Independence Day At The Lake

It has been great having kids and grands with us for the holiday weekend.  For the Monday festivities, we lost the Walker kids to camp, but picked up daughter, Wende, so we still had a quorum.  It was pretty much more of the same, with Kathy wearing out the kids on the jet-ski and others enjoying the dock, except Bev and I put more effort into the meal.

We decided to go with the traditional Independence Day fare of seafood – won’t make that mistake again, it will be burgers and dogs from now on.  Since three of our seafood loving kids were with us, a very rare event, we decided to tap into our Maine purchased seafood stash. 

We started with an appetizer of bacon wrapped grilled scallops using some very thin Benton’s smoked bacon I’d had cut for this purpose.  Mike Davis of Lotta Bull BBQ had made these at the cooking class I attended at Dead End BBQ back in May.  He used a thick sliced bacon that I thought overpowered the scallops so I tried it thinly sliced, but it still overwhelmed them – they will be cooked pretty plain from now on.

For sides it was some leftover green beans, mac and cheese, and homemade bread.

After the scallops, I deep fried some shrimp, as they were the top priority for most of the girls, except Lauren wanted some grilled.  I used the batter recipe we’ve been using for fish tacos and the grilled ones got treated with butter and Emeril’s Essence.

Following the shrimp, I used the same batter and deep fried a pint of whole steamer clams.  They tasted good but were much tougher than those we had in New England and I assume freezing them contributed to this.  That Hornitos stuff is for medicinal purposes only.

Finally, I mistakenly cooked some haddock on foil, seasoned with Essence and butter.  It was a mistake because I meant to use the grill pan, so they ended up being sautéed rather than grilled.

Earlier, we had made a simple shrimp sauce of ketchup and horseradish, a remoulade sauce using Mary’s recipe at Deep Dish South, a tartar sauce using a recipe from Ina Garten, and mango salsa using the ingredients list from Allrecipe.

We had varied opinions on the dishes, with Bev liking the haddock the least and Rhett thinking it was outstanding with the addition of both remoulade and salsa.  Everyone had the same overpowering comment about the scallops and all liked the shrimp.  I thought the sauces and salsas were all excellent and I made a full batch of remoulade to be sure I’d have some on hand – it’s delicious as a salad dressing.

Kathy pulled the kids on the jet ski again and we had a little interruption mid-afternoon from a passing storm that gave us ½ “ of much needed rain.

The cook and sous chef cooling off with some of that Hornitos stuff - on the rocks with salt of course.

All-in-all a great way to celebrate America’s birthday. 

All photos can be enlarged by clicking on them.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by Almost Heaven South.

One year ago:  Pork Butt On Your Grill

Larry