chosen chaos

I am not much of a seafood kind of gal.  I like shrimp cock­tail, salmon pat­ties dur­ing lent, and the occa­sional crab cake.  The scal­lop is a recent addi­tion to this short list.  A sum­mer or two ago Babe and I made some scal­lops on the grill with mush­rooms and avo­cado and yum yum yum.  I can see why some don’t like them because of the tex­ture but I move right past that and suck up the but­ter that’s usu­ally driz­zled over them!

Pan-​​Seared Sea Scallops

• 3 Table­spoons unsalted butter
• 1 Table­spoon olive oil
• 20–24 sea scal­lops, rinsed and pat­ted dry, slimy white stuff peeled off with fin­gers, salted and peppered
• 2 gar­lic cloves, minced
• 1/​2 cup dry white wine
• juice from 1/​2 lemon

In a large skil­let over medium-​​high heat add 1 table­spoon of but­ter and the oil.

When the pan is hot add as many of the scal­lops as pos­si­ble with­out crowd­ing and cook for 2ish min­utes per side.  Be care­ful when you flip them that you get the whole scal­lop or else they will fall apart.  Repeat until all the scal­lops are cooked.

Lower the heat to medium, melt the rest of the but­ter, add the gar­lic, and cook for 30 sec­onds — be care­ful not to let the gar­lic burn.  (Reminder that I use jar gar­lic so I have no idea if this step works the same way or not?)

Add wine and lemon juice, crank­ing the heat to high.  Scrape the fish bits as the liq­uid boils down.  Watch the sauce like a hun­gry hawk, be care­ful not to let it boil to noth­ing.  When it looks kind of syrupy, remove the pan from the heat and driz­zle the sauce over the cooked scal­lops.  Save some if you decide to serve it with the corn-​​bacon hash… which I did and encourage!

Corn-​​Bacon Hash

• 1 strip of bacon (I used 4 or 5, I really like bacon!)
• 1 minced shal­lot (yay, I used my first shallot!)
• ker­nels from 4 ears of corn (I used 5 because that’s how many came in the bundle)
• 5 or 6 chopped basil leaves (I didn’t include this, lazy)
• salt & pepper

Cook bacon in a large skil­let until crispy.  Remove bacon, chop into pieces and place into bowl.  Blot the pan with a paper towel to remove the bulk of the grease.

Add 1 minced shal­lot to the bacon fat and stir until soft.

Add the ker­nels and cook for 2ish minutes.

Remove to the bowl.

Add the basil, salt and pep­per.  Also add the sauce from the scal­lops if you have it!  (This really made a dif­fer­ence I think!)  Toss and serve!

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