I spotted the largest scallops I’d seen in a long time at the Greenmarket on Wednesday, so I jumped on them. Because I had more time to prepare dinner that evening than I normally allow myself, I decided I could go to one of my favorite scallop recipes. It’s only a little more complicated than the very simple one I use most of the time, but it does involve a few minutes of busy work.

I found the basic recipe years ago, in Mark Bittman’s 1994 book, ‘Fish: The Complete Guide to Buying and Cooking‘, where he describes it as “..among the most impressive appetizers I know” (I actually prepared them as an appetizer only this one time). Today there’s also a link on line, a 2012 piece he did for the New York Times, and it includes a 4-minute video, if that helps.

Bittman suggest that alternative fish for the recipe would include monkfish, cut into medallions, thick swordfish or tuna steaks, or even large shrimp, with cooking times adjusted accordingly.

• 11 sea scallops (.76 lbs) from Blue Moon Fish, rinsed, dried, slit almost all of the way through horizontally, where they were stuffed with a mixture of basil from Keith’s Farm, one medium-size clove of garlic from Norwich Meadows Farm, salt, and pepper, all chopped together very finely before enough olive oil to form a paste was added, the stuffed scallops then rolled around on a plate with a little more olive oil and pan grilled about 2 or 3 minutes on each side, removed to plates, lemon juice and olive oil drizzled over the top
• ten very ripe, very sweet cherry tomatoes from Stokes Farm (‘the best cherry tomatoes‘), washed, dried, halved, heated for a minute in a small, low-sided, ancient Pyrex bluish-glass pan, seasoned with salt and pepper, added to the plates with the scallops
• haricots verts from Berried Treasures Farm, left whole, blanched, drained and dried in the pan over heat, shaking, then set aside until just grilling the scallops, when they were reheated in oil, finished with salt, pepper, and fennel flowers from Mountain Sweet Berry Farm
• the wine was a French (Loire) white, Éric Chevalier Clos de la Butte Muscadet-Côtes de Grandlieu 2014

There was fruit for dessert

• half of a small Snow Leopard melon (a small honeydew variety, with firmer flesh) from Norwich Meadows Farm, along with a few late-season sweet cherries from Red Jacket Orchards

• the music throughout the meal was Q2, streaming

almost over the top, at least by my measure

 

I rarely include a cream sauce in any of my cooking, and in fact the finishing touch on these scallops was not actually a cream sauce, but a ‘composed butter’ which included fish juices, herbs and wild garlic, a small remainder from this earlier meal, kept frozen in a ramekin until now.

The picture above is very unlike the usual images of pan-grilled scallops found on this blog (this one is my favorite), which are frankly more to my taste, but I couldn’t resist pursuing the experiment this time.

I’ve had the small ramekin on my mind for two weeks, hoping to arrange a perfect [second] marriage for it.  I’m more familiar with composed butters as a final touch for grilled steaks, a device I’ve only encountered in Julia Childs books; I was afraid that matching this one up with shellfish might be too much of a stretch, but the result was delicious.

The plans for virtually every element of this meal came together only at the last moment – in fact only while I was actually already cooking – and that included the treatment of the scallops.

Mildly-aromatic ‘wild garlic’ came into play twice during the preparation of this dinner, as a finish for the tomatoes, and as an important element in the herb butter spread on top of the scallops. I’ll think of this tiny (actually, at least partially domesticated) plant as my first 2016 ‘find’ in the Greenmarket.  It’s tasty, attractive, pretty versatile, and keeps pretty well. It’s also the harbinger of a growing season which is actually heralded by the first appearance of ramps, which, while definitely wild, have become a fixture, a tradition, for both the farmers and their happy city customers.

• ten sea scallops from P.E. & D. D. Seafood, washed, rinsed and dried very thoroughly, generously seasoned with salt and pepper, pan grilled a minute or so on each side, finished on the plates with a squeeze of juice from a local lemon grown by Fantastic Gardens of Long Island, drizzled with a little olive oil, and spread with a preserved butter which included tilefish juices combined wild garlic from Lani’s Farm, fresh parsley (Eataly), thyme (Forager’s), lovage (Two Guys from Woodbridge), sage (Eataly), and oregano (Stoke’s Farm)
• eight Backyard Farms Maine ‘cocktail tomatoes’ from Whole Foods, halved, sautéed in a little olive oil until beginning to soften, seasoned with salt and pepper, removed and placed on a bed of tiny, only slightly-peppery cress, “a basal rosette of baby-arugula-like winter cress”, according to the grower/seller, Lani’s Farm (and in fact also basically ‘wild’?), then 8 or 10 finely-chopped wild garlic plants, also from Lani’s Farm (including bulbs, white and green stems) immediately tossed into the still-warm pan in which the tomatoes had cooked, stirred a few seconds, the garlic and tomato juices poured on top of the tomatoes themselves
• red mustard greens from Norwich Meadows Farm, wilted in a little oil which had already warmed 1 halved clove of bruised garlic from John D. Madura Farm, seasoned with salt and pepper, finished with a drizzle of oil
• the wine was a California (Clarksburg) white, Akiyoshi Reserve Chardonnay Clarksburg 2014
• the music was a number of works by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, beginning with his ‘Mavis in Las Vegas‘, and the other entertaining pieces on this recording, and ending with his very serious last symphony, Symphony No. 10 (“Alla ricerca di Borromini”), which includes a sonnet to and text of by Francesco Borromini, and poetry by Giacomo Leopardi

We hadn’t eaten meat in 9 days, although that was certainly no hardship for us.  After enjoying a small duck breast, from Long Island or Pennsylvania, on October 22, we had feasted, in succession on Long Island eel; ‘Hudson River prawns’; zucchini-filled pasta made 2 blocks away; penne with local Romanesco; and New York-local-waters-sourced mackerel, crab cakes, scallops and Grey Triggerfish.

We broke our inadvertent fast last night with some delicious pork chops from upstate NY.  The duck and pork recipes have been among my favorites for a long time, but I’ve added some new choice ones from among the meals which those two dinners bracketed.

• two 8-ounce bone-in loin pork chops from Flying Pig Farms, thoroughly dried, seasoned with salt and pepper, seared quickly in a heavy enameled cast-iron pan before half of an organic lemon was squeezed over them and left in the pan, which was then placed in a 400º oven for about 14 minutes (flipped halfway through and the lemon squeezed over them once again), removed from the oven, sprinkled with chopped tarragon from Stokes Farm, and the pan juices spooned over the top
• eight ‘Mountain Magic’ tomatoes from Norwich Meadows Farm, added to the pan in which the chops had roasted after they had been removed, stirred in the juices until warm, seasoned with salt and pepper, sprinkled with Gotham Greens Rooftop packaged basil from Whole Foods
• Brussels sproutsfrom Van Houton Farms, tossed with salt, pepper, and some olive oil, and roasted in a 400º oven for about half an hour
• the wine was a California (Napa) white, Matthew Iaconis Napa Valley Chardonnay 2014 (in a Burgundy style, it’s Matt’s wine, and it comes from Naked Wines)
• the music was Bruckner’s Symphony No. 9, Claudio Abbado leading the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, only months before the conductor’s death