Scallops with Fava Beans, Dandelion Greens, Ramps, and Pancetta

 This dish hardly requires a recipe, as it consists of little more than the ingredients listed in the title.  That's what I love about spring produce; it is so delicious on its own that gussying it up with any other ingredients usually does more harm than good.  In this case, I've paired seared jumbo sea scallops with blanched fava beans and dandelion greens, ramps, and crispy pancetta that I have sauteed in a bit of olive oil.  A drizzle of sherry vinegar, a few cracks of salt and pepper, and you have spring on a plate.

Scallops with Fava Beans, Dandelion Greens, Ramps, and Pancetta
Serves 2

Ingredients:

• 1 lb. fava beans, shelled
• 2 tbsp
• 1/4 lb. piece of pancetta, diced
• 1 bunch of ramps, cleaned, trimmed and cut into 1/4-inch pieces
• 1 bunch of dandelion greens, cleaned and trimmed
• 8 large sea scallops
• salt
• pepper
• 1 tbsp butter
• Sherry vinegar

Directions:

1. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil.  Add the shelled fava beans to the water and boil for 2 minutes.  Immediately drain the favas and add them to a bowl of ice water to cool.  Once cooled, peel each fava and place the beans in a bowl.
2. Heat a tablespoon of olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat.  Add the pancetta and cook, stirring occasionally, until the fat renders and the pancetta begins to crisp.  Add the ramps and cook until some of the pieces begin to brown.  Add the dandelion greens and cook until they begin to wilt.  Season with salt and pepper and drizzle a bit of Sherry vinegar over the greens. 
3. Meanwhile, as the dandelion pancetta cooks, prepare the scallops.  Pat them dry with a paper towel and season them with salt and pepper.  Heat a tablespoon each of olive oil and butter in a large skillet over high heat.  Add the scallops and cook, undisturbed, until they are well-browned on one side, about 2 to 3 minutes.  Flip the scallops and cook on the other side until it is well-browned, another 2 to 3 minutes.  Set the scallops aside on a plate.
4. To plate the dish, divide the ramps and dandelion greens among two plates.  Quickly heat the fava beans in one of the skillets just until they are hot and surround the greens with the beans.  Top the greens with the scallops.  Serve immediately.

Bay Scallops with Orange Sauce

 I'm not usually a fan of citrus-based sauces, which are all too often much too sweet for my taste. I was apprehensive about making this dish—sweet scallops combined with an orange sauce sounds like a cloyingly sweet combo—but I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it.  Thanks to the smart inclusion of a bit of lemon juice in addition to the orange juice, the sauce has tart undertones, and the addition of herbes de Provence and dried oregano give it just the right savory notes to ensure that it stays well shy of being a melted creamsicle.  I wish I could pat myself on the back for creating the perfect citrus-based sauce, but all credit goes to Andrew Carmellini and his cookbook in which the dish appears, Urban Italian.

Seared Scallops with Lemon and White Wine

This scallop dish was my triumph over bachelorhood.  I had come home from having a couple beers with my friends and my first thought was order a big bowl of pad see ew from the neighborhood Thai restaurant.  But as my alcohol-induced laziness wore off, I decided that I would cook the jumbo sea scallops that I had purchased earlier in the day.  I scrambled to the stove, seared the scallops in a healthy amount of oil and butter, splashed in some white wine and lemon juice, and served it all over some wilted arugula.  Dinner was ready within 10 minutes, the whole dish cost less than ten bucks, and it tasted a whole lot better than takeout.  Bachelorhood has never felt so glamorous. 

Seared Scallops with Lemon and White Wine
Serves one hungry man

Ingredients:

• 4 large (U-10 or bigger) sea scallops
• salt and pepper
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1 tbsp butter
• 1 garlic clove, minced
• 1/4 cup dry white wine
• juice from 1/4 of a lemon
• 2 handfuls of arugula or spinach

Directions:

1. Remove the tough muscle from each scallop and pat them dry with a paper towel.  Season the scallops with salt and pepper.
   
2. Heat a cast iron skillet over high heat and pour in 1 tbsp of the oil. 
3. Once the oil is hot, add the scallops.  Cook undisturbed until they are well browned on the bottom, about 2 1/2 minutes.  
4. Reduce the heat to medium and flip the scallops.  Add the butter to the pan and continue to cook the scallops, basting frequently with the butter, until they are just cooked through, about 1 1/2 minutes.  Remove the scallops from the pan and set them aside on a plate.
5. Increase the heat to medium-high.  Add the garlic to the skillet and cook until it is fragrant, about 30 seconds.
6. Pour the wine into the skillet and bring it to a boil.  Cook until the wine is reduced by half, approximately 2 minutes.  
7. Meanwhile, as the wine reduces, wash the arugula. Heat 1 tbsp of the oil in a saute pan over medium-high heat.  Add the arugula and a pinch of salt to the pan and cook, stirring frequently, until it begins to wilt, 1 to 2 minutes.  Remove the arugula from the pan and set it aside on a serving plate. 
8. Remove the skillet with the white wine from the heat and pour in the lemon juice.  Taste the sauce for salt and pepper. 
9. Top the arugula with the scallops and pour the white wine lemon sauce over the scallops.  Serve immediately. 

