2014 Charleston Trip - Scallops and Shrimp Pepperoni

While doing my morning blog reading I read the recipe and watched the video for Chicken and Shrimp Pepperoni from Chef Dennis on his site – A Culinary Journey With Chef Dennis.  I’ve been following his blog since he was the chef at a private girls school, have always admired his cooking, and encourage you to stop by if you haven’t.  In addition to his blog he is a big player in the Google+ cooking world.

While exploring Mt. Pleasant, SC, we picked up some scallops and shrimp at a local seafood store and planned to grill them along with some asparagus from home, but after seeing the Chef’s meal, we decided to use it as a guide to make our dish, subbing scallops for the chicken and asparagus for the artichokes.

Scallop and Shrimp Pepperoni – Adapted from Chef Dennis

Ingredients:

4 large sea scallops – dry packed

8 large shrimp - peeled and devained

1 small red bell pepper seeded and sliced (we had a green one)

8 oz mushrooms sliced

4 oz fresh asparagus spears, cut into 3” pieces

2 oz pepperoni slices

1 clove garlic sliced

4 oz chicken stock (the original 8oz was too much so I've halved it here)

2 oz marinara sauce

splash of white wine

¼ cup grated Romano cheese

1 tsp chopped Italian parsley

1 pinch of crushed red pepper flakes

1 tbsp salted butter for beurre manie

olive oil as needed

½ lb linguine or spaghetti

Instructions:

1. Heat a pot of salted water to cook pasta al dente

2. Heat a large saute pan, then add olive oil and garlic slices.  Remove garlic when it browns.

3. Add scallops and brown on one side, flip and add shrimp.  Cook shrimp about 2 minutes per side and remove both them and the scallops

4. Add peppers, asparagus and mushrooms and saute for 4 or 5 minutes, mixing ingredients to insure even cooking.

5. Add the white wine to deglaze the pan and stop the cooking.

6. Now add the chicken stock, marinara, Romano cheese and red pepper flakes and mix well.

7. Add the pepperoni slices, and allow ingredients to reduce slightly 3 -5 minutes.

8. Roll butter in seasoned flour, stir into the sauce to thicken and nestle scallops and shrimp into the sauce to reheat for a few minutes while the pasta is drained and plated.

9. Add the pasta to a bowl and top with seafood, sauce, and a little chopped parsley.

Notes:

A. If your sauce appears to thick or oily, add a little more water to it, this will help assimilate the oil, as well as thinning it out.

B. You will see more oil in this dish then you probably want, but this comes from the pepperoni, once the pepperoni is in the pan, you want to limit the time it cooks, the more it cooks the more the dish will look oily. The pepperoni adds so much flavor, so you do need to let it spend some time in the pan combining with the other flavors.

C. If the timing of the sauce and pasta doesn’t work out, the sauce can be removed from the heat after step 7 then reheated a couple of minutes before the pasta is done beginning with step 8.

This is my plate – we didn’t have big bowls in the RV.

We both thought it was delicious and now look forward to trying the original.  Thanks Dennis.

Photos can be enlarged by clicking on them.

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

Larry

5/6/14 meal date