Memorial Day Dinner Party - Bebe's BBQ, Seared Scallops & Summer Corn, Balsamic Strawberry Panna Cotta

Clearing out the camera today!

We had a series of small dinner parties in our patio garden over Memorial Day weekend that was a mix of some previous favorites and a few brought in dishes.


Our brother-in-law is particularly addicted to seared scallops, so we grabbed these at WFM (Reading Terminal was closed) and applied a bit of heat. Regular readers will recognize the corn & poblano pepper salad. The little dollops of avocado mousse helped to keep these little guys anchored to the dish.

In the background you can see a bottle of Cantillon Vigneronne, a sharp gueuze that my visiting brother-in-law fell in love with at Monk's - we picked this bottle up at the Foodery...not cheap but we were splurging for our out of town guests.



Speaking of guests, here's a shot of some gorgeous flowers that a family friend brought from her garden (Thanks Michelle!)...perfect centerpiece for the table.




Did I mention that my family hails from Texas? I wanted to prove to them that Philly does food right across the map, even Southern standards like BBQ, so we stopped by Bebe's in the Italian market for some BBQ pork and brisket.

Bebe's doesn't normally sell brisket by the quart but when we told the lady chopping up the BBQ we were building some brisket sliders to go with the pork, not only did she load us up with excellent brisket to go, she also sold us a bag of slider buns...one-stop shopping. By the way, the brisket sliders went fast...what you see above were the lonely remnants of a once proud tray of sliders.




For dessert Elizabeth pulled out another tried & true favorite, the Balsamic Strawberry Panna Cotta. This uses whole milk Greek yogurt (Fage) along with some heavy cream. The strawberries marinate in balsamic vinegar and the panna cotta is topped with lemon zest and cracked black pepper - the little pops of spice and zing played great with the classic, sweet combination of strawberry and balsamic



The chef relaxes! As the evening came on we enjoyed plenty of good cheer & wine... a great start to the summer season. Had a great time everybody...thanks for visiting.

Summer Scallops w/Sauteed Corn, Pepper & Avacado

One last go around for the summer combo of corn & scallops. This time we added a slight mash of avocado beneath each scallop to fix them in place on the bed of summer corn.

These avocado were a little less ripe than we would have liked, but the stronger 'green' flavor that an under-ripened avocado has worked well with the peppers in the corn.

The avocado was slightly seasoned with a bit of salt and a touch of olive oil to give it some smoothness.

Here's a shot of the black peppers that we picked up from Savoie Farms at Headhouse Market. The flesh of the black pepper was a little thicker and had a pronounced crunch, which worked well to marry the green-ish tinge of the avocado to the corn.

The corn was sliced off the cob and then added to the diced pepper.

Sauteed with a touch of butter and olive oil, we didn't overseason the corn.

Final step was to create little lillypads for the scallops to rest upon.

This is starting to become a habit - more seared scallops.

Brother-in-Law Scallops

The Thai have a dish called son-in-law eggs in which an egg is boiled then deep-fried...recipe search begins here...the story goes that this was the only meal that a young suitor knew how to make when he cooked to impress the family of his prospective bride.

We seem to have developed a dish that our brother-in-law loves to drool over, judging by his comments on our blog...the seared scallop.



We cooked a Seared Scallop & Arugula, Clementine Salad over Christmas for the family and we couldn't help but tease him a bit. We splurged & bought some dry packed U-10's from our source in Reading Terminal Market, Johnny Yi.

This one's for you Chris!