how to eat like a bird

seared scallops with tomato butter

I'd never attempted to make scallops before because I used to think of them as potential for disaster--something expensive I could easily ruin, if off by a mere minute or two. But now that I've watched so many episodes of Top Chef, I kind of feel like I could sear them in my sleep. That's how many times those cheftestants turned to scallops. And now I know why. They're incredibly fast to make, they pair well with butter, acid, and bacon, which covers a lot of territory, and everyone loves them.

This recipe is from Russ Parsons's How to Pick a Peach, and it's an entirely satisfying, luscious kind of dish with very few ingredients. Basically, you let some cherry tomatoes mingle with some tarragon, steep diced shallots in butter, and then pour the butter over the tomatoes, causing them to wilt a bit. Then you sear some scallops and bring it all together. The smell of fresh tarragon against butter and shallots is rather transporting, and I even relinquished some of my fear of butter. It wouldn't be so bad to be French, I thought.

Adapted from How to Pick a Peach by Russ Parsons. Serves 6. (I made scallops for two, but made the tomato butter recipe in its entirety because I didn't want to fuss with half-teaspoon measurements and because it would go well with these collard squares I made for a side. My collard greens turned out a little dry and overcooked in my zeal to use up extra Gruyère and achieve a golden-brown cheesy crust (old habits die hard), so the extra sauce did come in handy. My friend consumed many of the extra portions while I watched in terror, but I think this is a relatively healthy recipe if you are aware that 4 tablespoons of butter should serve six, not two.)

• ½ pound cherry or grape tomatoes
• 1¼ teaspoons minced fresh tarragon
• 4 tablespoons (½ stick) butter
• 1½ teaspoons minced shallots
• up to 2 pounds sea scallops (I used a little more than ½ a pound for two persons, or about 6 scallops each.)
• Salt
• Red wine vinegar (optional)
• 2 tablespoons olive oil (I seared the scallops in butter instead because they were going to end up in butter, and I felt I would get a better sear).

Quarter tomatoes and combine in a bowl with the tarragon.

Melt the butter in a small saucepan over medium heat. Add shallots and cook until they soften and become fragrant, about 2-3 minutes. Remove butter from heat and let cool 2-3 minutes.

Prepare scallops by removing the small, tough "foot" muscle attached to one side. Rinse and pat dry with paper towels. (It's very important to have them dry before you attempt a sear.)

Pour butter over tomatoes and stir gently to combine. It should be hot enough to soften the tomatoes but not so hot as to cook them through. Season with salt to taste (about 1 teaspoon) (I used kosher salt and used 1 teaspoon). If the tomatoes lack acidity, add a few drops of red wine vinegar. (I really wish I had done this--I overlooked this step but think it would have brightened up the sauce and made it perfect).

Heat a large nonstick pan over high heat. Add the oil and heat until it is smoking. (I used a regular stainless steel pan and butter). Place the scallops in the pan and cook until they are browned and crusty on one side, about 3 minutes. Turn the scallops over and brown on the other side, about another 3 minutes. They should be slightly translucent in the center. (My scallops weren't the huge diver-size ones I think he means, so I only cooked them 1-2 minutes each side--just long enough for them to be brown on each side. I put the larger ones in the pan first and took them out last.)

Plate scallops and spoon tomato butter over the top.

a hot crab dip

This was my first real test of portion control after a couple weeks of a restrictive diet emphasizing fruits and vegetables. My stomach had shrunk but would I allow it to expand for the sake of a gooey baked dish you can dip into? Foods that require dipping seem to be my weakness.

Relatively speaking, this simple crab dip recipe from CHOW contains less fattening ingredients than most baked crab dips. There's 6 tablespoons of mayonnaise and a tablespoon of horseradish cream per pound of crab, plus the cornbread topping (an inspired choice which brings out the sweetness of the crab). But it's not one of those concoctions that have you mixing mayo, sour cream, and cream cheese all together to be baked under a layer of shredded cheese. Who can taste the crab after all that?

