I'd never heard of Orion before but Matt picked this record up on a whim because, well, look at it. Real name Jimmy Ellis, he was considered an Elvis sound-alike so the whole "masked" gimmick was some kind of "Is he secretly Elvis?" ploy (aided by the fact that Sun Records was the label pushing the narrative.) He has a few albums that look similar to this - monochromatic with him just chilling with his awkward haircut and bedazzled mask. There is a documentary about him that was on the festival circuit last year - Orion: The Man Who Would Be King- so if that gets picked up maybe we'll all be hip to the ways of Orion. You can read more about him here. Now for the bad news..this album was a total snooze fest and will be the lowest rated Records and Recipes album so far! It was barely "rockabilly," just very basic covers of songs like Long Tall Sally. It was very dull and not as fun or funny as the cover lead us to hope it would be. It did allow us to take this creepy masked picture; we look like we're forming a very low budget Slipknot knock-off with Orion.
Orion Rockabilly: D-
Matt recently mentioned we never have scallops so that was the inspiration for this recipe. But there are a couple of good reasons for seldom making scallops at home. Firstly, they are expensive as hell. Not that we never splurge on food but it's usually on going out not buying something fancy at the grocery store that I could easily ruin. So the second reason is related, in that they seem fussy to cook properly so even if they were super cheap, I would still be hesitant to try and master them for an average meal. But I found this very simple recipe and figured if everything else was easy I could focus my energies on not destroying these expensive, delicate white blobs. It seems the #1 rule of trying to make a properly seared scallop is to buy dry scallops. Most scallops you see are "wet" which means they've been injected with some weird solution that makes them weigh more (more $$$ per pound) and preserves them. But when you try to sear them the liquid gushes out and no sear is happening under those conditions. Whole Foods luckily had dry scallops so we were off to the scallop races.Everything actually came together quite easily...except for the vermouth sauce. I'm a notoriously bad saucier; I can't make a sauce to save my life. It will either remain completely liquid or totally evaporate or just become weird and chunky. I actually made the sauce twice; first was chunky and the second was too liquidy. But even in the picture on the recipe the sauce looks really thin so I didn't feel so bad. It was just vermouth and butter so even if it wasn't texturally great, it was inoffensive. But I seared those scallops like a boss and I was very proud. They got that little buttery crust but didn't get overcooked.
I was excited by the prospect of a pea puree for 3 reasons. Reason #1 was that recently Matt mentioned he liked peas and I never make them for no good reason. Reason #2 was my vague memory of an incident called "peagate" on Top Chef where...someone maybe steals another contestant's pea puree? The details are foggy but Google image search turns up a guy wearing this t-shirt so it was clearly a thing. Reason #3 was simply that I never make purees because I always think they require a food processor but it turns out that a blender is actually just fine. And this puree was so easy; boil frozen peas for 2 minutes and then blend them up with butter and salt and pepper. And it looks so green and vibrant and tastes quite good. I've never loved the texture of peas but all blended up it becomes a non-issue. My favorite aspect of this recipe is that scallop portions in restaurants are always so puny- maybe 3 or 4 scallops, which I get, they are pricey- but we were able to eat a big ol' pile of them which was very satisfying. I also had never bought pea shoots before and figure really any little greens would be fine but having a little fresh greenery on top really did tie it all together and make it look/taste like a restaurant quality dish, a first for Records and Recipes!Seared Scallops with Pea Puree and Vermouth Sauce: A
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