"Big Night," Scallops and Mussels

Saturday night is traditionally movie night at our house, children upstairs or out of the house, and something special for dinner. Tonight I fixed a seafood medley of scallops, mussels and small lobster tails. I get a box of frozen New Zealand mussels that are already scrubbed and on the half shell, which makes preparation very easy. Chop garlic and shallots and mix with Italian style bread crumbs, Parmesan cheese, salt, pepper, garlic and onion powders, and red pepper flakes. Put mussels in a single layer in a baking pan, sprinkle with white wine and lime juice, and cover with the bread crumb mixture. Drizzle with olive oil and bake at around 400 degrees (give or take) for around 15-20 minutes, depending on whether the mussels were frozen when you started doing this. As for the scallops and small lobster tails (we're talking scampi size here, but they were cheap), I chopped up more garlic and shallots, and ginger, and added soy sauce, olive oil, cooking sherry, paprika, and a dash of tabasco sauce, and marinated half of the scallops and itty bitty lobster tails (did I mention that these things were SMALL??) while I wrapped thin slices of bacon around the rest of the scallops because I was a little hesitant about what the marinated ones were going to taste like.

Meanwhile, I'd finished a glass of rum and passion fruit juice, made bread dough in my Zojarushi bread machine -- more on that later -- and watched Eddie Izzard's "Glorious" concert. I'm the Queen of multi-tasking.

I fired up the grill and added a small package of wood chips that are created for gas grills, to give food that wood-grilled flavor. They work. I'm going to buy stock in the company. After tripping over the basset several times, I was able to get the scallops and lobster tails on the grill, the mussles in the oven, and a glass of that really great rosé that I mentioned a few posts ago (Albertson's had it on sale for $6.59 today!).

As for the Zojirushi bread machine, during my 27 years of married life, I've literally worn out three bread machines from constant use, so the last time around I decided to get the Mercedes of bread machines: http://www.zojirushi.com/ourproducts/breadmakers/bbcc_x20.html. So far it's stood up to regular use and turned out consistently wonderful loaves of bread and batches of bread dough.

The movie, "Big Night" (1996), appropriately enough, was about cooking one great meal. I love movies that are made because someone liked the story, and not because a large committee of overpaid Hollywood executives decided that this would be a slick movie that would make lots of money. It's like a great meal: not perfect, but warm, interesting, and made with imagination and love.