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This is a seafood dish that can be thrown together quickly and yet tastes like you spent the entire afternoon in the kitchen. The briny, sweet flavor of the sea scallops is reinforced by the natural sweetness of the roasted red peppers that form the sauce. The scallops of pan seared for a couple minutes right after preparing the sauce and cooking the pasta resulting in a meal that can be prepared in thirty minutes.
Start with 1-1/2 to 2 pounds of sea scallops. Clean the scallops by removing the small, tough muscle found on one side of each scallop (see picture below). If you don't peel off this piece from the scallop, then you'll have an extremely tough and chewy piece attached to your tender scallops after cooking.
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As far as roasted red peppers go, they're so easy to do, it's almost not worth the flavor you lose by buying water-packed ones. Once they're roasted, the skin pretty much peels off effortlessly.
It is possible to use canned red peppers. Make sure you drain them so you don't introduce additional water into the sauce. You might need to augment the flavor of the sauce with additional spices.
You can also roast a bunch of red peppers (when they go on sale) and then freeze them for use later after removing the skin and sealing in freezer bags.
Just today I was saying to myself, "wow, a lot of the photos on this site are very well composed and a good number of them look like professional food photography." Today's scallop photos are a great example of that in my opinion. Nice looking photos.
Your way makes so much sense. Thanks.
Thank you for sharing,
Sheila
Yep, you can roast them over the burner and then toss them into a paper bag or something else you can seal them in to self steam.
I think I really needed to cook the scallops a lot longer the first time I tried this because I didn't think medium-rare scallops were that great. The second time I did this, I cooked them pretty much all the way through and I thought it was awesome! I guess I prefer scallops well done.
By the way, the red pepper sauce is awesome too!
If your scallops are processed and will be too wet to sear, try coating them with ground dried mushrooms before cooking to make a flavorful crust.
I have also taken to slicing my scallops in half horizontally, making two thin discs. This speeds cooking, increases the surface area that's browned, and stretches an expensive ingredient.
Back to the sodium tripolyphosphate, can some of that be removed by soaking in fresh water? (I do think this could be the culprit, because if I buy them from Shaws, a local chain grocery store, that is when I fail to get good sweet scallops. If I buy them from the fish market they usually come out well. Of course they cost $15.00 a pound there)
Thanks for your advice.
I love the tinfoil step, any little trick to make clean up easier. I was reading the bun recipe earlier just before I was about to roll out some dough and was inspired by your picture using the silpat. I can't believe I haven't seen that somewhere before! Ingenius. Thank-you for your great site. I am going to read more now...
When I recently pan-seared scallops that were very fresh (without any chemical or fishy smell) - I had a hard time getting rid of the scallop smell in my house after. The scallops turned out sublime, but the lingering odor (for almost 2 days !) is really off-putting. As an engineer, can you recommend a way to avoid this in the future?
I used the overhead fan on my stove whie sauteeing, but even it seems to smell of scallops, and my husband thinks we polluted the air-conditioner filter! It has been ages since I pan-seared scallops, and now I remember why.
Artichokes, crab legs, and brussel sprouts just to name a few.
I've found the best way to minimize the amount of time that the scent lingers is to open up the house.
Admittedly, not always the most convenient method, but here is San Diego the weather makes it feasible year round.
Another way to avoid it is to use an outdoor grill with a side burner.
I often cook outside just because I enjoy it, but when I'm cooking something "stinky", it definitely has other benefits.
:unsure: My question is on serving: should I place the parts (pasta, scallops, sauce) in separate serving dishes on a buffet, or recruit help and serve up each plate and distribute to seated guests.
There will be a salad also, which will possibly be self serve.
I saw your comment and picture of your scallops - I buy mine frozen from CostCo and I drain them on paper towel (I usually wait for the paper to soak up the liquid for 20 mins then swap them to a fresh piece of paper towel). I also thaw them (in the refrigerator overnight) on paper towel. I find this plus a HOT HOT pan results in no liquid at all, one minute a side is enough to cook them and produce a lovely brown color.
Hope this helps and I'd be interested to see how this works in the engineer's kitchen!
Keith
You should try to get your recipe (especially the red pepper sauce) be featured in a cookbook or cooking magazine or at least be reviewed so others can get to enjoy them more. Here is one site that I know reviews recipes and cookbooks http://www.cookingzines.com/. I get some wonderful recipes there too.
I let it simmer for a few minutes, and it changed the flavor quite a bit.
Awesome recipe, so easy and very flavourful. Tasted very fresh with the parsley.
Kevin
Cheers,
Melissa
melissa@foodista.com
Editor and Community Developer
Foodista.com -- The Cooking Encyclopedia Everyone Can Edit
We will be making this again.
Sorry, the instructions weren't too clear on this part. You aren't introducing any additional heating process (like steaming over a pot of simmering water) - you're just going to allow the peppers to steam in their own hot water vapor. Just take them out and wrap them in foil and let them rest on a trivet on your counter for 5-10 minutes. That should loosen up the skins.