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Lima Beans, Porter, Scallops, Doritos

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What a difficult challenge! I spent a few days reeling, unable to come up with anything at all cohesive. I had considered lima beans as a challenge to Jason earlier, and doing so, considered what I would do with them, which would be to replace chickpeas in something Mediterranean. I stuck on that train of thought for a bit and realized all I had to do was make a falafel sandwich. The biggest challenge then became the scallops.

My porter went into a beer flatbread recipe that I modified slightly to conform to a pita bread recipe. I literally danced around the kitchen when my preliminary test actually worked. Then I threw blanched lima beans, raw onion and garlic and a handfull of fresh parsley into the food processor and pulsed it around until it was a chunky paste, then pulsed up a bunch of Cool Ranch Doritos (the only kind I could find without cheese in them, which I thought would be weird). I folded the Doritos into the bean mix and threw a patty of it into a skillet of hot oil to test it out. It came out tasting pretty good, but came apart in the oil. I remedied this by adding an egg.

Three ingredients down, one to go. Since I had been cleaning and butchering sea food every week thus far, and I had had such a rough time with the crabs, I wasn't in the mood to seek out and then learn the specifics of how to clean live scallops. I'd seen it done before, and it's gross. I just bought half a pound from the grocery store, already cleaned.

The two ideas I had were making a scallop salad similar to seafood salads you find in stores, but with a Mediterranean theme, or stuffing the falafel balls with them. I opted for stuffing, since I knew Jason wasn't a fan of creamy salads. I just rubbed them with a little dry rub and pan seared them before cutting them into smaller pieces and fitting them into the falafel balls before frying.

To finish, I simply stuffed the pita with the falafel and some arugula and onions tossed in a tahini dressing.


Comment (1)

This was incredible. I have no idea where Joe came up with this, but it just worked. Who would have guessed that the flavor on Cool Ranch Doritos would so closely resemble falafels? The pita bread was better than most store bought pita and the salad that was stuffed inside was great. The scallops may have been a little tough, but stuffed in a falafel and fried, it didn't matter. Excellent job!

-Jason

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