Seared Scallops with Fava Bean Puree

If you've ever been to Manhattan when the temperature rises above 80 degrees, you understand just how hot living in a New York apartment can be.  For studio-dwelling cooks like myself, the overheated Manhattan apartment is especially unforgiving; turn on that oven and you will have an uncomfortably warm apartment for hours, no matter the output of you air conditioner.  For this reason, come Memorial Day, I pretty much give up on all braising and roasting and relegate my cooking repertoire to searing and stir frying until cooler weather arrives.  This recipe for scallops with a fava bean puree is one of the typical types of recipes I turn to during the warm months.  Boil the fava beans, gently warm the puree, and quickly sear the scallops and you have dinner on the table in about 20 minutes.  More importantly, you won't break a sweat before or after you eat. 

Seared Scallops with Fava Bean Puree

Ingredients:

• 2 lb. fava beans, shelled
• 1/2 cup heavy cream
• 1/4 cups chicken broth
• salt and pepper, to taste
• 1 lb. scallops 
• 1 tbsp butter

Directions:

1. Blanch the fava beans in a pot of boiling water until they are soft, about 8 minutes.  
2. Drain the fava beans and cool them in ice water. 
3. Peel the skins off of the fava beans and add the beans to the bowl of a food processor.  Pulse the beans until they are pureed. 
4. Pour in the cream and broth and run the food processor until all ingredients are well combined.  Season the puree with salt and pepper.  
5. Spoon the puree into a small pot and warm it over low heat.
6. Pat the scallops dry with paper towels.  Season them on the both sides with salt and pepper. 
7. Melt the butter in a large skillet over medium-high heat.  Once the butter has stopped foaming, add the scallops.  Cook them undisturbed until they are well browned on each side, about 1 minute per side.  
8. Spoon the fava bean puree onto plates.  Top the puree with the scallops and serve them immediately.

Seared Scallops over Braised Leeks

The sweet, briny flavor of sea scallops makes them pair nicely with earthy foods such as mushrooms and leeks. Last night, I served scallops that I had purchased at the Union Square Greenmarket with leeks that I simply braised in chicken broth with thyme and bacon. A good scallop needs little more than butter and maybe a squeeze of lemon, and that's exactly what I did with these scallops, which had been caught off the Long Island shore the same morning that I purchased them. The key is to dry the scallops thoroughly prior to searing them in clarified butter (clarified so that butter does not burn). Two to three minutes per side on medium-high heat is all you need to give the scallops a wonderful crust on their exteriors.

Scallops with Sauteed Corn, Tomatoes and Bacon

This weekend, I cooked what I think is my greatest success with a recipe of my own creation. Sticky from 90 degree weather, and in no mood to spend too much effort cooking a meal for myself, I ventured to the store with not one idea in mind. I made a quick glance at the butcher counter, but I save simple pork and chicken dishes for the weekdays, and I did not feel like beef. Taking the weather into account, the seafood counter seemed like the best bet, but I had had fish the night before. Nearly ready to leave the store and scan through the list of dreadful takeout places in my neighborhood, I spotted some beautiful and well-priced Montauk sea scallops sitting in the far corner of the seafood counter. Knowing full well that this would be the perfect opportunity to take advantage of the scallop-hating Significant Eater being out of town for the weekend, I purchased five scallops. Let me tell you, I'm a scallop-izer, and I get pretty out of control when the Significant Eater is not around.

Scallops in my bag, I began to think of how I could prepare them. I thought of the items that needed to be eaten in my refrigerator before they went bad. I had an ear of corn purchased from the Greenmarket a few days ago, half an heirloom tomato leftover from a BLT earlier that day, and a package of bacon, which wasn't going bad, but bacon is always in my thoughts. Scallops, corn, tomato, and bacon sounds like something on a restaurant menu, I thought, so I went with the idea. I am glad I did, for in my mind, the dish could not have been improved upon. The corn, bacon, and tomatoes came together very nicely, and provided a perfect bed for the sweet scallops to rest upon.


Scallops with Sauteed Corn, Tomatoes, and Bacon
Serves 2

Ingredients:

• 2 slices of bacon, diced
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
  
• 2 ears of corn, shucked
• 1 tomato, preferably heirloom, diced
• Salt and pepper, to taste
• 8 large sea scallops
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1 tbsp butter

Directions:

1. Heat bacon in a deep skillet over medium heat. Cook until fat is rendered and bacon begins to crisp.
2. Add garlic to skillet and cook until fragrant but not browned, no more than two minutes.
3. Add tomato and corn to skillet and cook until tomato begins to break down, about three minutes. Taste for salt and pepper and set heat to low, stirring occasionally.
4. Prepare the scallops by tearing off the muscle. Pat them dry with paper towels and season with salt and pepper.
5. Heat olive oil over in a skillet (preferably cast iron for the perfect sear) over high heat.
6. Add scallops to the pan. After thirty seconds, reduce the heat to medium. Cook until well seared on one side, about three minutes.
7. Flip scallops and add butter to pan. Cook for another 3 minutes, occasionally basting scallops with butter.
8. Serve scallops on plates atop corn, bacon, and tomato mixture.

