ceramic platter from Fifty One and a Half

I've been grilling fish lately with a great new item and I wanted to share it with all of you.  Most of you have probably had fish grilled on cedar planks.  The cedar infuses the fish with a nice taste.  I've never really wanted to buy and store cedar planks, though.  The next best thing are these easy little Cedar Papers from Fire and Flavor. They are a great way to grill or bake fish, chicken and vegetables.

We're on the home stretch for the holidays now.  Our older boys will soon be home from college and there's lots of menus to plan.  They both have birthdays in December, we have our big annual Christmas Eve open house to plan for and then out of town guests coming right after Christmas.  There's a couple of favorites that I plan to include in the Christmas Eve buffet - Sicilian Arancine, Pine Nut Croccante and these wonderful Sparkling Cranberries from Heidi that are so beautiful to put out in a big bowl.  Please look to the bottom of this post for some additional holiday links that I thought you might like.  They are worth checking out.

In the beginning of the new cookbook, Seafood alla Siciliana, author Toni Lydecker quotes Goethe:  "To have seen Italy without having seen Sicily is not to have seen Italy at all, for Sicily is the clue to everything".   And you'll certainly feel this way after reading this beautiful book.  When the publisher contacted me and sent me a copy, I couldn't wait to read it - after all, this is where my mother was from.  This is not just a collection of recipes but an in depth look at Sicily itself - its history, its food, its wine, its culture.  

Every spring I order real wild Copper River salmon from Alaska. I get enough to last us all year and put it in my freezer. It's so much better than the farm raised salmon in the grocery store and fresher than the wild salmon they sell that's been sitting out, for who knows how long, defrosted in the fish case. Some of that stuff looks pretty sorry. I order my salmon from this place and it comes on dry ice, each fillet individually vacuum sealed so you can take out from the freezer just how many pieces you need at a time. These are absolutely gorgeous fish - so fresh and firm with bright silver skin.  I order two kinds, the cheaper Sockeye salmon and a little of the more expensive King salmon. The King salmon fillets are thicker than the Sockeye and and are a little higher in fat, which contains all those great Omega-3 fats.

These scallops, in a simple orange sauce, are so intense and flavorful that you won't believe how easy they are to make.  We loved them.  I've adapted this recipe from "Urban Italian", the wonderful cookbook Andrew Carmellini came out with this fall.  He's the chef responsible for the award winning Italian food at A Voce, in New York City.  In his recipe, he calls for the smaller bay scallops, but I used sea scallops because that's what I had on hand.

This recipe is from The Silver Spoon cookbook, the enormous compilation of Italian recipes published in this country in 2005. This book has been in print in Italy for over 50 years and is considered the classic Italian cookbook, the book that every bride receives as a gift. It has been updated and adapted for the American cook. This recipe for Saffron Scallops is a great example of what the recipes are like for the most part in this cookbook - very few ingredients, simple recipes, easily prepared. And it's absolutely delicious!