Looking for a good recipe you can whip up in 60 minutes or less? Try making this easy Whole Stuffed Flounder from About.Com Southern Food.

Ingredients:

1 whole flounder, about 2 pounds, scaled, gutted, head removed
1/2 cup celery
1/2 cup green onion
1 stick butter
1 cup medium shrimp, cooked and peeled
1 cup crab meat
1 box (5 1/2 ounces) unseasoned croutons

How to Make Whole Stuffed Flounder

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Happy Leap Year Day!

Named the hottest chili pepper in the world by The Guinness Book of World Records, the Bhut Jolokia (also known as Naga Jolokia) easily eclipses the former record holder, the Red Savina which clocked in at 570,000 Scoville Heat Units.

The pepper was originally grown in Northeastern India and Bangladesh, but as seeds and plants have become available for purchase, the pepper is starting to be more widely cultivated and used in recipes in the Western World. (FieryFoods.Com has a recipe for Super Hot Assam Curry Paste that uses the peppers towards the bottom of the page.)

As it says on Wikipedia…

“The pepper is used as a spice in food or eaten alone. One seed from a Naga Jolokia can sustain intense pain sensations in the mouth for up to 30 minutes before subsiding. Extreme care should be taken when ingesting the pepper and its seeds, so as to not get it in the eyes. It is used as a cure for stomach ailments. It is also used as a remedy to summer heat, presumably by inducing perspiration. In northeastern India the peppers are smeared on fences or used in smoke bombs as a safety precaution to keep wild elephants at a distance.”

Here’s a YouTube video of a brave (and experienced) chili pepper aficionado trying Bhut Jolokia for the first time. And here’s another.

Looking to add a bit of visual wit and whimsy to your kitchen? Animal House and Boston Warehouse make a huge line of fun kitchen tools, gadgets, and implements that can add a light touch to any serious kitchen.

For a closer look and more information about each gadget, just click on the colorful thumbnails below. We’ve seen these in person at Target and online at Amazon.com.

Finding it hard to keep up with (or find) your favorite shows on the Food Network? Click here to see their full upcoming show schedules for your time zone.

Looking for a good recipe you can whip up in 30 minutes or less? Try making this easy Scallops Florentine Casserole from AboutSeafood.Com.

Ingredients:

1 ½ pounds large sea scallops, rinsed and patted dry
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
4 tablespoons canola oil, divided
1 garlic clove, minced
One 6-ounce bag prewashed baby spinach
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 ½ cups 1% lowfat milk
1 cup reduced fat preshredded Cheddar cheese
¼ cup grated Parmesan cheese, divided
2 tablespoons dry sherry
2 tablespoons plain dried breadcrumbs

How to Make Scallops Florentine Casserole

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After the jump, are the lyrics to Seafood Mama, a fun retro song celebrating the joys of seafood from The Andrews Sisters, courtesy of Lyrics007.Com. (If you want to hear the song, just check out our new Southern Coastal Life MP3 Playlist…it’s the 6th song from the top.)
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Looking for a good recipe you can whip up in less than 30 minutes? Try making these easy Swordfish and Caponata Sandwiches from Bon Appetit.

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons olive oil
2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice
2 teaspoons chopped fresh rosemary
1 10- to 11-ounce swordfish steak (about 3/4 inch thick), halved
3/4 cup caponata (eggplant relish) from jar or can
4 thin lemon slices
2 6-inch-long French rolls, split horizontally
1 small bunch arugula

How to Make Swordfish and Caponata Sandwiches

See More of Hugging the Coast’s Fish For Friday Recipes

• Shrimp and Hearts of Palm Salad (from Cooks.Com)

• Corn, Crab, and Roasted Red Pepper Soup (from CDKitchen.Com)

• Savannah Red Rice (from Recipezaar.Com)

• Southern Oyster Casserole (from FamilyOven.Com)

• Cajun Snapper and Shrimp over Bacon Cheddar Cheese Grits with Red Pepper Coulis (from The Food Network)

• Hummingbird Cake With Cream Cheese Frosting (From About.Com: Southern Food)

• Red Velvet Cake With Raspberries and Blueberries (from Epicurious)

Enjoy the Holiday!

