Fox Point Seafood

(serves three with left­overs for lunch)

2 cloves gar­lic
juice of 1/2 lemon
pinch sea salt
cou­ple grinds black pep­per
1/2 cup good ready­made may­on­naise, or your own fresh
12 raw king prawns
12 raw scal­lops (roe off for me)
2 wild Alaskan salmon fil­lets
sev­eral shakes Pen­zeys Fox Point Sea­son­ing
juice of 1/2 lime
sprin­kle olive oil
1 tbsp veg­etable oil

Now, some­thing really inter­est­ing, chem­i­cally speak­ing, hap­pens when you mince gar­lic together with lemon juice and sea salt. I think it must break down some essen­tial build­ing blocks of solid mat­ter (oh dear, I think my art his­tory PhD is show­ing), well, what­ever it is I mean, the gar­lic is pul­ver­ized by the acid and salt in a very sat­is­fy­ing way. And the results are quite dif­fer­ent to sim­ply minc­ing the gar­lic and mix­ing it with the lemon and salt. Trust me on this point. I once made a mind-bendingly pun­gent vinai­grette for cole slaw that involved peel­ing and sec­tion­ing a lemon (nice obses­sive com­pul­sive job that was) and chop­ping the sec­tions with salt and gar­lic. I loved it, but I have a mem­ory of some of my guests cry­ing. So this mod­i­fied gar­lic rap­ture may be just the ticket for the faint of heart who nev­er­the­less want some kick to their aioli.

Mix the minced gar­lic, lemon and salt mix­ture into the mayo and set aside.

Place all the seafood on a plat­ter and sprin­kle it all with Fox Point Sea­son­ing. This mir­a­cle condi­ment is a clas­sic exam­ple of a whole being more than the sum of its parts. Why should dried shal­lots, chives and scal­lions be such a per­fect thing to accom­pany seafood, chicken, scram­bled eggs and dare I sug­gest it, but­tered pop­corn? But it is. Mag­i­cal. Driz­zle the lime juice and olive oil over all the seafood.

In a very large skil­let, heat the veg­etable oil till nearly smok­ing and place the salmon fil­lets in skin side down. Resist the temp­ta­tion to play with them: don’t poke at them, peek under­neath as they cook, just sit for about 4 min­utes. Now you may turn them. One hopes the skin will have cooked very nicely so that you can either enjoy it, or peel it off (I don’t do salmon skin). Cook on the flesh side for just another minute and remove the salmon to a warm plate. Turn back to the skil­let and see if you need more oil, if so add it, but judi­ciously, as you want this to be a nice light dish. Place the scal­lops as quickly as you can in the hot oil on one side of the skil­let and throw the prawns in at the other side. Toss the prawns with tongs and after about 2 min­utes, turn the scal­lops over. Now remove from skil­let and arrange nicely on the salmon plate. Serve with the aioli.

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