What I Learned At Cooking School. And Then Some.

I decided to try the little tip from Chef What's-His-Name, from my cooking class last Tuesday.

Here, I'm boiling water with a sprig from my bay tree, sliced lemons, sliced onions with skin, sliced garlic with skins, and salt and pepper.

I simmered the water with seasonings in it for about 45 minutes.

After considerable simmering, I brought the water up to a rolling boil and dropped my shrimp in. Cook until the water comes back to the boil - approximately 3 minutes. Do NOT overcook shrimp, unless you want fish-flavored rubber crescents.

Drain the shrimp and cool.

Transfer shrimp to a container and sprinkle with
Old Bay Seasoning.
Refrigerate.

I peeled and deveined
10 shrimp.

Finely chop the shrimp.

OK, here's where I Semi-Ho'd it a bit. I didn't happen to have any leftover lobster on hand and I didn't have any crabmeat. You can only get frozen crabmeat now. I refuse to eat frozen crabmeat because
it tastes like ...
frozen crabmeat.

Yes, God help me, I Sandra Lee'd it.
I used FAUX crabmeat.

It's that vacuum-packed bag of "Imitation Crabmeat." I just read the ingredients: Alaskan Pollock, water, corn syrup, wheat starch, sugar, and get this--- KRAB AIGSTRAKT-HAHAHAHAHA, Sorbital, salt, soybean protein, soybean oil, KRAB FLAVOR, whatever that is, seasoning, and - my favorite - Cochineal Color
(E 120 and E 160 c).
Now, if that's not appetizing, I don't know what is.

I have my Red Island Australian Extra Virgin Olive Oil and my garlic infused olive oil ready to add to the seafood mixture.

Don't you just love these action shots of mine?

Chop up some green onions and add to the mix.

I'm getting ready to make my mustard emulsion.

I mixed 4 tablespoons each of Dijon mustard and vegetable broth. While my mini-processor is still whirring away, I added about 5 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil.












Add salt and pepper and my mustard sauce is complete.













Wallah!

What we have here is a mound of the seafood mixture topped with some clover sprouts and my lemony creme fraiche.
I put a few slices of avocado with lime juice on the plate, then added my mustard sauce and a few dots of Wasabi sauce, celery oil, and basil oil.

Pink plate.


















Yellow plate.

Green plate.



















Now, the side views.

This dish was obviously a hit. Mr. Hawthorne declared it better than what we'd had at the cooking class. "A lot of flavors and they all work together."

He also tried the shrimp separately and could tell a "subtle nuance" of flavor from cooking it in the seasoned water.