Friday Night Seafood Feast

I went by Costco after work to pick up a couple of planned purchases. While walking through the meat section, the seafood kiosk caught my eye. Now everyone knows you aren't supposed to go grocery shopping when you are hungry as you wind up with stuff you really wouldn't normally buy. Did I mention, I went shopping after driving home from work. Duh! Most folks working a day shift/job drive home hungry. I have no stats to prove this, but it only makes sense. Lunch breaks are usually sometime between 11a and 1 p. Getting off a day shift is a time around 5p. I count that as about four hours after lunch when most stomachs say feed me again.

Not to get off track, but yes, that kiosk caught me off guard. Large prawns 8-9 per pound, whole dungeness crabs and a 4 pound bag of mussels found their way into my cart. Usually G and I go out to dinner on Fridays, but I just changed that plan. I was going to cook seafood.

I didn't organize or plan this as a 30 minute meal but I was determined to not make it an all night cooking adventure.



Simply stated, the mussels would be steamed in a large pot with garlic, butter and some salt added to about 1 1/2 cups of water (or enough liquid to steam for about 10 minutes).



The previously cooked and frozen whole crabs also only needed some steaming to warm. I added about 2 teaspoonsful of liquid crab boil to about a 1 1/2 cups water for these in a large pots.



The shrimp(already deveined) I washed and placed in a little water with a couple of teaspoons of that famous FoodTV chef- Emeril's Essence. After about 15 minutes, these were patted dry.



I added about 2 tablespoons olive oil,1 tablespoon Plugra and two green onions sliced to a cast iron skillet to heat. I again seasoned the shrimp with more Essence and added them to the heated oil to saute.

I cut up a couple of lemons, melted some butter for dipping, poured some of the mussel broth in a dish to dip the mussels and uncorked a bottle of wine. All that was missing was some crusty or sour dough bread.

After about 45 minutes of prep and cooking, dinner was served. I was so excited about eating that I forgot to take a picture of the dinner table set and ready to dig in. This picture was taken about midway through eating.