Seafood platter
is one of the wonders of the food world. What does it actually mean? usually whatever is at hand for a seafood meal thrown onto a platter and away you go.
Since we have moved to the east coast (South Carolina) we are able to purchase fresh seafood daily if we could afford it. Yesterday's adventure was to go to 3 different "fresh seafood markets" close to us (45 min +/-).
All three are locally owned, some of these for many years. One market we were in, the "captain" of the fishing boat was behind the counter. He did not appear as what you would think a captain looked like, you know, Ahab and such...
He was tall (6'4"ish), slim and somewhat tanned, not the beaten down tan type, but roguish looking. He had a steady slow drawl, though he was articulate and appeared to love sharing his knowledge, the sign of a great teacher. As we asked him questions we learned as much as we could, in regards to our quest for knowledge about east coast fresh fish.
He helped explain the highly sought after "Grouper Cheeks" that were already sold out. They sell out of Grouper Cheeks very early, so we were out of luck. Then he explained Tilefish in comparison to Grouper.
We went ahead and bought some of the Tilefish along with some other accurtoments for cooking.
Off we headed to our next two fish markets.
The next market was smaller, though offered a great deal of good fresh seafood. Their sea scallop offering was amazing, at least 50% were the orange/pink color, or the female scallop. The female scallop has a sweeter taste (go figure) and is harder to find. The nice woman helping us was glad to pick out all the female scallops that we wanted. First time we have ever been able to do this, filling our bag with the best of the scallops. Next she showed us their selection of Grouper cheeks and necks, and she was able to get us 6 large cheeks, what a find. After a few more bits and pieces purchased we were off to our last seafood market of the day.
Our last market was the closest to the beach that we frequent. We were hoping it would offer us the fair that we had hoped for, so we could save time and money. This market had, for me, the most important seafood item out there. Scallop pieces, or what is left over from processing sea scallops. Think about it, during the shucking of the scallop, some of the meat is going to get cut, trimmed or fall off. Why waste it? I use scallop pieces for my white sauce, spinach & scallop pizza. Yummy. This market also had a nice way of trimming their fish to make it more useable with less waste. One market we had been to would not trim the fillets to the weight you asked for, thus waste.
Guess what? we have not been back to that market since.
So our meal last night was a seafood platter consisting of the following:
Oven roasted Tilefish fillets with a brown butter, shallot, EVOO, balsamic vinegar, lemon juice and S&P sauce.
Pan seared scallops with a brown butter, EVOO, shallot, balsamic vinegar, lemon juice and S&P sauce.
Fried breaded Grouper cheeks with home made pickled okra tartar sauce.
All served with a side of mushroom risotto and marinated fresh heirloom tomatoes.
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