Baked Scallops with Panko Crust

Good sea scallops don't need much more than salt and pepper to make a great meal, but what's the fun in that? Topping jumbo scallops with some spiced up panko and popping them into the oven is nearly as simple and a little more delicious.

Baked Scallops with Panko Crust
Serves 2

Ingredients:

• 6 large "dry" sea scallops, muscle removed and patted dry with paper towels
• 1/2 cup panko
• 1 tbsp. chives, minced
• 1 tbsp. parsley, minced
• 1/2 tbsp. thyme leaves, minced
• 1 garlic clove, minced
• 1/4 tsp. cumin
• 1 tbsp. butter, melted
• 1 tbsp. olive oil
• salt and pepper
• lemon wedges, for serving

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 400F
2. Mix panko with herbs and spices, salt, pepper, olive oil and butter
3. Add scallops to oven-proof pan. Top scallops with panko mixture.
4. Cook scallops in oven until just cooked, about ten minutes.
5. Cook scallops under broiler until panko begins to brown, about a minute.
6. Serve with lemon wedges.

Scallops with Spinach and Roasted Parsnips

For the most part, I have been disappointed by David Pasternack and Ed Levine's The Young Man and the Sea. Several of the recipes have errors (from too much olive oil to incorrect cooking times), and for the most part the recipes are fairly formulaic: fish dusted with wondra flour and served with a sauteed vegetable that Pasternack claims pairs well with the fish. One exception is the recipe for scallops with sauteed spinach and roasted parsnips. The recipe is almost too simple to be cookbook-worthy, but the flavor combination is not something that would have thought of without the help of Pasternack and Levine. The sweet scallops and parsnips are a nice contrast to the bitter spinach. It doesn't hurt that the dish looks so nice on the plate.


To get the above, toss together some sauteed spinach with parsnips that have been roasted with some salt and pepper and a nob of butter in a 400F oven for about 45 minutes. Then, top the spinach and parsnips with scallops that have been seared on each side in some olive oil. Serve it to your guests and tell them that the dish is proof that a great meal need not be difficult to prepare.

Garam Masala Scallops with Acorn Squash

For no other reason but sheer love for Indian flavors, I have been on a curry fix of late. I found this recipe from Epicurious for scallops in a curry sauce over acorn squash. I would not have thought that scallops, acorn squash, and curry would work together, but this recipe turned out very nicely. Not only did it look nice on the plate, but the slightly spicy and creamy curry sauce played an excellent complement to the sweet scallops and squash.

As with most recipes, good-quality ingredients are important to this dish. I used jumbo U-10 dry scallops, which are meaty and rich enough to not be overpowered by the curry sauce. A purist would have made curry powder and garam masala from scratch but I had Penzeys excellent representations of each already on hand, which made for an easy and delicious dinner.

Scallops with Asparagus and Lamb’s Quarters

I credit tonight’s dinner to The Spamwise Chronicles. The author of this wonderful blog kept a foodblog on eGullet a couple of weeks ago, and a scallop dish he made caught my eye. I tweaked the ingredients a bit so I could use up the rest of last Saturday’s Greenmarket purchases, but the idea is the same. Along with ramps, garlic scapes, last of the spring Asparagus, and lamb’s quarters, all purchased last week, I picked up some sea scallops from the P.E. & D.D. Seafood at the market today. Combining everything together for a nice meal full of local veggies and seafood, I made this:

Scallops with Asparagus and Lamb’s Quarters

Ingredients

1. Asparagus, washed and cut into one inch pieces
2. Olive oil
3. Salt and pepper
4. Butter
5. Large sea scallops patted dry with a paper towel
6. Salt and pepper
7. Ramp bulbs, minced
8. Garlic Scapes, minced
9. Dry white wine
10. Heavy cream
11. Creme Fraiche
12. Lamb’s quarters (wild spinach) leaves, washed and dried

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Put asparagus pieces in small baking dish. Stir in olive oil and season with salt and pepper.
3. Roast asparagus for 15 minutes and set aside.
4. Meanwhile, melt butter over medium-high heat.
5. Sear scallops for 3 minutes, turning once. Set aside.
6. Add garlic scapes and ramps to pan and stir for about 30 seconds.
7. Deglaze pan with a big splash of dry white wine. Turn heat to medium-low.
8. Add a big splash of cream.
9. Season sauce to taste.
10. Whisk in a small amount (I used less than a teaspoon) of creme fraiche. Whisk until sauce coats the back of a spoon.
11. Add lamb’s quarters and stir until lamb’s quarters wilt slightly, about a minute.
12. Plate aspragus, followed by scallops, and pour sauce on top.