I’m with Islay. If the shellfish is really fresh the less you do to it the better imo.

Seasoned bacon wrapped scallops and shrimps. We like to use cajun or a poblano lime seasoning, but you can use whatever you like. You only need a couple of each for snacking tidbits.

Creamy seafood encheladas. It can be basic, or cranked up as you like. It can be nice to use crepes or other kinds of wraps instead of traditional tortillias. Or stuff shells or manicotti

Crab benedict for brunch. Avocado is a nice addition to this. Pair with a side of shrimp stuffed tomatoes, and maybe a scallop gratin.

Baked sushi. Normally made with imitation crab, it's great with real seafood and can be done with whatever sushi stuff you like.

If you get shell on shrimp, you could make a shrimp stock and then... seafood risotto- nice with mushrooms, leeks, and maybe a bit of diced parsnips or fennel.

If you like fennel, a fennel gazpacho is nice with shellfish.

LynnNM, thank you for this recipe. I have eaten this dish at this restaurant and LOVED it, (I think I might have licked the plate clean.) I copied the recipe and will give it a try.

I have gotten lots of good ideas to keep me busy this winter. Yum!

I just saw baked sushi online for the first time today. Not what I was going for for this dinner, but will defintely put it in my arsenal. I do love rissotto and asparagus, so the suggestion of simply cooked shellfish on a bed or asparagus lemon rissoto just might be what I'm looking for. Love so many of the ideas suggested. When I'm at home, I'm on the west coast so lots of fresh available but oh my, the prices these days!

One of the nicest "fancy" meals I ever cooked for hubs and I was pan seared nice scallops over pasta with pancetta and some parmesean cheese, some good bread for sopping up any leftover juices, a nice green salad and champagne or a good white wine. Another great seafood dish I had was crab salad with avocado. I also like crab stuffed rangoons, very decadent, as are all those other creamy seafood dishes. Definitely for special occasions only! If I was having a dinner party, I might make fisherman's pie.

Every time I see this thread title I think it’s about a ”starter” dish, which is called the entree here. “Entree” implies “beginning” so I’ve never understood why Americans use the term to mean ”main course”.

Interesting comment Colleen. Truth be told, I guess in the common vernacular around here, I would say main course or main, but restaurants around here list appetizers, entrees, sides and desserts.

eta: I'm Canadian, not American

I've never understood it either.

I second Islay. Seafood to me is light and best fresh. I tend not to add any heaviness to it, with the exception of butter.

eta I’m referring to Islay’s comments further upthread about pleateau de fruits de mer.

Oy vey, I can't believe with all my years of French class that I never noticed the "entree" anomaly!! With vegan and vegetarian foods it gets a little tricky, since the "three dish plate" is a common vegan meal, each with a little bit of protein. Or soup, salad and starch, which would remove soup from the "starter" category, although it is also common to start a vegan meal with some type of soup that might be less hearty than a main course one. I rarely entertain with a formal dinner party so all my lovely soup bowls are quite wasted as far as having soup as a "starter" although I love the idea. I have a whole repertoire of starter soups too, that I rarely make . . . like carrot bisque, squash soup or asparagus or even a fruit soup, which I have never made but always sounds so lovely. Around here it is just hubs and I and we eat what is easy, inexpensive and quick to fix. I don't even do the standard Jewish soup starter, a clear chicken broth with some matzoh balls. It just ads an extra level of time and serving, and the matzoh balls are pretty much an empty starch which we can ill afford the calories to consume on a regular basis, and with just hubs and I, not really worth the trouble. We often eat the heartier chicken soups though.

Just comng back to say I made the Ina Garten roasted ahrimp recipe mentioned above and we really liked it. Very different from what we usually eat which is never shrimp. Thanks for the recommendation.

Here’s one I’ve made and loved!

https://www.cookingmamas.com/orzo-risotto-with-shrimp-asparagus/

I use jumbo shrimp and more asparagus.

@3katz4me, Ina has a few good shrimp recipes, If you haven't already, they're worth checking.

2katz, im so glad you and your sister enjoyed it! i used it as my non-meat option at our Christmas family gathering. That recipe is alway a hit

From Merriam-Webster.com (This is usually regarded as the best American dictionary):

The culinary sense of entrée can be traced back to 18th-century Britain. In those days a formal dinner could include not only the principal courses of soup, fish, meat, and dessert, but also an impressive array of side dishes. Between the fish and meat courses would come a small side dish, and because this secondary dish came immediately before the centerpiece of the meal, it was called the entrée, being, in effect, the entrance to the really important part of the meal. As dining habits have changed, meals have become simpler, and fewer courses are served. However, in the US, the course following the appetizer continued to be called the entrée, perhaps because it is a French word, and anything French always sounds elegant.

