I'm into this whole 'stuff things with fresh basil and garlic' idea, though seafood intimidates me. The other day I was kind of dicing things randomly and ended up with a crudely-chopped basil pesto thing (but with feta cheese) stuffed inside some little tomatoes. That was pretty awesome, with the extra salt from the feta cheese making the tomatoes all the tastier.
I dunno, though, toothpicks. That may tip the hoity-toity scales too far.
Ooo, no, mine are manly wooden toothpicks without the frilly plastic poofy things on the end! (you don't want to grill with those frilly things anyway.)
Seafood should not be intimidating. A good yellowfin tuna steak is every cook's best friend: it's versatile enough to use in place of steak or pork in many recipes, because the meat is firm and rich (I make a damn fine tuna au poivre in gorgonzola cream sauce), but it's easier to cook, more forgiving, and way healthier.
I mean, I'm biased since I don't do meat other than fish, but dude, seafood is fun and tasty...and unlike chicken, if you undercook it, it won't kill you!
Mostly what intimidates me about seafood is buying it. For some reason I feel like the variation in quality in seafood is much larger, and much more opaque (to me). It doesn't really seem like the sort of thing you just pick up at the supermarket (unless we're talking like, fake crab meat or tiny peeled shrimp.)
Well, it depends on your local supermarket. I mean, I get my tuna, scallops, and salmon at the supermarket across the street. They have an excellent seafood department; their wild salmon comes in twice a week, and they get daily tuna, because where I live, yellowfin tuna is a local catch. The scallops are frozen but still good.
In fact, sometimes a supermarket is a better place to buy seafood than a specialty or gourmet market, because if the supermarket has a good reputation for seafood, then it'll have more traffic than a specialty store -- and more traffic means the fish will sell faster, so will be fresher. Less traffic means the fish will have been sitting there longer.
Basically, trust three things.
1: your nose. If the air smells fishy when you get to the counter, keep going. If any of the fish there smell like they're overly fishy, then just don't bother. You can't trust the storage at that market. The air should smell fresh. Your fillet itself should also smell fresh, not fishy, once you get close to it. Clean
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Memo to me: Pev's downstairs neighbors are apparently nuts or have alien concepts about food.
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I'm into this whole 'stuff things with fresh basil and garlic' idea, though seafood intimidates me. The other day I was kind of dicing things randomly and ended up with a crudely-chopped basil pesto thing (but with feta cheese) stuffed inside some little tomatoes. That was pretty awesome, with the extra salt from the feta cheese making the tomatoes all the tastier.
I dunno, though, toothpicks. That may tip the hoity-toity scales too far.
Reply
Seafood should not be intimidating. A good yellowfin tuna steak is every cook's best friend: it's versatile enough to use in place of steak or pork in many recipes, because the meat is firm and rich (I make a damn fine tuna au poivre in gorgonzola cream sauce), but it's easier to cook, more forgiving, and way healthier.
I mean, I'm biased since I don't do meat other than fish, but dude, seafood is fun and tasty...and unlike chicken, if you undercook it, it won't kill you!
Reply
Mostly what intimidates me about seafood is buying it. For some reason I feel like the variation in quality in seafood is much larger, and much more opaque (to me). It doesn't really seem like the sort of thing you just pick up at the supermarket (unless we're talking like, fake crab meat or tiny peeled shrimp.)
Reply
In fact, sometimes a supermarket is a better place to buy seafood than a specialty or gourmet market, because if the supermarket has a good reputation for seafood, then it'll have more traffic than a specialty store -- and more traffic means the fish will sell faster, so will be fresher. Less traffic means the fish will have been sitting there longer.
Basically, trust three things.
1: your nose. If the air smells fishy when you get to the counter, keep going. If any of the fish there smell like they're overly fishy, then just don't bother. You can't trust the storage at that market. The air should smell fresh. Your fillet itself should also smell fresh, not fishy, once you get close to it. Clean ( ... )
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