One last meal for my Italian students

indigenous Matses' frog medicine) course yesterday, and they did it with flying colors. Final written exams were on the money. Congrats to both father and daughter. For the celebration I bought them some champagne--which we had out at the bridge over the dry creek, right next to the garden. Then for dinner I felt like breaking new ground, so I decided to make them shrimp and sea scallops with apples and pears--a combo I have never heard of with sea food. It was either gonna be great or suck. I bought half a pound of smallish sized (21-25) shrimp and half a pound of medium sized sea scallops. Home, I cleaned the shrimp and tossed the shells, along with onion ends, into a dry heavy sauce pan and scalded them till they were bright red. Then I added water and cooked it down until I had just about one-quarter of a cup. I made jasmine rice while the juice was cooking, then trimmed and parboiled thin--and beautiful--asparagus. I trimmed a yellow pepper and then julienned it--to go with the asparagus--and added scallions, cut the same length as the yellow pepper, and halved sweet cherry tomatoes. I sauteed those together in a little olive oil with garlic and sea salt and cracked black pepper. While those sauteed I peeled a large Delicious apple, one Bosc pear and one Red pear. I sliced them fairly thin, then put them in a very hot saute pan with a bit of unsalted butter. As their sugar carmelized, I added minced shallots, the shrimp and sea scallops. A touch of salt, and finished them off (they took all of one minute) with a good balsamic vinegar to tie the flavors together. I pulled them from the pan, added the shell juice and reduced it with the balsamic until I had a nice glaze, and poured that over the seafood and fruit. Served the veggies next to that, with a nice portion of the Jasmine rice and voila! And you know what? The apple and pears were great with the seafood. I sort of thought they would be but was glad when they were. It was a slightly different flavor/texture mix than our mouths and taste buds are used to, so there was a bit of suspension of previous beliefs necessary, but damn, it was a good mix. And now they're off and back to Italy--or will be very soon--and I hope they use the medicine well.