Grilled Pistachio Pesto Opakapaka with Tomato, Sweet Onion and Chili Relish

This one is a winner...

I love Sundays, especially during the fall. You've got the return of football and your team still has a chance, the air is getting crisp, and ski season is on the horizon. Sundays are also great days to cook. Rather than jjst parking it on the couch with a beer, why not sort yourself out for the week and make some great stuff with NFL Sunday Ticket on in the background? That's what I did Sunday anyway.


So, I hit the farmer's mkt, and picked up some nice looking Opakapaka. Opakapaka is also known as Crimson Snapper or Hawaiian Pink Snapper, and is a mild, white fish -- which is just what I like. Anything that tastes slightly fishy...just can't eat it. On a sustainability level, Opakapaka is okay, depending on where it's caught -- preferably the Northwestern Hawaiian islands where the populations are still healthy. A good alternative to Opakapaka, according to Seafood Watch is Farmed Striped Bass.


Brooke, meanwhile, wanted to make some more fresh pesto, but this time instead of using pine nuts as in traditional pesto, she used pistachios -- which turned out beautiful. The pistachios give the pesto a much richer flavor and thick, hearty texture. As good fortune would have it, both pistachio encusted and pesto are common preparations for Opakapaka, so it seemed like we were in the chips.


We also have a bunch of tomatoes on hand -- our four tomato plants are finally producing, so I decided to make some kind of tomato relish. We made the relish and pesto Sunday, then put it together last night, which was great, because we had a great dinner on a Monday night that took almost no time to get together.

Here's what you'll need:


1/2 lb Opakapaka or Farmed Striped Bass
2 handfuls of various small to med sized tomatoes
2 Fresh Chilis - I used Cherry Bombs and red Jalapenos
1 Sweet Onion
2 cups fresh basil
1/3 cup Pistachios
2 cloves of garlic
1/2 cup olive oil

To make the pesto, please see my "Pesto Buccatini with Diver Scallops" post, but subsititute pistachios for pine nuts.

For onion portion if the relish, make sauteed onions ala Jon Waxman, as in my previous bay Scallops post.

Take your tomatoes -- small to medium sized like cherry, roma, and lemon boy, grab a knife and give them some stabs. You want the tomatoes to break open and fall apart, and this will give them a head start. Clean your chilis (slice open, remove seeds and the while spongy stuff inside), cut in half and then into 1-2" strips. Put the chilis into a sauce pan, add some olive oil and sautee for about 5 mins. Give them a good bashing with your wooden spoon as they cook. Add salt and pepper. After 5 mins or so, add a cup of dry white wine, bring to a boil, then simmer on low heat for about an hour. The tomatoes and wine should really reduce down to a cutney like consistency. Once the consistency is to you liking, combine the tomatoes with the sweet onions, and simmer for 10 minutes.

After combining the onions with the tomatoes, turn your BBQ on full whack and heat to 400-500 degrees. Then, rinse your Opakapaka and pat dry. Season with salt and pepper and rub both sides with olive oil. Then, coat the fish with your pesto -- you may need to add a little more olove oil to it to get it to spread nice on the fish. Don't be shy, get a nice coating on there.

Grill the fish about 6 minutes a side with the top closed or until your fish is white, but slightly translucent all the way through.

Plate, cover with relish, eat and enjoy!

Bay Scallops ala Jon Waxman

Brooke's not a big fan of scallops and in fact, she wasn't wild about the pesto/scallop pasta I made recently...but I'm not giving up! She liked the flavor of the dish, but she has a problem with the texture of scallops. She doesn't like the soft, smooth, fleshy nature of them, so I decided to try out Bay Scallops. And it worked! She loved the dish and because the scallops are smaller, they cook through a bit more and have a texture closer to chicken.

The great thing about scallops is that they are flavor sponges -- they just soak up whatever you give them, and because of this, you don't need to over season them. They can absoarb delicate, complex flavors really well, which is why chef's often have them on the menu -- so they can really show off!

I found this recipe in Jon Waxman's book, "A great American Cook", that I've been dying to try and it was far better than I could have even imagined. So here you go:

1 lb fresh bay scallops

1 cup dry white wine

2 lbs sweet onions

Unsalted Butter

Salt, pepper

Parsely

Put 1 cup of wine into a sauce pan, bring to a simmer, and simmer gently for 20 mins. Cut the onions lengthwise, then slice crosswise as thin as possible, or use a mandolin. Melt 5 tablespoons of butter in a large saucepan over med. heat. Add the onions, season with salt and pepper and cook over very low heat for 40 mins, stirring often. The onions will get super creamy. After 40 mins, add the reduced white wine.

Wash and pat dry your scallops, season with salt and pepper. Melt two tablespoons of butter in a skillet over med. heat. Add the bay scallops into the pan, spread them out evenly, and let cook undisturbed for about 3 mins, then strir them around for the next 3 minutes so they can cook evenly -- which is kind of hard because they;re so small, but do the best you can.

Place the onions on a plate, top with scallops, and garnish with parsely. Start with this dish as an app, and you are on your way to a good night!

Ps. When you take pics of your food, it's readily apparent why chefs use parsely -- it's just for effect and to give the dish some color. The yellow/white of the onions and scallops does not look all that appealing here, but if I had sprinkled some parsely over the top, it would have given the dish depth and color. But it tasted great.

Farmer's Market

So, I thought I'd just post a typical haul from the farmer's market... some staples I like to keep on hand throughout the week.

