The Beauty of Crudo- Plus a Little Cooking

Let’s play a game. I’m going to put up a few pictures and you tell me who loves their wife.

This past Valentine’s Day I, of course, had to work. However, as a committed husband and diehard romantic (is this working?) I boldly returned home to prepare three different scallop dishes that had been bouncing around in my head for a couple of weeks.

As a lot of you may know, both me and the wifey are kinda freaks for raw seafood. A few months ago we were at a sushi bar and had raw scallops for the first time. Well-not the first time, but the first time not all chopped up with some kind of spicy mayonnaise. What’s that about anyway? These were just sliced and dressed with a bit of lemon. Holy shit. How had I spent years not eating this?

So originally, I planned to get my hands on some super-fresh, super-plump scallops and do three crudo dishes. The more I thought about it though, the more I realized it would be a real shame not to cook at least a few up with some of my home-cured guanciale (will I ever stop talking about this? No.)

For the first dish, I hooked up a grapefruit, white wine, and chicken stock reduction, a nice watercress salad and some really flowery cracked black pepper that we brought back from Vietnam. I totally jacked the individual grapefruit cell garnish from The Fat Duck’s notoriously bizarre liquorice salmon dish.

This was real tasty. I knew that citrus would go well but the grapefruit’s particular bitterness was a nice complimentary twist. I thought it might overpower the delicate scallop flavor but it really just brightened it up.

Next was a crudo salad with kohlrabi, apples, and scallop cubes tossed with black sesame. The whole lot got dressed with a light Meyer lemon vinaigrette. Wowzer. I thought I liked the first dish, but this pile of goodness was outstanding.

For those of you who don’t know, kohlrabi is a much underutilized root vegetable that tastes like a cross between an apple and a turnip. Uncooked, the texture is kind of like a crisp potato without the starchiness. You can eat the stuff any which way – boiled, roasted, fried, raw, whatever. The greens are great too, so for the price it’s a real bargain vegetable at the markets around here.

I guess if I could have changed one thing about this dish, I would have liked to have sliced the kohlrabi a little thinner. Unfortunately, my mandolin wasn’t up to the task and those deli slicers cost like a bazillion dollars for some reason. (Although, if anyone wants to buy me one I’ll certainly move some stuff around and make a spot for it.)

Finally, I cooked off some of that amazing hog jowl and seared the remaining scallops in the rendered pig fat. I dressed them with strange but delightful little sauce that was a bit herby and a bit spicy.

I started by making a cilantro-serrano aioli and then I thinned it out with some reduced chicken stock. (If anyone points out that I just paired scallops with a glorified spicy mayonaisse after bitching about it at the beginning of the post, I will be thoroughly displeased and possibly retaliatory.) I garnished the sizzling sea creatures with the guanciale cracklins, some sliced Fresno peppers, more cilantro (I freaking love that stuff), and a smattering of sea salt. It tastes pretty much like it sounds. Amazing.

For the most part, that wrapped up our Valentine’s dinner. No edible undies, no flavored oils or puddings, no extra hot cupid diapers…or was there? I’ll leave it up to you.

-L. Pants

Comments

[amy]

Dude! #1... that dish looks excellent!! When do I det my Valentines present? I'm showing this to my husband now... he's screwed. #2... you can NEVER talk too much about home-curing your own guanciale. I'm jealous. I"m still holding on to a small square I picked up in Italy last summer and smuggled home. We made an excellent amatriciana (natch!) with it and I can't get myself to finish it up. I'll prob. cry when it's done. Go you! Amy @ http://www.neverfull.wordpress.com

[Girlie]

Thanks for the comment, Amy!

I am impressed that you got guanciale home through customs... I'm always too nervous to try. It seems to be relatively straightforward to cure at home - I'm hoping Husbear has time soon to write up a longer post about the half-pig it came from!

Heh - I'm feeling for your husband!