Met Owen at 10am outside Coastal Seafood. Already there were people waiting to get in. I had forgotten about Good Friday! Celebrate! Eat Fish! You could see the staff die a little in their souls as they saw us out there. I hadn’t even considered the parking lot would be full of nutty women, those fourty-somethings that live in 50’s blocks just south of Calhoun. Not the Edina-ites, they don’t go to the city for their fish, these are the eco-happy, liberal, would be liberal but the taxes are just too high kinds of ladies in their fair trade wool coats and Fendi bags. Hot.
Owen and I were in and out in a matter of minutes. Fuck, I love cooking without a budget. We got mussels, clams, shrimp, squid, tiny tiny bay scallops and some halibut, all for the paella. I’m playing with a paella recipe, I want to make it a little more spring like instead of summery, so I’m going to hit it with orange and cut back a bit on the tomato. We’ll see how that goes.
I’m making two appetizers, one is a crostini with sheep’s milk blue, spiced pecans, and roasted apricots. I love this one because i think it’s going to really balance the salty/sweet/spicy, if we need sour I’ll dash some vinaigrette on there. We also have some brie for the other appetizer and while another crostini would be nice, i’m thinking I’d like to show just a little more creativity than that.
There will also be a quick salad of mixed greens, orange mustard vinaigrette and probably some apricots and nuts, you know, because I have them.
Dessert is currently a tart filled with orange spiked mascarpone, covered in some sort of fruit and glazed with lemon ginger marmalade. This is still up in the air as I don’t know what fresh fruit is available and we’ll have to wing it. This is minnesota, it’s not easy to get fresh fruit in the winter than hasn’t been bred down to super stable but completely styrofoam flavored.
After the seafood store and some dallying here and there, David and I headed out to the Guyanese restaurant. It was okay. The food is an interesting cross between Indian and Carribean, unfortunately, everything at this place was too salty and too overcooked. The service was great and everyone was really helpful, I just had hoped for something….more.
I’m off to get some ice cream as it seems to be dinner time. later Chochachos