Using Up The Scallops

When I made the blackened scallops the other night, I thawed about double what we used and needed to cook up the remainder of them. I really like broiled, or baked or scampied seafood, so decided to give them a try using a modified version of the following recipe from Fish Ex.

Ingredients:
1 lb. Scallops (small) – I had 18 ounces
1 stick real Butter (more if desired) – I used 2 more tbsps for saute
fresh Garlic (to taste) – I used 3 medium cloves
1 cup Bread crumbs – I used Panko
Lemon wedges
Pepper
4 individual serving dishes

Directions:
In fry pan melt butter. Add crushed garlic and saute. Add bread crumbs and toss till coated with butter. Put scallops into individual buttered serving dishes. Top with Bread crumb mixture. Sprinkle with lemon juice. Sprinkle with pepper (season to taste). Bake 375 for 15 minutes.

I first let the scallops warm up some, then sprinkled with S&P and sautéed them in a little of the butter to give them a crust.


I removed them and added the other ingredients to the skillet along with the juice and zest of 1/4 lemon and 1 ½ tbsp of roughly chopped capers. I really like both lemon-butter-garlic and lemon-butter-caper sauces, so I just combined them. Then rather than a 15 minute bake, since the scallops were sautéed, I did a 5 minute bake then a few minutes under the broiler. I’m getting better at using a recipe as a guide – I actually already had in mind what I wanted to do, but this recipe gave me an idea on proportions.

After topping the scallops, I added a little more butter and garlic to the skillet and sautéed some slices of cheese grits in it – I’m getting my moneys-worth from that pan of grits. Bev had gotten some frozen Kale Maria out of the freezer the other day and I wanted something green, so added it to the meal. She just substituted kale in Calhoun’s Spinach Maria recipe as shown on Chris’ blog.

After plating, Sous chef daughter Wende added a little fresh grated Parmigiano Reggiano to everything.


This probably wasn’t scallops scampi anymore, but they were pretty good but not great. First the recipe provided way too much topping for the amount of scallops. Second, I used too much lemon and rather than be a subtle flavor it was somewhat over powering – the garlic and capers were about right. The major learning – with seafood, less is better and I’m committed to being able to make higher level, restaurant quality seafood at home. I guess I could just report on the things that turn out super good, but I’m a believer in sharing my successes, semi-successes and failures in case they can help you or you can coach me. Nice thing about cooking – even the failures are pretty good. I remember my first margarita tasting a little like gasoline and now they’re right good, so maybe I can get there with seafood if I live long enough. The kale Maria and cheese grits were both delicious – sadly I’m at the end of the grits, but for the next batch, the sis-in-law brought me a bag of whole grain, stone ground from a mill in Abington, Va.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by.

Larry