Made this recipe yesterday and it is delicious! I left out the cilantro as we do not care for it. I also used organic wheat tortillas instead of corn tortillas as well as feta cheese. https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/food-recipes/a36323456/shrimp-zucchini-and-corn-enchiladas-recipe/

Call it what you may - my plans have changed a little. My nephew has recently become interested in cockatails, so asked that we do a Mardi Gras them dinner one night. I will oblige with shrimp/chicken/andouille gumbo. Another night I will do something similar to the orzo, shrimp asparagus dish posted above, but I think I will make rissotto with arborio rice rather than trying the orzo technique. I am still mulling over some crab appetizers.

But, plllog it wou have made more sense (and been correct) if ”entree” had kept its meaning of ”the dish before the main event”. In my experience if appetisers are served, it is not at the dining table, but rather where the diners gather before the meal. Then at table the soup is served first, then the entree (being a small dish such as a tartlet or say a slice of melon with prosciutto etc). And often it’s just either soup or entree rather than both. Then the main course, the main dish of the meal, before dessert or cheese and fruit.

Colleen, this was a couple hundred years ago. The people who interpreted it as the name for the main course, rather than as the first part of the maain course, probably didn't think of it as a French word. Probably didn't know any French, anyway. They might have thought of it, if they were fancy people, as the ”entry” in the menu. Word drift happens in all kinds of ways that don't make sense. It's what the word means here. it's not going to change.

Yes, in the same way that Winnie the Pooh speaks with an American accent LOL

Cute joke but not true. One is the natural evolution of language and the other is corporate decision making in arts production. Actors portraying French speakers in the USA usually speak (when speaking in English) with British accents...

Heh, we going to throw in salad, removes, sorbet/clensers, cheese flights prior to dessert and neither to be confused with the sweets course which of course is to come before the savory course.... golly. Pretty sure our OP isn't getting that detailed with the menu, lol.

Talk about thread drift! I'm fine with that, I always like to hear people's opinions. Of course there are different terms for the same thing among cultures and languages. There is no right or wrong, as long as we all know what we are making or ordering. Thanks to all who offered recipes.

Plllog, what I meant is that Americans often appropriate things and accept them as the norm. Like cheese called cheddar, Winnie the Pooh speaking American, entrées being the main course or le plat principal, That sounds very wrong to my ears, but for you, it's normal and ok. It's one of those differences, that's all.

I firmly reject the notion that there were no Americans with access to a French-English dictionary back in the day. What is more likely to my mind is that the people writing the menus were ignorant and, crucially, incurious.

For non-Americans, who speak several languages and understand different cultures with some depth, the American excuses about misusing words ring hollow, and evince a lack of respect for people and cultures outside the US. How can you spend anyntime learning Feench and not know what the word, entrée means? You don't know how to enter a building or answer a door in a language you studied for more than five minutes? C'mon.

So please understand, the issue here is not one of pedantic snobbery over specialized words. The issue here is making an effort to understand the world outside your bubble and show that world some measure of respect.

Immigrants to this country have all had the experience of listening to Americans explain what they belive about the other person's country of origin. If French food and terminology, which is used on the regular, is not worth learning about, imagine the unpleasantness people from other parts of the world are subjected to hearing about how they are perceived, and then dismissed.

Of course there was French-English back in the day. French was spoken in North America before English was. French was the official language in the English court for a few hundred years and had influenced the language greatly before it stopped being the official court language a few hundred years before the English ever stepped onto North America. Entree used in the culinary sense was developed by the Brits in the mid-1700's, around 400 years after French was the court language when entre still meant entrance. At the time it started being used culinarily it only meant the course preceeding the roast course as the entrance to the roast course. As Anglo-American eating habits changed, the courses reduced and entree just became after the appitizer, regardless of if it was the enrance for the roast or not. So it's not basterized French, it's basterized English purloined from the French that became the Americanized form as common folks were eating less courses to their meals. With the rise of the resteraunts and higher dining, use of the term carried over from common to commercial form. Purloined because French sounds good, just like the Brits did a century or so before.

