Posts Tagged ‘old bay’

Bacon Wrapped Grilled Lobster

Posted: February 21, 2012 in Food, Main course, On the grill
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Always trying  to outdo previous years, I decided to experiment this Valentines day with a new lobster dish. I will try my best to go with the measurements since this was a game time decision attempt at grilling excellence.

4 Lobster Tails (Shelled with meat carefully removed and cleaned)
4 Strips of your favorite bacon
Garlic Powder
Old Bay seasoning
Agave Nectar

Basting Sauce:
1 cup Southern Comfort
1/2 cup Butterscotch Schnapps
50mL of maple syrup (Grade B preferably) (one of those little small sampler jars is what I used)
A few shakes of garlic powder
Even more shakes of Old Bay
1/2 stick of butter or margarine
A couple of squeezes of a honey bottle

Heat the basting sauce ingredients in a sauce pan, letting it come to a calm boil. Pay attention to it, because depending on how much Old Bay you use, it can bubble up and over. Once all of the butter is melted and it has boiled for a couple of minutes, reduce heat and let simmer. Taste and add honey to your liking.

Season the lobster meat with the Old Bay and garlic powder. Then lightly drizzle the agave nectar over the meat. Carefully wrap each tail with bacon, securing the ends with toothpicks.

Prepare grill for direct grilling and brush hot grates with olive oil. Over medium to high heat add the lobster tail. Be ready to maneuver quickly, as this basting sauce is pretty flammable. After about a minute, start basting the the lobster tails. As the flames flare up, just gently move and rotate the lobsters. Close the grill and repeat this cycle every minute or two.

The goal is to cook until the bacon is done. Normally when I cook lobsters in the shell, they take only 10 minutes on the grill. I don’t know the science of it, but this method actually took about 20 minutes as I had to make sure the bacon was done. The bacon will take longer to cook with the constant turning, but it seems to protect the lobster and this was the juiciest lobster I have ever eaten in my entire life!

Enjoy!

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Vanilla lobster and 5way bacon wrapped scallops

Posted: May 23, 2011 in Food, Main course
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2 part dish

PART 1:

Vanilla Lobster

2 fresh lobster tails, shelled, and cut into lil chunks
one sprig, or twig or whatever you call it of vanilla bean cut into 1 inch pieces (not extract, the real bean)
olive oil
fresh diced chives (or green onions, or spring onions, depending on where you’re from)
old bay seasoning

Coat medium sized pan in olive oil, on med/hi heat, add chives and vanilla and after a minute, add lobster meat and stir continuously. As you’re tossing the lobster meat you’ll see the specks of black over the lobster, these are the vanilla bean “seeds”. Once the lobster gets a lil opaque (maybe 5 minutes), add a light dusting of old bay, just to give some kick. You don’t want to over power the vanilla.

PART 2:

10 Large Fresh Scallops cut in half
5 pieces of peppercorn bacon cut in half
20 toothpicks

5 Way Bacon Wrapped Scallops
Simple recipe, 5 different flavors. I’ll show the main setup and then the different flavors afterwards. This can also be grilled (I know you’re shocked its not grilled this time)

Pre-Heat broiler. After flavoring the large scallops (see below) roll in bacon and then hold in place with toothpick. place in middle rack under broiler for 6 mins, turn and broil for six minutes on a broiler tray.
If bacon isn’t done, cook for a lil bit longer.

a. marinate/toss scallops in olive oil, vanilla extract, chives, pepper

b. marinate/toss scallops olive oil, honey, old bay seasoning

c. soak scallops in naVan, then roll with cane sugar (i used sugar in the raw)

d. soak scallops in Malibu coconut rum, then roll with lime-pepper seasoning

e. soak scallops butterscotch schnapps, then roll with seasalt


From left to right:
olive oil / vanilla / chives
olive oil / honey / old bay
naVan / cane sugar
Malibu / lime-pepper
Butterscotch Schnapps/ sea salt

The ultimate crab chowder

Posted: May 22, 2011 in Food, Main course
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I apologize in advance, I forgot to take pics. Please don’t hold it against me.

