Note to self:  Yes, and very yes.  I don’t know of any reason why this simple entrée should have turned out better than anythings scallop-related I’d prepared in the past, but it did.  And the cauliflower/tomato/fennel dish was just as tasty as the shellfish.

 

I had bought scallops earlier in the day at the greenmarket, largely because we werenfresh garlic from Lucky Dog Organic ‘t certain how long we might be at Jade Townsend’s Crazy Garage Sale that evening, and scallops take only minutes from start to finish.  It would be accompanied by a small head of golden cauliflower I already had on hand and was keeping an eye on, and I knew I could do all kinds of good things with it that wouldn’t take much longer.

• ten sea scallops from Pura Vida Fisheries, washed, rinsed and dried very thoroughly, then pan grilled, finished with a squeeze of lemon juice, and drizzled with olive oil [the simple procedure is included in Rose Gray and Ruth Rogers’ ‘Italian Easy: Recipes from the London River Cafe‘, possibly the most indispensable volume in my kitchen library, as I have found so many of my favorite, and simplest, recipes there]
• flowerets of a ten-ounce golden cauliflower from Norwich Meadows Farm, sautéed in a pan in which fresh garlic from Lucky Dog Organic, some crushed dried chili peppers and fennel seeds had been heated, the mix then braised for a few minutes along with halved and seeded Maine cherry ‘cocktail’ tomatoes from Whole Foods, finished with fresh basil leaves torn off of a live plant (Full Bloom Market Garden, Whately, Massachusetts), also from Whole Foods [the recipe appears here]
• the wine was a Portuguese white, Vaca das Cordas Vinho Verde 2014
• the music, in addition to works by other composers broadcast on Counterstream Radio that evening, was Frank Zappa, ‘Times Beach III’, from the 1993 album, ‘Yellow Shark’