Scallops
Still emptying the freezer! This time it’s scallops – a bit of a
weakness of mine. I bought these to practise a fish mousse with, but didn’t
need all of them, so into the freezer they went.
Scallops are hands-down my favourite shellfish. Their shells are
beautiful, although they’re the bane of my life because I can never bear to
throw them away, so I end up with piles and piles of them. The only solution is
to buy them already out of the shell!
If you do buy scallops in the shell, you’ll need to remove them before
you cook them. If the shell is closed, just slip a thin-bladed knife in at the
hinge end and run it down the flatter shell. Do this for both sides and the
shell should open for you. Then you just ease the scallop out (a spoon works
well). To clean it, just remove all the gross-looking bits with your fingers
and you should be left with a pure white cylinder of muscle, possibly with a
bright orange, claw-shaped coral attached. Some people don’t like the coral,
but I think it’s the best bit!
Last note on buying scallops: please buy ‘diver’ scallops, not dredged
ones. This means that a diver has gone down to the sea bed and hand-picked the
scallops. They’re more expensive, but much preferable to the alternative:
dredged scallops are obtained by running a huge net along the bottom of the sea,
dragging up all sorts of innocent fish minding their own business and generally
messing with Mother Nature. They’re also worse quality, because banging about
in a net damages the scallop and drives lots of sand and grit into the shell,
so they are often gritty and broken.
So that’s dredged scallops. Don’t do it.
My absolute favourite to cook scallops is very simply, just pan-fried
with some lemon juice and parsley. This time I had a rasher of bacon hanging
around in the fridge, so I decided to include it the rather posh lunch dish
which was shaping up.
Cooking scallops in butter
A lot of people like to pan-fry scallops in butter. While I agree it’s
totally delicious, I do have one problem with it – scallops need to be seared
at quite a high temperature, and if you heat butter that hot, the milk fats in
it will turn brown (technically known as a beurre noisette) or even burn
(technically known as a cock-up...) This is what causes the little brown
speckles you sometimes see on cooked scallops in restaurants.
There are two solutions to this, both of which produce lovely
milk-white scallops with the only brown on them being that beautiful
golden-brown seared crust which gives pan-seared scallops their flavour. The
first is to use clarified butter (also known as ghee) which you can buy in the
shops or make: very gently melt your butter, skimming the impurities off the
top, then pour off the pure butter and reserve it, discarding the milky
substance at the bottom. Using clarified butter keeps the buttery taste, but
means there’s no milk fat in the butter to burn.
The second solution is the one I used, purely because I didn’t have any
clarified butter. It’s a bit of a cheat, but who doesn’t love a good cheat?
Basically, you just use a small amount of hot oil for the actual cooking of the
scallops, then let the pan cool slightly and add some butter right at the end
of cooking (off the heat). This creates a buttery flavour, but the butter can’t
turn brown because you take the pan off the heat and let it cool before adding
any.
I like the second method because it saves you the hassle of buying or
making clarified butter, but classically speaking it’s bad because you shouldn’t
mix your fats in a sauce or dressing – in other words, if you’re using butter
you shouldn’t also use oil, and vice versa. But to be honest, my method tastes
great and the scallops look nice too, so who cares!
Finally...
This dish also works very well with some finely chopped chilli included
– just throw it in the pan when you turn the scallops (see the recipe below).
Ingredients
3-6 scallops per person, depending on size and your appetite!
1 lemon
Handful chopped parsley
1 rasher of bacon
Splash of olive or vegetable oil
Chunk of butter
Salt and pepper if needed
Salad and your favourite simple dressing
Method
First, you need to make sure the scallops are really dry. Lay them out
on a piece of kitchen towel and cover with another, pressing down gently. You
can also use an old dish cloth (needs to be clean, obviously, and you’ll definitely
have to wash it afterwards). If you don’t dry the scallops, the oil will spit
when you add them to the pan, and they won’t get that lovely golden crust on
the outside either.
Cook the bacon until it’s really crispy – the fat at least should all
have gone brown and crisp. If you really hate crispy bacon, cook it how you
like it, I can’t stop you. But I think this recipe’s best with crispy bacon!
Chop the parsley if you haven’t already, and cut the lemon in half
ready to squeeze. When the bacon’s really crispy, chop it up very small – to about
the same size as the parsley pieces.
Heat the olive oil in a frying pan. Place in the scallops and let them
fry in the oil for a couple of minutes on each side, or until both sides have
developed a golden, caramelised crust. If your scallops are those huge
king-sized ones, you might stretch to 3 minutes each side, but they honestly shouldn’t
need much more than that. Scallops can be eaten slightly underdone in the
centre.
Once the scallops are cooked, take the pan off the heat and let it cool
for a few seconds. Then squeeze over plenty of lemon juice and add the butter. Let
it melt in the residual heat from the pan, but don’t put it back on the heat.
Add the parsley and bacon, and give it a shake to mix it all up. It may not
need seasoning – bacon is pretty salty anyway. Taste it and see.
Serve with a nice salad – some rocket and baby leaves. A simple lemon
juice and olive oil dressing goes really nicely here. Pop the scallops in and/or
around the salad, and spoon over lots of the parsley and bacon mixture from the
pan. The pan mixture is the key to this dish, don’t waste it.