So on the left, we've got some nice beets, gold and red that I plan on roasting and I'll use the beet leaves for a great braised veggie dish. Got some leeks of course, can use those in just about anything. I've got a big, huge knob of ginger, which I'll use to make some Thai food, fresh ginger tea and to kick up my Dark n' Stormies...

At the top center is some fresh spinach, for spinach salad or sauteed spinach, as well as a bag of wild arugula aka "rocket", which is much spicier than baby arugula, and looks totally didifferent. Also, a side note on spinach -- interestingly, on Jamie Oliver's "Food Revolution" show, he said that frozen spinach is actually has more nutrients than freh spinach, because they harvest it and freeze it right away, which I confirmed in an article I read about research done on the topic at Penn State. So, don't think that frozen spinach is a faux pas or anything, I use it all the time for sauteed spinach and you can't tell it's been frozen at all -- in fact, I prefer it.

Got some Heirloom Tomatoes of course. Gotta load up on em while they're in season. Three types of fresh pasta from Beverly Hills Wine and Cheese - the best in LA: Pappardelle, Buccatini and Whole Wheat Fettuccine.

Got some peaches to make a dessert with, some fresh strawberries and blueberries for breakfast , some figs to eat with some nice cheese and bread, some grapes for the kid -- and some amzing Concord seedless grapes that taste like grape soda. OMG they are good. Got some eggplant to mess around with, some fresh white corn (no reason to ever get yellow in my opinion) which is great to add to just about anything - salad, pasta, fish, as a side or on the cobb. And, some red peppers to make Fred's famous Romesco Sauce...not sure I can post the recipe because it's top secret -- and for good reason! It's the bombzo.

So there you have it. Some typical weekly staples.

Pesto Buccatini with Diver Scallops

If you watched this season of TOP CHEF MASTERS, you'll remember chef Johnathan Waxman aka The Obi Wan Kenobe of cooking.

I bought Obi Wan's book (proves that being on Top Chef is great marketing for chefs) and in it are a few great looking scallop recipes -- this isn't one of them.

In his book, "A Great American Cook", Waxman says that it's a crime to do too much with a scallop. Keep it clean and simple, and that's what I tried to do here. I feel like I succeded, but then again, I don't have Padma or Tom to tell me how badly I failed.

But I think Obi Wan (or at least his book) taught me well...

So if you read some of my previous posts, we have this basil plant that is going crazy and have more basil than we know what to do with, so Brooke said "Let's do a pesto". "Great", I said, even though I've never made pesto.

I've been wanting to make scallops and thought that a nice pesto pasta was simple enough not to be a travesty by Waxman's standards and so here's what we came up with -- by the way, I say "we" because I have the greatest Sous Chef in the world -- my wife, Brooke.

What you need (for two):

5 Large Scallops

Buccatini Pasta (or similar pasta - I like Perciatelli a lot, too)

For the pesto, from Joy of Cooking:
2 cups Fresh Basil leaves
1/3 cup Pine Nuts
Olive Oil
1/4 cup Pamesan Cheese
Salt n Peppa
1/2 cup Extra Virgin Olive Oil
2 Cloves Garlic - I used elehant garlic
Food processor.

**Side Note: interestingly, Elephant Garlic is not garlic. It's actually a type of onion -- a species of leek, in fact, which probably explains why I love it! I am bat-shit about leeks. Elephant Garlic is milder than regular garlic, and although I love strong garlic, in pesto sauces I think that regular garlic is often overpowering, which is why I went for elephant garlic instead.

Put the basil, nuts and parmesan into the food processor, and gun it. then slowly pour in your olive oil until it makes a nice paste. You may not need to use all of it, but keep adding the olive oil until it gives you a good, pasty texture.

Next, get a pot of salted water boiling for the pasta. Then start on the scallops. First, wash and pat them dry and cut off the tough muscle from the side of the scallop if it hasn't been done by your fishmonger. Melt 2 tablespoons of butter over med heat in a skillet or pan. Don't use a non-stick pan...they aren't as good for searing as they don't distribute heat properly. Put your scallops in the pan and cook without disturbing them for about 3 minutes. You want the bottoms of the scallops to be brown, and when they are, they should release easily from the pan. When the first side is done, turn the scallops over using tongs and brown the other side.

Meanwhile, cook your pasta, strain, then put back into the pot. Add pesto to taste, and mix it up with the pasta over low heat. You may want to add a little olive oil to help looses the pesto and coat the noodles.

The last step is really a dealers choice. You can either chop up the scallops and mix them in with the pasta, or plate your pasta with a couple of scallops on top, and finish by putting some pesto on top of each scallop and drizzling with olive oil. Either way is good. And I know it's sacrilidge to put cheese on seafood pasta, but if you want some parmisan on there, knock yourself out!

The Singita Salad

This recipe is straight from the plains of Tanzania -- the Singita Grumeti Game Reserve in Africa. There's a very good reason that we carried this recipe the 8,000 miles and 46 hours it took to get home, because not only is it the best salad on the continent of Africa, it may be the best salad in the world...

What I love about the sald is it's dense texture. This is a hearty entree salad with rich, bold flavors. But the dressing is really what makes it...it's f-ing phenomenal.

For the dressing:

1/4 cup rice vinegar
2 tablespoons neutral oil, like grape seed or canola.
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon light brown sugar
1 tablespoon peeled and grated ginger
2 teaspoons toasted sesame oil.

For the salad, equal parts Julienned:

Seared or grilled beef filet or skirt steak (salt, pepper, olive oil), finely sliced.
Carrots
Mauge Tout
Onions
Peppers (red, yellow or green)

Mix everything together and finish with toasted sesame seeds.

There you have it...the best of Asia in Africa!