Appitizers weren't originally eaten away from the dining table, hour d'oeuvres are. Hour d'oeuvers are meant as food eaten first with cocktails or mingling before the guests are seated. Appitizers are meant as food to complement in the first courses. As time has gone on and we aren't eating all the seperate courses formally, the two terms became interchangeable to many folks.

Not all cheese is cheddar, but cheese produced by cheddaring and called cheddar is popular in the U.S., and though French is a popular source of terminology, cheddar cheese isn't often called fromage in the states. Cheddar-ish cheese flavored product is called American cheese, that's a total bastardizasion. Queso has become a more popular term over the last few decades, often to umbrella over the variety of Central and South American cheeses- which makes sense, since Spanish was the first European language to be spoken in the Americas in the modernn era.

Christopher originally had an American accent as well as the rest, you can still catch the accent in a musical blip from the first featurette. After the rights were purchased by Disney, Christophers accent changed, and the first featurette redubbed for continuity. Part of it is that Christoper is a real boy in the real world, where the rest are charaters in his mind, the accents differentenates between the two. And also, at the time actors were part of studio stables, so Disney used it's stable instead of hiring out- Sterling also did Chestershire Cat, Kaa, and Roquefort among other acting credits :)

Chestershire cat???

Actually, Christopher Robin was a real boy who was at school with my mother's cousin. He never originally had an American accent. He had all those toy animals - they weren't in his mind. To give him an American accent is just wrong!

Chestershire cat is so American. A bit like Worcestershire. He's just from Cheshire

We didn't purloin French terms either. They were thrust upon us as defeated enemies when Guillaume le Conquérant invaded England in 1066.

IC, I've missed this whole issue of Christopher Robin, Of course, in my world he has an American accent—-his voice is that of my daddy, who was born in Michigan. I don't get why that is so bad. We knew he was from England. It's problably why they made him sound American in the films, too. So he'd sound like American children's daddies reading the stories to them. But I don't like the films. I'll turn them off and start reciting James James Morrison Morrison or Christopher Robin had sneezles and wheezles.

Worcestershire sauce is from England, name and all.

The language of England is itself a creole consisting of many layers and overlays and borrowings from all who came there. It also has a long history of rewarding word play and linguistic innovation. There is no such thing as ”pure” English. The American language is more of the same with masses of borrowings and neologisms from all the wonderful and varied people who have brought their own language backgrounds to the mix. The meanings and constuctions of words drift and change as people find new ways to use them. I sometimes get frustrated with errors, before they become codified as new meanings for old words, too, but trying to prevent it is like trying to hold back the tide from the sand.

Oh, and 150 years ago, while some Americans spoke French or French dialects, and a very small percentage might have learned some in school, by far most people were not exposed to it, except for borrow words. It's not like now, when one hears alot of French in mass media and has picked up the odd word or cognate here and there,

To keep this OT, here is a photo of the scallop dish I described. I ran across it the other day. Easy peasy, just spend $14.00/lb. on scallops and you are golden.

"How can you spend anytime learning French and not know what the word, entrée means? You don't know how to enter a building or answer a door in a language you studied for more than five minutes? C'mon."

I am the daughter of a French teacher, and studied French for three years. For another perspective: Why do I know or care what the menu title says for that portion? I'm looking at the selection. Plus, the number of times I've been to a restaurant fancy enough to have "Entrees" is minimal. I live in the sticks. For all I know it could be referring to "Enter this portion of the meal!" Or perhaps "Dig In!" or "Enter the wonderful world of our main dish selection!" Or "Enter the stomach." Or "Enter the delights of Chicken Marabella." or even "This is the beginning, the part you have to go through to get to the really important part, the desert!"

I am reminded of a scene from the movie/play "The Sunshine Boys"

The attitude is very much "I'm American so it doesn't matter whose cultural sensibilities I trample all over. I don't care either".

I'm off.

Or perhaps, one misunderstands American's love of the cultural mash up, which is our pleasure and not necessarily anyone else's nor do we expect it to be. We like to take a little of this and a little of that and add little innovation. Smooshing cultures together and changing them up is probably about the only quintessential American characteristic. Prior to recent times, we were anything but heritage snobs. Yes, we are clueless, but often that allows for the freedom that comes from lack of incessant negative judgements. You truly can re-invent yourself over and over again here, and we do it often throwing out the baby with the bathwater, it can be fantastic or terrible or a little of both. America is grey and weird. How much do Europeans care about our cultural sensibilities? I would not necessarily expect them to, but would be pleasantly surprised if they did. I doubt cultural sensitivity is a common trait around the world. As cultural insults go, mis-labeling menu selections seems relatively mild and actually in this case, a bit humorous which is what I was getting at . . .does not mean we don't care about people and their feelings, but it swings both ways. Didn't the French invent provincialism? To me, it's more important to know how to correctly spell hors d'oeuvres, know how to pronounce Colbert, and put the little hat over the "a" on pâté de foie gras and know the difference between that and chopped liver.

