Seafood Quesadilla

With Tom Tedesco

The late owner/Chef of Lobster Pool Tom Tedesco discovered one day that he had the wrong item delivered – a case of 8-inch tortillas. Instead of sending them back he created his own version of a quesadilla with what he specializes in – seafood. It is a very tasty combination of boiled lobster, scallops and shrimp poached in white wine and herbs, and several other ingredients such as a 3-cheese blend, chopped scallions for a little extra bite and his own roasted red peppers. Even though this dish, which Tom shows you how you can make it at home, was the result of a delivery mistake it became an instant hit on their menu and they have served it ever since.

Ingredients

2 8" tortillas
2 cups 3-cheese blend
1 red onion, sautéed in butter
1 roasted red pepper, diced
1 lemon
fresh parsley, chopped
fresh tarragon, chopped
scallions, chopped
4 ounces fresh shrimp
4 ounces scallops
4 ounces lobster meat, boiled
1 cup white wine
sea salt to taste
fresh ground pepper to taste
1/4 cup salsa
1/4 cup sour cream

Instructions

1. Dice red onion, roasted red pepper, scallions, fresh tarragon and fresh parsley
2. In 4 quart sauce pan, add 2- ½ quarts of water, add 1 cup of white wine. Add parsley and tarragon and bring to a boil. Poach shrimp and scallops.
3. Sauté red onions in butter.
4. Heat tortilla in a sauté pan and place in pie tin.
5. Spread 3-cheese blend, top with scallops, shrimp and lobster meat.
6. Top with scallions and roasted red peppers. Salt and pepper to taste. Top with 3-cheese blend.
7. Heat 2nd Tortilla in sauté pan and place on top.
8. In 500 degree oven for 7 minutes.
9. Plate, quarter, and sprinkle with fresh parsley. Add sides and serve.

Courtesy of The Lobster Pool Restaurant, 2010.

Simplicity is the key to making a lobster roll, said the late Tom Tedesco. In this video he shows you to a shuck a lobster and serve up a delicious New England-style roll.

The red-shingled Lobster Pool Restaurant in Rockport hems the bend in the road, as cheerful looking on this cloudy day as ever; baskets of chrysanthemums, hay bales and pumpkins decorate the front of the restaurant. Myalisa Waring tells me that this year she wasn't even going to decorate. And this year, with Tom's harshly sudden death in August, Myalisa is finding everything difficult. Still, a neighbor who knew Tom loved the fall decorations brought over the three hanging baskets of chrysanthemums. With that, like so many other moments buoyed by friends, Lisa found the energy to do more.

A solid man with curly flaming red hair and mustache, Thomas J. Tedesco, by all accounts, loved family, fishing, and his restaurant, The Lobster Pool, which he bought 13 years ago after running concession stands on Cape Ann.

Three years ago I was on a run, and came down into Folly Cove to see a white tent set up on the lawn beside that flagpole. There were pots of flowers around and the place looked even dressier than usual. A young woman who I recognized as an owner was fussing with the tent, and I stopped to ask her what was happening.
"I'm getting married!," she shouted, her eyes as joyful and playful as the waves breaking just behind her. Myalisa Waring, who began working at The Lobster Pool thirteen years ago, and Tom Tedesco were getting married.

I visited Myalisa this Monday in the tiny apartment above The Lobster Pool where the walls are lined with photos of her wedding and Myalisa repeated to me again and again how Tom had loved her children as dearly as his own, how the eldest four all worked in the restaurant, how much a family experience the restaurant was for all, how this was Tom's greatest strength, his genuine love for and dedication to all his family.

In that apartment I saw Myalisa's photos of The Lobster Pool in winter, crusted in a foot of snow, sea smoke rising in a sparkling sun behind it. There was a whole section of wall dedicated just to photographs of Lobster Pool sunsets, those nightly summertime masterpieces that make a lobster dinner a celestial event. But, sadly, there was a section of wall dedicated to Tom's end. Tom always said, according to Myalisa, if he died he wanted to be cremated with a big party.

So, only three years after that lovely wedding, The Lobster Pool was the site of the second family event. While crowds of family and friends filled the restaurant, Myalisa and the children, aboard local lobsterman Peter Prybot's blue fishing boat, scattered Tom's ashes into the Folly Cove waters. As Myalisa reports, "the sunset didn't stop that night."

From Food For Thought by Heather Atwood. Contact Heather at heatheraa@aol.com. Her blog is at gloucestertimes.com/foodforthought.