I actually made this up myself, just taking bits and pieces of crab chowders that I’ve enjoyed at different restaurants and adding different things that I like to it.
(feel free to sub out what you don’t like, I know everybody can’t like everything! I just added things I like, almost turned chowder into gumbo, lol)

6 servings (manly servings that is)
Ingredients

* 2 tablespoons butter
* 1 cup chopped onion
* 4 fresh spring onions chopped (aka chives or green onions)
* 3 tablespoons of garlic powder
* 3 1/2 cups (1-inch) cubed red potato (about 1 pound) (skin on)
* 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
* 2 1/2 cups 2% reduced-fat milk
* 8 slices of cooked bacon, sliced into 1cm thick pieces
* 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
* 1 turkey smoked sausage cubed (i prefer EckRich Skinless turkey smoked sausage, its skinless)
* 1 (14 3/4-ounce) can cream-style corn
* 1 (14-ounce) can fat-free, less-sodium chicken broth
* 8 ounces lump crabmeat (or more if you’re crabby)
* 3 tablespoons Old Bay Seasoning (i’m a little heavy handed on this one)

Preparation

Melt butter in a large saucepan over medium-high heat.
Add onion, and garlic powder; sauté 4 minutes.
Add potato; sauté 1 minute.
Sprinkle with flour; cook 1 minute, stirring constantly.
Stir in milk, pepper, corn, and broth.
Bring to a simmer over medium heat, stirring frequently.
Cover, reduce heat, and simmer 20 minutes or until potato is tender, stirring occasionally.
Fry turkey in separate pan without grease until browned to your liking liking.
Stir in crab, bacon, spring onions, Old Bay, and turkey; cook 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Enjoy!

Shrimp a la Ryan (a quick dish)

Posted: February 16, 2011 in Food, Main course
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So it has been awhile since I’ve made this dish and Toya made a request in the form of “You know what you haven’t made in a long time???”. And before she could even answer the question, somehow I knew she meant Shrimp a la Ryan, even though there’s plenty of other dishes I need to dust off the shelves again.  If you don’t have much time for dinner, this will definitely help as it is a quick dish. Ingredients needed are :

A pound or two of jumbo shrimp, (I used tiger shrimp from Sam’s)
Spaghetti noodles
1/3 to 1/2 bag of broccoli florets (I used frozen ones for this dish)
Green, red, orange, and yellow peppers, or any combination of your liking (chives also work well here)
Old Bay Seasoning
Cracked peppercorn
Garlic Powder
Alfredo Sauce
Malibu coconut rum

Wash your shrimp

De-vein and shell your shrimp

Cut the shrimp in halves

Start preparing your noodles, when they are halfway done, add frozen broccoli to the water and return to boil.

Cook on med-high with butter and a little olive oil until pink on bottom

Flip and cook till pink on the other side

Add peppers (these are previously chopped up fresh peppers then frozen)

The special ingredient.  Add Malibu to just “bathe” the shrimp, you don’t need to drown them.  Try to aim for a level of 1/3 the height of the shrimp

Add your seasoning here, stirring lightly. The amount depends on your personal taste.

The later in the cooking process you add the seasonings, the more likely they “stick” to the food as the alcohol forms a glue-like glaze while it cooks

When noodles are done, place noodles and broccoli on plate. With a spoon, lightly spread some Alfredo Sauce over the noodles. You don’t want to use too much here, just enough to give the noodles some “Ummph”.  I know you’re thinking Alfredo sauce and Malibu????  Trust me on this one.

Add shrimp to top of noodles and broccoli and any remaining “residuals”


Enjoy!
Overall, this meal should take about 20 minutes or less if  you’re boiling the noodles while you’re cooking the shrimp.