We're having Chicken a la Mer for dinner tonight. One of our favorites at a local Cajun joint. Below is the recipe for the sauce and this time I'm adding chunk lobster instead of the usual shrimp and lump crab meat. I use Tony Chachere's for the seasoning to give it a Cajun kick. Served over flattened, breaded, and fried boneless chicken breasts with sides of Rice Pilaf, steamed broccoli, and garlic bread. Can't wait!

a la Mer sauce

Beesneeds, I cannot imagine why cheddar, an English cheese (oddly enough, from a little village called Cheddar), might ever be referred to as "fromage" unless by a Francophone speaking of it to another Francophone.

And lpink, I am reminded of the scene in "Throught the Looking Glass" between Alice and Humpty Dumpty:
"I don't know what you mean by 'glory,' " Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. "Of course you don't—till I tell you. I meant 'there's a nice knock-down argument for you!'"
"But 'glory' doesn't mean 'a nice knock-down argument'," Alice objected.
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master—that's all."

Alice was too much puzzled to say anything, so after a minute Humpty Dumpty began again:
"They've a temper, some of them—particularly verbs, they're the proudest—adjectives you can do anything with, but not verbs—however, I can manage the whole lot! Impenetrability! That's what I say!""

And Bottle of Wine is a hit song written by American singer-songwriter Tom Paxton in the 1960’s, NOT a French folk song. And no suburban white French boy ever rapped ever....

I don't know of any French folk song in English.....Where have you heard it, Plllog? Do you think rap should stay in the Bronx?

With lpink on the OT….I made Ina Garten’s Shrimp Bisque yesterday….I used those Argentine Reds, and did not blend or process. I cut the shrimp into 4 pieces each, because it was our main course, and I like to chew….I also had no sherry, but I did use the last of a bottle of Couvoisier. The family loved it!!

IC, the words have been translated into French. And you were the one talking about cultural appropriation as if it never happened where you live.

Springroz, that sounds awesome!

Translating books and songs is cultural appropriation?

Maybe the French culturally appropriated Joe Dassin. Can you culturally appropriate a person? An immigrant? Probably not, otherwise the US is nothing but cultural appropriations.

The unofficial French national anthem, Aux Champs Élysées, is famously sung by a man whose father brought him to France at a young age, seeking refuge from McCarthyism.

PS Maybe Claude François's Comme d'Habitude? Probably not cultural appropriation, but illustrates the point that translations and such are a far cry from cultural appropriation. I am sure Mr. Sinatra paid M. François hansomely for the music to his anthem, My Way.

Zalco, no. Calling it a traditional French folk song is.

Plllog, I was not aware of the French calling that song a traditional French song. I plead ignorance on this one.

Although I will note, if you Google traditional French folk songs, all you get are children's songs. I don't know any French folk songs myself, the genre does not exist to my limited knowledge, or Google's.

Plllog, I Googled your wine song. As I said earlier, the concept of folk songs is not French. Translating songs is not cultural appropriation. And with your Bottle of Wine song, you have confounded many concepts.

Bottle of Wine is not considered a French folk song. A Kiwi, Graeme Allwright, who is considered a French folk singer by whom, I have no idea, because he translates Canadian and French folk songs into French, wrote this verse to the Bottle of Wine song and Tom Paxton sang it at a UK festival.

Here, from http://www.mydfz.com/Paxton/lyrics/bow.htm:

Tom sang a French verse to it in the Live in the UK album, which was written by French folksinger Graeme Allwright:

Jolie bouteille, sacrée bouteille,
Veux-tu me laisser tranquille?
Je veux te quitter, je veux m'en aller,
Je veux recommencer ma vie.
[rough translation:]
Happy Bottle, sacred bottle
Will you let me be peaceful?
I want to quit. I want to move on.
I want to start my live over

From Graeme Allwright's wiki:

