October 19, 2011 Dinner-Sauteed Sea Scallops with Vegetable Medley and French Apple Tart

Dinner, October 19, 2011

Sauteed Sea Scallops with a sautéed Medley of Vegetables
and French Apple Tart

I guess I did not sleep as well as I thought last night, because I became very tired around 4:00 p.m. and did not feel like cooking a big meal, especially, since I promised to help Suzette make an Apple Tart.. 

Luckily, Richard Donfro, a friend, brought by a lovely cream of parsnip soup with a lemon flavored shredded kale garnish that we ate around 5:30 p.m. as an appetizer, so we were not hungry for a large meal.

After Suzette made her dough and it was resting in the fridge, Suzette peeled while I thinly sliced about eight or nine of the Jonathan apples we had purchased at the Fruit Stand in Velarde, N.M. last Saturday for the apple tart she was making for an “apple tart throw down“ competition she was having with her pastry chef, Armando, at the Greenhouse Bistro on Thursday.  Since we used high carbon steel knives to slice the apples, Suzette sprinkled the apple slices with lemon juice to keep them from discoloring.  The thin irregular lines of red running through the apples were beautiful.

While Suzette made the dough for her Apple Tart, I went to the fridge and gathered, and sliced:

Two Portobello mushrooms

Two Zucchini squashes, from our garden

½ brown onion

One long Italian sweet red pepper, bought at the Taos Farmer’s Market

Two cloves garlic

While Suzette constructed her Apple Tart by lining a tart pan with parchment paper and rolling the dough and fitting it into the tart pan and laying the apple slices on the dough in the tart pan in the shape of a flower, I sautéed the vegetable mixture in a skillet with some butter and olive oil, a dash of white pepper, about ¼ teaspoon of French Sea Salt, and about a tablespoon of dried oregano for about twenty minutes at medium heat (to avoid scorching the vegetables) and then added about two teaspoons of lemon juice and covered the skillet with a wok lid and sweated the vegetable mixture for another twenty minutes.

While the vegetables were sweating during the last twenty minutes and Suzette had put her Apple Tart into the oven, she dried the defrosted Sea Scallops between layers of paper towels and then sautéed them in a skillet with heated butter and olive oil and finished them with a pinch of salt and a splash of white wine to make a light sauce.

She also cooked about a cup of left over apple slices and lemon juice and in a different sauce pan cooked about one cup of unsweetened apricot preserves with honey to make a glaze.

When the scallops were lightly browned, Suzette made a bed of the sautéed vegetables in a shallow soup bowl and garnished the vegetable medley with the Sea Scallops, which we ate with a glass of Champlou Vouvray, a lovely, elegantly light dry Vouvray with a slight citrus flavor.  I also had a slice of whole wheat toast to soak up some of the vegetable and scallop sauce. 

  As we finished our dinner, the timer sounded and we ran to the oven to take the lightly browned Apple Tart from the oven.

While Suzette was glazing her tart with the Apricot glaze, I ate several slices of the lemon-flavored cooked apple slices and watched the first game of the World Series between the Texas Rangers and Saint Louis Cardinals.  Suzette then combined the remaining glaze with the remaining cooked apple slices and we put the leftover sautéed vegetables and the cooked, glazed apples slices and the remaining Cream of Parsnip Soup and kale garnish into the fridge.

Since we often construct our meals using available leftovers, it is important to track our leftovers so you can see how we construct our menus utilizing those leftovers; if I don’t eat them for lunch or snacks.

For example, there was some L’Orange Sauce left over after last night’s meal (October 18) that went back into the fridge.  

We actually have three fridges, which I sometimes think of as living beings that inhale purchased ingredients and leftover dishes and exhale those leftovers and ingredients for future meals.  They function as an expanded larder that allows us to keep and choose a wide variety of ingredients and leftover dishes as the foundation for meals without having to shop for each meal, as you will see as this series of articles progresses and as evidenced by this evening’s meal, which was gathered entirely from the fridge.

Bon Apetit