I used backfin crab meat from a can, rather than jumbo lump, as I think that's perfectly adequate for dips. But, of course, jumbo lump would have been better, and this dip was a little too wet for the smaller pieces of backfin. I would say you can cut it back by one or two tablespoons of mayonnaise. For the cornbread, I stopped by a Southern restaurant and picked up two pieces. You can also use cornbread muffins from a supermarket.

I served this with endive leaves as well as rounds of baguette toasted in butter. I did a comparison taste test and, of course, the bread won. But later when I snacked on leftovers by myself, I found that I was too lazy to slice and toast up day-old bread, and the endive leaves were ever so convenient, like disposable plates with nary a crumb left behind. I can't imagine loading them up with something like onion dip (which everyone knows needs potato chips, not crudité), but they worked really well with the crab dip.

And while bread seems the more substantive food item by sight, endive is much more filling because it's a little fibrous. I do think that starting off with one or two leaves delicately piled on with dip made me eat a lot less of it even when I switched to the bread.

a Top Chef recipe: Hung's tuna tartare

Is that a bunch of ingredients thrown on a plate? Is that my mise en place? No, it's Hung's tuna tartare from the "Restaurant Wars" episodes of Top Chef--just less artistic, less composed, and less refined.

I did try (see below). I like pretty food, even winsome food, and have fantasized plenty of shaping rice balls into happy teddy bears and Hello Kitty. But here I felt like I was copying in the most amateurish and slavish fashion, as shown on TV. My hand shook as a schmear of vinaigrette turned into a puddle and toast points got cold as I struggled to form some sort of architectural structure. I think if you don't have the steady hands and particular finesse of an experienced chef, home cooking is best served by a rakish haphazardness that should probably bring to mind Mario Batali more than Daniel Boulud, even if the latter was perhaps the most tactful and gentle-spoken guest judge ever to grace the show.

Now, onto the creative part of this endeavor: deciphering Bravo's recipe. Normally I wouldn't dare attempt one of their recipes. Their site is a headache to navigate and even if you can find the dish you're searching for, you'll run into a general, stupefying lack of detail with some inconsistencies mixed in for added befuddlement. Nearly half the comments on any given recipe amount to "Are you kidding me?" The other half consists of wishful commentary remarking that the food sure did look good on TV, and then there is the wee percentage who roll their eyes and point out that they have in fact made the very dish in question and if you knew what you were doing, you could make it too without all the hand-holding specifics, retards.

But Hung's tuna tartare take on a salad Nicoise was looked upon with such favor by the judges that my curiosity was piqued, especially because I didn't think I knew what an Egg Vinaigrette was. See, when it's capitalized like that, it throws you off.

To my surprise, there was a short and tidy list of common enough ingredients. I knew the measurements were suspect, but the recipe seemed so simple, I figured I could work with it. It actually seemed to be a 30-minute meal, wasn't sized for several dozen people, and while guest judge Geoffrey Zakarian deemed tuna tartare a cliche in the second and conclusive episode, he did cite it in a later interview as his favorite dish of the night.

That comment perhaps raised my expectations too high because I forgot that a lot of the other food on the show was problematic or just plain bad. This was indeed "delicate" and as Daniel Boulud said, "a real bistro dish." If you were served it for lunch, you'd be delighted with it. The flavor of the egg vinaigrette is bright and clean against the sweet mellowness of the tuna, and for all the refinement of presentation (Hung's, not mine), the flavors are familiar and almost even homey (toast and eggs anyone?). It's a salad Nicoise deconstructed, after all, and it's done very well.

I suspect a lot of the appeal resided in the delight in contrast between its precious bejeweled look (did Padma say it was so pretty she didn't want to eat it?) and the comfort of accessible flavors. Mine was not so refined (or as properly and beautifully seasoned, I am sure), so I was not so surprised. Would I make it again? I prefer my tuna tartares with Asian flavors, but I would keep the egg vinaigrette in my repertoire and use that and all the other components (save the $18.99 per pound tuna) in an actual, hearty salad Nicoise.

Here is the ingredient list, as posted on Bravo's site. The parentheticals are my notes.

Serves four as an appetizer and two as a main course.

Adapted from bravotv.com.