“There is no love sincerer than the love of food.”
–George Bernard Shaw

“There’s nothing sexier than a poached pear with a perfect sorbet.”
–Lisa Hershey/ The Art of the Plated Dessert

“I may not be healthy or wealthy or wise;
I may not have dreamy, mysterious eyes;
I may not wear clothes from a French fashion book;
But I’m never lonely, for boy, I can cook!”
–Anonymous

“Cooking is like love. It should be entered into with abandon or not at all.”
–Harriet Van Horne

“Whosoever says truffle, utters a grand word, which awakens erotic and gastronomic ideas…”
–Jean Brillat-Savarin/ The Physiology of Taste

“One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.”
–Virginia Woolf

“Hunger makes you restless. You dream about food—not just any food, but perfect food, the best food, magical meals, famous and awe-inspiring, the one piece of meat, the exact taste of buttery corn, tomatoes so ripe they split and sweeten the air, beans so crisp they snap between the teeth, gravy like mother’s milk singing to your bloodstream.”
–Dorothy Allison

“All I really need is love, but a little chocolate now and then doesn’t hurt.”
–Lucy Van Pelt/ Peanuts Comic Strip

A barefoot chef from Asheville, North Carolina won the Oyster Shucking Competition in Charleston, South Carolina’s 25th Annual Lowcountry Oyster Festival.

Named one of the top 20 events in the Southeast by the Southeastern Tourism Society, two tractor-trailers filled with 65,000 pounds of oysters rolled onto the grounds at Boone Hall Plantation to kick off the festival.

Winner Tres Hundertmark, chef/owner of The Lobster Trap of Asheville, NC, shucked an average of one raw oyster every 2.6 seconds.

“I had just placed in a shucking competition in Connecticut,” Hundertmark commented. “So I felt I would at least rank in the top 5.” But even Hundertmark didn’t expect to take 1st place.

The Oyster Shucking Competition entailed opening as many raw oysters as possible in 3 minutes. Hundertmark blasted the opposition away with an amazing 69 oysters in 3 minutes. (That’s 1 oyster every 2.6 seconds, beating the five-time champ by 5 oysters.)

Located in downtown Asheville, NC at 35 Patton Avenue, Tres Hundertmark has cooked for such restaurants as the House of Blues in New Orleans, Louisiana, Beau Rivage Casino in Biloxi, Mississippi, the Chanticleer on Nantucket Island, Massachusetts, and at the track at Kentucky’s Churchill Downs.

Looking for a good recipe you can whip up in less than 30 minutes? Try this easy Curried Crab Pizza Recipe from CDKitchen.

Ingredients:

3/4 cup mayonnaise
2 teaspoons curry powder
1 (10 ounce size) prebaked Italian bread shell crust
2 cans (6 ounce size) cans lump crabmeat — drained
3/4 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
3/4 cup shredded cheddar cheese

How to Make Curried Crab Pizza

See More of Hugging the Coast’s Fish For Friday Recipes

Chinese New Year is the most important holiday in Chinese culture, but you don’t have to be Chinese to enjoy the pleasures of eating succulent pan fried dumplings, marinated black mushrooms, Chinese barbecue pork, clams in black bean sauce, steaming pork buns and more.

In the below video, author Nina Simonds visits the Imperial Seafood restaurant in Boston’s Chinatown and gives an overview of foods considered auspicious for the occasion.

Also see Partygoers Prepare For The Year of the Rat from the Boston Globe.

If you or your partner enjoys spending time on the water, you might want to checkout Seawear Jewelry’s excellent and extensive line of nautical jewelty.

Featuring such marine motifs as alligators, crabs, shells, and dolphins, Seawear Nautical and Celtic Jewelry also sells compass and lighthouse themed jewelry as well as Irish claddagh rings which are traditionally used to commemorate friendship or love.

February’s Free Cookbook Preview…

Been to Google Books lately? Google Books has been gradually placing the full text of thousands of books online, many of them free full previews of culinary books that are either out-of-print or have been added online with the permission of their publishers.

One of the latter gems we’ve recently stumbled upon is the Gloucester Fishermen’s Wives Cookbook, a 144 page compendium of interesting recipes, photographs, and related stories edited by Susan Pollack.

You can read the whole book on Google Books here then buy it from Amazon.Com when you’re ready to purchase the book.

A freelance writer for Sierra and the Boston Globe, Susan is on the staff of National Fisherman.

The award winning outdoor sportsman magazine Field and Stream, recently named the Charleston Jetties one of the best fishing spots in the Southern United States.

Considered by the magazine to be the third best fishing spots in SC, the Santee-Cooper Area took first place in the state, with the Lake Russell Area listed in second place.

Here’s the full list of notable fishing spots in the South after the jump…

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The Library of Congress has recently released 3000+ photos on the www for the enjoyment of the online community…some of them dating back as far as the mid-1800’s.

Here’s a few fishing related photos from their collection…

Shot in Louisiana in 1940, the last photo in the series looks just like a portrait of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn.

You’re just one click away from our new and frequently updated

Hugging the Coast Photo Gallery on FlickR!

Featuring photos of coastal living taken throughout the Carolinas, we’ll also be adding more photos celebrating Southern food (such as boiled peanuts, soft shell crab, grits, fried shrimp, and pulled pork barbecue!), as well as photo essays showcasing the vanishing way of life of the commercial fisherman.

Here’s a taste of a few of our featured photos…many more will be added soon!