A little something we threw together on Saturday night. I can take credit for some of the cooking and photography, but Seth gets major points for conception and review of the meals we cook.
Karina is from Maine, and up on the breath-taking northeastern shores of our wonderful country is some of the best damn seafood in the world. I have rarely ever eaten scallops, usually only as low-grade appetizers at catered parties where they are encased in overcooked bacon. On most of the occasions the bacon or the booze over powers the subtle taste of bivalve mollusk, meaning the flavor is still somewhat of a mystery to me. So when Karina managed to secure some giant sea scallops I was pretty excited to try cooking them.
Recently a family friend sent me a crazy gift basket from Australia that included some very high quality cheeses. One of these is an uber-righteous blue cheese and looked down right painful to eat.
Karina and I decided we should try and put these together. We knew that this would be a very rich dish so we tried to even it out with some pasta with wilted baby spinach and some super-crisp bacon to add some crunch.
RECIPE (about 3 servings):
- 12-15 Scallops (thawed)
- 1/2 pound of Pasta (we used whole wheat shells)
- 1/2 pound of Bacon
- 3/4 of a bag of Baby Spinach
- Wedge of Blue Cheese (it could be crumbled if you were plating the dish differently)
- 1 tablespoon of Butter
- Salt, Pepper and Olive Oil
To make this dish we cooked the pasta and bacon first. While the pasta was draining the bacon gets crumbled into a bowl and set aside. Toss the baby spinach into a pan with a little olive oil over medium heat and stir carefully until the spinach is wilted. Put the pasta and about a quarter cup of bacon into the pan with the spinach and reduce the heat. Stir it all together with a tablespoon of butter to coat the pasta and leave the heat low to keep it warm. To cook the scallops (which was all Karina) get some olive oil in a pan and put it on max heat. Drop the scallops in the pan and let them sear for about a minute on each side. Place them on a paper towel to drain. To plate the dish simply spoon some of the pasta mixture onto the center of the plate and surround it with 5 or 6 scallops, cut small slivers of blue cheese and place them on top and garnish the pasta with a few more pieces of the bacon.
What makes the dish totally amazing is when the blue cheese starts to melt slighty while on top of the scallops. I preferred to mix my blue cheese in with the pasta and make a rich melty pile upon which to draw from. I would stab a piece of scallop and a shell or two of pasta per bite making a decadent layered morsel.
The bottom line is that this was an excellent meal and I hope we try it again to perfect it. The dish is really simple to do and actually does not take very long. We finished the meal with a small scoop of brown sugar ice cream and it was magical.