Tuna Tartare with Nicoise Olives

• 8 g tuna, diced  (they mean 8 ounces or half a pound of sushi-grade tuna--only crack cocaine and saffron come in grams)
• 1 T chives, chopped
• 1 T salt (maybe they mean kosher salt; I used fine sea salt and half a tablespoon was more than enough)
• 1 t pepper (used a sprinkle)
• 1 t paprika (start with half a teaspoon and season to taste)
• 1 cup nicoise olives (3/4 cup is plenty)
• 8 white asparagus (I used haricot vert (French green beans))
• (You also need something to make a cracker or toast points. I used a slice of good white bread.)

Egg Vinaigrette

• 2 boiled eggs, chopped fine
• 1/4 cup mayonnaise
• 3 T sherry vinaigrette
• 1 t sugar
• 1 t salt (again, maybe they mean kosher; start with 1/4 teaspoon and season to taste)

(This makes a lot of vinaigrette. If you don't want a lot leftover, half everything with the exception of the 2 boiled eggs which are used as garnish. Half of 1/4 cup is 2 tablespoons.) 

This dish has a lot of small components to remember, but nothing took a long time. I started boiling the eggs first, and did indeed finish in 30 minutes or so. Mix the tuna with chives and season. Place in fridge. ---My sushi-grade tuna acquired from Citarella tasted a little fishy at first, but after seasoning and a few minutes in the fridge, it tasted fine.

Sauté the white asparagus or haricot vert briefly so it's cooked but retains a crunch. Green beans, even French ones, won't be as dressy as white asparagus but they're almost always found in Nicoise salads, and I liked them very much here. Set aside.

Sauté the olives. I think this is primarily so they're easy to pit. I wanted them to retain a texture closer to raw than cooked, so pitting them was the fussiest part of this recipe for me. After pitting, chop finely and set aside.   

Make the vinaigrette by mixing the mayonnaise and the sherry vinegar, and season. Mine was runnier than the one pictured, but it tasted good. Add less vinegar if you want a thicker consistency. Chop the eggs fine to garnish over the vinaigrette.

Toast bread, cut crusts off, and slice into 1-inch rows.

Plate everything as a separate component, so it looks like a deconstructed salad Nicoise. Marvel that you prepared raw fish and lived to tell the tale. Enjoy!

a lobster farm in the city

On a quiet summer weekend when almost everyone seems to have vacated town for prettier, seaside retreats, I will sometimes feel the need to dip something in drawn butter. That's when I head down the street to where Allen meets Hester for my own lobster shack experience, courtesy of Chinatown wholesalers and the Canadian lobster trade.

It's not en route to Maine, but for wholesale prices, anyone can walk into The Lobster Farm and pick the lobster of her choice from massive tanks categorized by size. Prices range from $8 and change per pound for 1-pound lobsters to $9.75 per pound for 2-pounders. (For comparison's sake, Fresh Direct offers 1 1/2-pound lobsters for $12.99 a pound.)

Someone will hold up the lobster to show you how alive it is, weigh it, and unceremoniously stuff it into a plastic bag. Request a female if you eat the roe. Supposedly a female also has a wider tail. I took a nice 2-pounder home, which was plenty for two, alongside an order of chipotle chicken nachos. I know it sounds discordant (i.e., trashy) but it was rather good all together--if you're stuck in concrete environs, you may as well have your favorite takeout food. You shouldn't eat tomalley (the green stuff), in case it contains dioxins from polluted waters, but I just had a little, and with a dash of lime on a tortilla chip, it approximates an upscale guacamole. (I share, for those of you who want to do this for your next Top Chef challenge sponsored by Corona.)

Steaming is the best way to cook a lobster if you're unsure of what you're doing. It's gentle and hard to mess up, even if you're off by a couple minutes. There are various steaming times cited on different websites, but I go with this one because people from Maine should know what they're doing (18 minutes for a 2-pounder). Dip in butter with a side of Old Bay seasoning. I don't own a whisk or a microplane grater, but somehow I have these. For clarified butter, you're supposed to melt the butter and spoon out the milk solids that rise to the surface, but I just nuked some butter in the microwave and moved aside the solids with a handy lobster claw.

The Lobster Farm is at 40-44 Allen Street, between Hester and Canal.

Not for the squeamish: (feisty, before and after).