Archive for the 'Seafood' Category

©2008 Harry Kenney

Funny how there are some dishes I’ve created and made for a long time, yet, seven months into this cooking site, realize there are still one’s I haven’t included here. This is one of them (til now). I stumbled into this one of those times when I had salsa left over from a party. You see, I do enjoy tortilla chips and salsa as a nice alternate to the usual potato chip and dip. Thing is, in the days after the party I just don’t feel like eating salsa and chips solo. So I need to come up with something to do with that jar. Several years ago after one party I also found I had forgotten to serve the second half of the shrimp I’d bought. (There was still plenty of food and no one at the party knew or missed it though.) … In short. Boom. Came this recipe.

I know the name seems a tad corny coming from me. No, I swear I’m not turning “Rachel” on you. I promise never to call things in between soup and stew “stoop”. And no, I don’t think any male, no matter how brimming with nor how deficient of testosterone should ever have the word “Yum-o!” come from his lips either. So that’s not happening. So the choice was, call this was I call it around the house as my shorthand “Sorta Jambalaya” or name it something more long-winded like “Chicken and Shrimp in Spicy Tomato Spanich Rice”. The latter is accurate but doesn’t roll off the tounge as well. The first is reluctantly a tad cutsy, but it does convey the concept quickly.

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©2008 Harry Kenney

Have you ever gone to the market, brought something home and said now what am going to do with this? I’m sure we’ve all done that. I certainly have. I’d love to say I always shop with a plan. I would have to say I partly do. I often buy food with some recipe or some idea at least vaguely in my mind. But not for the entire shopping experience; the rest of the shopping goes by what I see, what’s on sale, what looks fresh, what looks not so fresh, and what just generally grabs my attention. And this time it was the on-sale bag of frozen bay scallops.

And then I got home and thought “now what?” You see, I know what to do with the larger scallops. You know the one’s I mean that are the size and shape of big marshmellows. Pretty much you sear them on one side, then the other, bang, they’re done. Well, you’re certainly not going to do the same with what amounts to 60 or 70 miniature marshmellow-sized scallops. We’re talking just slightly larger than pencil erasers after all. So, what to do?

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I really do get annoyed when my market doesn’t have exactly what I want. Which happens too often actually, but what can you do? You play with the cards your dealt with or you fold or you find another game. I did what I’m often (grrr) having to do, the first. This time it was uncooked shrimp and I wanted them larrrrrrge. Big-butt. Jumbo. Prawn-like. I had to suffer with 31-40s, the only size they had at the moment, and the only ones in the store, and they didn’t even have enough to make a full pound. Sheesh.

What kind of rookie-league outfit were they running here? Why don’t I have a fish monger near me? So you take what you can get. What’s the saying? When life gives you a lemon make lemonade.. Or, with me, it turned out make margaritas!

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What’s to say about this meal? Other than it’s light and delicious? Dunno. It’s not that I’m in any way “tired” of writing openings — I have way too much to say, generally, for that ever to be the case. It’s just that sometimes, there is no back story, nothing that went wrong the first time to warn you about. Very little to inform you about.

Other than use fresh seasonal ingredients whenever you can and come up with something special. One can argue if this dish is a pasta primavera or not. I say it is as it’s mostly about the veggies (even though hey, who can ignore shrimp?). Other’s might debate that saying instead of blanched or raw I did a saute or pan roasting of my veggies. Still other’s say, this isn’t spring, certainly the use of a summer squash negates that. I say argue until the moon turns blue and take a chill pill. It’s all about the food, folks.

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