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Recipe at bottom of post. Happy cooking!
Hello everyone! Thank you for your patience while I adjusted my posting schedule and also had some unexpected events in my personal life. I also really appreciate the following support on my Instagram. Although I was offline for a little more than two weeks, I actually gained some additional followers which was a nice surprise.
I haven’t had a chance to post any updates so I’ll start with that. For Christmas, I was gifted a noddle maker and a massive nutrition book, both of which I’m super excited to use. The noodle maker is exciting because I’ve been looking to start making more foods from scratch whether that be pasta, marinara sauce, pickles, etc. I really want to see what I can do.
The nutrition book is significantly larger than I was expecting. I thought it was a normal sized book – it’s a whole textbook. There’s a lot to go through, but I am excited for it because I want to start making my own dishes instead of focusing on recipe reviews. With the dishes I make, I want to make sure they’re covering all of my nutrition basics and why. I really enjoy learning, so this is a great way to enjoy my cooking a bit more.
A fun gift that was unexpected was a set of assorted olive oils and vinegars. Thankfully, a little recipe book came with them to offer some ideas, but I’m excited to try those out to see what new flavors I can bring to my food.
Naturally, all of these wonderful gifts will be used in my cooking blog! I’ve really enjoyed trying new recipes and making some of my own. The hardest part for me is remembering to record videos and take pictures, and remembering to post it. I think I find it hard because I enjoy cooking and I enjoy sharing my cooking, but my motive behind it is not to grow a following or have a famous Instagram account or anything. I enjoy writing and cooking, and this was a great way to bring those two aspects together. However, doing the recordings and posting on Instagram is the way for me to share these meals with other people. So although it’s sometimes difficult, I try to keep that in mind to boost my video-recording motivation.
I have many more updates since I’ve last posted, but I’ll save those for next week’s post so that we can get started!
This week I am very excited to kick-off my first series! I was originally going to post a delicious Balsamic Glazed Chicken recipe, but I wanted to kick this series off sooner rather than later, so the chicken will be for next week. Stay tuned!
Welcome to my Color Series! For each month, I’ve selected a color to represent that month or the holidays in that month. There were a few obvious ones such as February, October, and December, but for many of the months I had to think about what color might relate to them and why. There will be at least one recipe a month dedicated to that month’s color and my goal is to have an assortment of dishes: breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, or desserts. So now, January….
January is white! I picked white because, although it hasn’t snowed in January in a long time, I’ve always associated January with white tones. For New Year’s celebrations, Champagne is a white wine and many of the poppers, confetti, etc. are usually a white or silver material. Way back when, when I was very young, it used to snow in January. Even now, although it no longer snows very often, January is typically cold and windy, and even the air seems to have a white tone to it because of the morning frost that occurs.
Thinking of white foods was initially very difficult. I thought of the usuals, garlic and white onion, but I couldn’t initially think of how to piece those together into a meal. Thankfully, Google exists, and was very helpful. The core of this white dish used garlic, white onion, white mushrooms, cauliflower, and sea scallops. Of course a few extra ingredients were included (that were not white). Check it out below and let me know what you think!
Seared Sea Scallops with Cauliflower Purée Sauce
Recipe List:
- 4-5 garlic cloves, minced
- 1 small/medium white onion, sliced or diced
- 1 pack white mushrooms, sliced
- 1 head cauliflower
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 1 bag sea scallops (between 1-2 pounds)
- 2 tablespoons butter
- 1/4 cup of chicken broth (plus a little extra for later)
- 1 cup sour cream
- 1 tablespoon lemon juice
- A bundle of parsley
- 1/2 pack of linguini*
- Salt and pepper to taste
Recipe Directions:
- Thaw your scallops if needed. Pat scallops dry to remove excess moisture.
- Heat olive oil in skillet over medium-high heat until hot. Add scallops in single layer. In a separate pot, prepare water for boiling to make linguini (cooks for 8-9 minutes)*
- Season with salt and pepper and fry for 2-3 minutes, then flip and fry again. remove from skillet.
- Melt butter. Add in garlic, mushroom, and onion. Cook 1 minute.
- Add chicken stock and bring to a simmer. Cook for about 2 minutes. Add sour cream and simmer until slightly thickened. Add lemon juice and parsley.
- Remove mushroom and onion from skillet. Add cauliflower, small amount of chicken stock, and small amount of sour cream. Cook until cauliflower is tender.
- Add enough liquid to just cover the cauliflower. If easier, transfer from skillet to a pot. If there is too much liquid, the sauce will not get thick enough.
- Using a blender or an immersion blender, blend cauliflower and liquid into a purée.
- Adjust consistency as needed – thickening by cooking further, or thinning by whisking in liquid.
- Once blended to your liking, mix in linguine.
- You can also mix in the mushrooms, onion, and scallops!
- Serve scallop, mushroom, and onion mixture over linguini. Add parsley and additional sauce as needed.
*The steps are optional depending on preference
Since this is my first “big” recipe that I’m sharing, I thought I’d also share some lessons learned:
- Making a purée is much harder than I thought it would be. As you can probably tell from the pictures, my purée didn’t turn out as I had intended. I think I added too much liquid, and I think the skillet I was using was not deep enough to use the immersion blender. I had a hard time getting the cauliflower to break down even though it was tender.
- It was also my first time using an immersion blender. The directions on the pack say not to use the blender for more than a minute, and to let it cool for 4 minutes. I wasn’t sure how long blending would take, but I figured it would be quick. I think it’s quick if you know what you’re doing 🙂 I think I just became impatient and gave up/ Instead of a purée, I ended up with a delicious cauliflower sauce that mixed in with the linguini very nicely.
- Biggest lesson: It doesn’t have to be perfect. This was still delicious and I would make it again. I had so many firsts in this dish (scallops, purée, blending), and it was so fun to learn new things and cook with ingredients I haven’t cooked with before. While it didn’t go according to plan, it tasted just as good, and possibly even better than what I initially had in mind. Just have fun with it!
Gabriela Maria 