Migs Vuitton | Photographer

Clarione was in town and we did a small, intimate, impromptu – but super delicious- dinner with him, Holly, Mark and our new roomie Stacy. The plan was to take a sophisticated menu you’d see at a restaurant and bring it home and enjoy cooking with these different flavors adding a twist of asian-infused ingredients to each plate. The menu as planned consisted of:

• Butter lemon scallops on a bed of japanese cucumbers marinated with rice wine vinegar
• Wasabi infused crab cakes
• Seared ahi tuna salad with cranberry gorgonzola dressing
• Vodka spritzers

Let’s start with the scallops. This was my first time cooking with scallops so I was a bit terrified to serve them without trying it first, so I cooked one scallop earlier in the day and it came out great! All you need for this appetizer is:

Butter Lemon Scallops w/ Japanese Cucumbers

Scallops (two per person)
Butter (enough to use to substitute cooking oil)
Lemon
Salt/Pepper
Rice wine vinegar
Japanese cucumber (can also use regular cucumbers)

Before you do anything, you’ll want to ready your cucumbers so they can marinate awhile in the fridge (at least 30 minutes). You can use a potato peeler to get some really thin strips of cucumber. Be sure to peel of the layer of green. Place your strips into a bowl and add rice wine vinegar and pepper (I add some hot pepper flakes to give it a little kick).

Once that’s done, all you’re really need to do is cook your scallop! Add some butter and lemon juice into a pan (not too much so the scallop can brown) and once it’s hot, really hot, put in your scallops. Don’t put them too close together so you have some room and time to work with the scallops. Once the bottom of the scallop has a nice brown on it (a minute or so) flip them over and baste them with some of the lemon butter that’s already in the pan.

Let that side cook about the same time. I read that it’s best to cook scallops on a non teflon pan so it can get scorching hot. We only have teflon so maybe we lucked out because it cooked really well. Once the scallops are done, place them on the bed of cucumbers and let sit for a bit before serving. Not too long or they’ll be cold. I didn’t salt these scallops because you’ll get a lot of acid from the rice wine marinated cucumbers.

Next up is the crab cakes:

Wasabi Infused Crab Cakes

Crab (real, not imitation)
Mayo (light please)
Wasabi mayo (optional mixed in or as a part of your sauce)
Mustard
Worcestershire sauce
Garlic powder
Bread crumbs (or crushed crackers)
Green onions (thinly sliced)
1 Egg
Tartar sauce (or any dipping sauce you like)
Bacon (totally optional)
Flour for coating

All you need to do is mix in your crab, mayo, mustard, worcestershire sauce, garlic powder, bread crumbs, green onions, bacon and egg into a mixture that looks good to your liking. I’d start light on the mayo. You want the crab to be the main ingredient and not the mayo.

Next you’ll want to flour them up in a mini pancake-like form. You can add some of the bread crumbs into the flour to give it more volume.

Once you’ve got your crab cakes all ready to go, place them in a pan of hot oil, enough to coat the crab cake all the way to the middle of the cake so that the center cooks. Once golden brown, flip them over and cook for the same amount of time. Serve hot with tartar sauce, wasabi mayo or your choice of dipping sauce!

The last dish to prepare since it’s the fastest is the Seared Ahi Tuna:

Seared Ahi Tuna Salad

Tuna (sashimi grade)
Spices (sesame seeds, all spice, salt, pepper)
Mixed greens
Cranberry gorgonzola dressing (Trader Joes sells this)

This is pretty basic. Put all your spices in a bowl and cover your tuna with the spices.

Pan fry on high heat with a splash of oil until the edges are cooked. Cut into thin slices and serve on a bed of mixed greens with a dressing you think would go well with searched tuna. In this case, the cranberry gorgonzola dressing was perfect and light enough to not overpower the tuna.

And there you have it. A modern, elegant, asian-inspired, seafood meal perfect for dinner parties where you take the restaurant setting and bring it into your home. And what’s a deliciously modern looking dinner without the cocktail? An easy vodka spritzer to cleanse your pallet…

Bon A’ Petite!!

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