, or at least until a majority of the shells opened up fully. We had halved the sauce preparation as well, so I might just go ahead and prepare the entire portion next time so that the mussels were fully immersed.
- Superb Sauce! The sauce was easy to prepare and really delicious paired with bread, which we made sure to stock up on, thanks to previous posts.
Coquilles St. Jacques à la Fondue d'Endives
- Scallop Selection & Shortcuts. Unlike the mussels, you can select your sea scallops at Ranch 99. When buying, we just tried to make sure the fishmonger didn't pick any that looked brownish. We read a tip online that also said not to pick ones that looked stark white (vs. creamy white) because they may have been soaked in water to increase weight - I'm not sure if there's any weight to that or not. Generally, you would look for firm texture, a mild sweet odor, and fresh, moist sheen. We found the rest of the greens and the crème fraîche at Whole Foods. We were contemplating trying the homemade crème fraîche recipe, but will probably save that for another day.
- Straightforward & Quick. Not too much to say about the prep., it was pretty straightforward and the result was delicious! I wish I had tried one of the scallops prior to saucing, for comparison's sake.
- Endive Evaluation. I can't recall trying this dish before, so I don't have a baseline as to what the endives should have tasted like. Texturally, ours was nicely cooked with a slight, bitter undertone which I liked and found added some complexity to the dish. I've read recipes where it appears the endives are first blanched, then caramelized, which might be an interesting variation for a Round II experiment.
No comments:
Post a Comment