Graeme Allwright

Graeme Allwright in 2012

Background informationBorn7 November 1926
Wellington, New ZealandDied16 February 2020(aged 93)
Couilly-Pont-aux-Dames, FranceGenresContemporary folk music, protest songs, chanson, jazzOccupation(s)Singer, songwriterInstrumentsGuitarYears activeEarly 1960s–2020

Graeme Allwright (7 November 1926 – 16 February 2020) was a New Zealand-born French singer and songwriter. He became popular in the 1960s and 1970s as a French language interpreter of the songs of American and Canadian songwriters such as Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, and Pete Seeger, and remained active into his nineties

OT, I made the Ina Garten's Baked shrimp Scampi (1/2 recipe) and while it was good, I prefer the recipe I have been using from a local cookbook from Swansboro, NC. I bought local recipe books as souvenirs when we traveled. I found it fascinating to watch recipes move across and up and down the country. The book was "Collard Greens, Watermelons and "Miss Charlottes's Pie" from the Swansboro United Methodist Women c1993.

Shrimp Scampi II (Lucille Crawford ) (page 192)

1/4 cup margarine or butter

2 tablespoons olive oil

3 to 6 cloves garlic minced

1 to 2 pounds shrimp, shelled and deveined

1/4 to 1/2 cup dry white wine

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons lemon juice

1/2 teaspoon lemon juice

1/ teaspoon dry mustard

1/2 teaspoon black pepper

2 tablespoons parsley chopped

Heat margarine and oil in a skillet. Add garlic and saute until soft. Add the shrimp and cook until it turns pink, about 3 minutes. Remove shrimp to a plate and deglaze skillet wityh wine. Add remaining ingredients and cook until of sauce consistency. Return shrimp to the skillet and stir. Serve immediately or hot cooked rice or noodles.

Yield 4 servings (may be halved0

I do make a half recipe and use rice. All the prep can be done early. It comes together fast if you prep first. It would be very easy to double or triple depending on how many you are serving.

Sherry, that looks on topic to me! And I like a lovely, straightforward recipe. The mustard measure is missing a digit, though most can probably figure it out. :) I've pretty much given up on fancified recipes. I have some which are really good, but so not worth the trouble!

Zalco, Ask any passsing Frenchman.... But that's just a case like the Christopher Robin with an American accent (Disney paid for the copyrights to Pooh in 1961 though the first book has already lapsed and the rest will go public soon). The issue isn't ”folk song” but that it's considered to be traditional.

More to the point is rap music which is the product of hundreds of years of cultural development at least as worthy of respect as the name of a cheese.

Plllog, no, Bottle of Wine/Bouteille de Vin is not considered a traditional French song. Seriously, France has its very own traditional musical culture.

As for rap, there is **zero** doubt in any French person's mind where rap music comes from, going all the way back to Africa, if we must be comprehensive. Rap in France is mostly sung by Middle Easterners, North Africans and Africans. They are all crystal clear on to whom they owe a debt. Why would you think otherwise? Do you have examples of French rappers claiming the genre is French and not Afro-American?

PS France is the number two market for rap music. They take this genre very seriously, use itnto expound on all sorts of social issues too.

PPS This rap discussion makes me think of opera. Wagner, Bizet, Mozart, they and their audiences knew the form was Italian. Is Carmen a cultural appropriation? Perhaps, but is is properly attributed, and to my mind that is the salient issue in cultural appropriation. You use and adapt from other cultures, aknowledging the debt and understanding how we have adapted the original for one reason or another.

Not worth my breath.

Nekotish, I apologize for my part in the foregoing. My seafood cooking is really basic. Many of the people I know don't eat it, and I'm allergic to fin fish, and Mr. Picky wants plain battered fried shrimp. I know your plans changed, but I was trying to see if I could find a real showstopper and found pages and pages of really revolting looking dishes.

So then I thought, I'd bet that Yotam Ottolenghi would have something really good and I found this: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2011/jun/24/tea-noodles-baked-pasta-recipes Green tea noodles with grilled shrimp. The shrimp are just shrimp, but the dish they're in sounds awesome.

If you're still looking for ideas for the crab, I have to tell you that the very best I've ever had was dungeness made in the tandoori oven at Trader Vic's, oh so many years ago. I think you could do something similar if you have a high heat grill with hood. Then just crack it all out, and parcel out in little cups with seafood forks, or put on buttered toast rounds as canapes. Maybe too much work, but it would be oh, so good!

I am allergic to shellfish, but I dropped in because I was curious about all the activity. I'll leave now.

@mtnrdredux_gw I shall take a cue from you and SOB.. haaha haha