{"id":5871,"date":"2015-10-31T19:19:07","date_gmt":"2015-10-31T19:19:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/?p=5871"},"modified":"2015-10-31T19:19:07","modified_gmt":"2015-10-31T19:19:07","slug":"scallops-with-basil-tomatoes-triggerfish-lovage-lacinato","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/?p=5871","title":{"rendered":"scallops with basil, tomatoes; triggerfish, lovage; lacinato"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"scallops_tomatoes\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Nice picture.<\/p>\n

This was also just about\u00a0a perfect meal, for the cook and the diner, but to be totally\u00a0honest, I have to quickly add that it gets that salute only by\u00a0the standards and means of a\u00a0modest kitchen and a quite-ordinary competence.<\/p>\n

Also, it was the child of necessity, or more exactly, the happy outcome\u00a0of a\u00a0glitch in plans which is not unusual. On my trip to the Greenmarket on Friday I was disappointed once again in not finding John Dory fillets (they had sold out much earlier). \u00a0I’ve become accustomed to\u00a0the need for adjusting\u00a0to whatever might be available in the fish stalls (or those of any other venders) at the time I arrive, which is often well past the hour when the most [exciting?] fish may\u00a0have been scooped up by its fans.<\/p>\n

When I stopped by Pura Vida Fisheries this Friday at about 1:30 in the afternoon, Paul suggested triggerfish fillet. \u00a0I don’t think I had ever eaten it before, and I’m certain I hadn’t cooked it. \u00a0Apparently even the Grey<\/em>\u00a0triggerfish is somewhat\u00a0rare this far north. \u00a0Perhaps because its habitat is along rocks along the shore, where it dines on shellfish\u00a0(yum!), it’s not really fished commercially, but this is the time of year\u00a0it’s most likely to be found, usually by\u00a0anglers.<\/p>\n

But then we both noticed that\u00a0there were\u00a0only two left inside the pan resting on the the ice, and they turned out to weigh only about 8\u00a0ounces\u00a0altogether.\u00a0\u00a0I decided that wasn’t quite enough for the two of us at dinner, so I added\u00a06\u00a0large sea scallops to my ‘catch’, and added it to the fillets already on ice\u00a0inside my insulated bag. I would\u00a0sort out the menu later.<\/p>\n

The meal I assembled, of two courses, each featuring some great seafood, was otherwise very\u00a0minimal in both outline and execution, allowing\u00a0the quality of some very fresh ingredients to\u00a0star\u00a0without any distractions.<\/p>\n

There was another first last night: \u00a0I used my new [previously-owned] tin-lined copper au gratin pan for the very first time, employing it here to saut\u00e9 the Triggerfish fillets. \u00a0I have never cooked with copper pans, and I didn’t buy it for display (I leave that to the seasoned-polished cast iron). \u00a0I loved the copper thing, finding it, at least in this outing, most remarkable for the speed with which it heated.<\/p>\n