Seafood Sunday

My favorite kind of food to cook is seafood. I love to eat it as well, which makes my time in the kitchen with the creatures of the sea quite enjoyable. Besides the fact that seafood is relatively low in calories and good for you, it is delicious and versatile. Seafood can be cooked SO many ways: sauteed, steamed, grilled, baked, you name it. I decided to mix up some of those methods tonight. I made baked trout with tomatoes and lemon, pan seared scallops in a white wine sauce over linguini and brussel sprouts with toasted bread crumbs.

I am picky when it comes to buying seafood. Ironic as it may be, the worst thing your fish can be is fishy. I usually buy my seafood from either Whole Foods or Chinatown (Chinatown seafood is really fresh. When I make paella, I go nuts in Chinatown: baby scallops, mussels, squid, even lobster). Today was at Whole Foods (interesting side note, Justin Long was also shopping there - Houston and Bowery - today. He is surpisingly tall, wore headphones the entire time, and pondered salad dressing for a peculiarly long time). The seafood department there is great. The variety of fresh fish is wonderful (salmon, chilean sea bass, whole branzino, catfish, etc), plus there are tasty prepared dishes (crab cakes, stuffed fish, seasoned shrimp) along with pretty good frozen fish as well (shrimp, scallops). Today I went with the scallops and trout, and the brussel sprouts looked great, so even though I have never made them before I decide to try them out.

I started with the trout. I wanted it to have a very simple, clean taste. I seasoned it with kosher salt (Mr. Needy Chef and I went to a cooking demonstation with Bobby Flay last fall and he said to always use kosher salt when you cook. And so it shall be.), pepper, garlic and some ginger. Squeezed some fresh lemon juice on top, sliced additional lemon slices and scattered them around along with halved grape tomatoes. I baked it at 350 for about 15-20 minutes.

I always pan sear scallops first. I like that little bit of crust on the outside. I decided to use olive oil cooking spray, seasoned them with salt and pepper and seared on each side for about 2 minutes.

I then decided to add some white wine that was in the fridge (Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc) and brought to a boil. I cooked some linguini and added the white wine sauce to the pasta.

As I mentioned, I had never made brussel sprouts but it was so easy and I am definitely going to find more creative ways to make them. You cut off the stems and boil for about 10 minutes. That's all there is to cooking them. I decided to toast some breadcrumbs in olive oil, and once browned added the brussel sprouts and coated them in the breadcrumbs.

I would say that I use recipes about 50% of the time when cooking. Tonight was a great example of the delicious meals you can make using simple ingredients, and cooking just what you think will taste good.