When I want to cook something quick and delicious and healthy and impressive, this is what I cook. Scallops are one of my favorite things. Too bad they cost so much!
Ingredients:
1 pound dry sea scallops (Ask your fish dude if the scallops are dry or wet. Wet scallops are injected with a solution that makes them impossible to sear).
1 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
a little brown sugar or turbinado sugar
salt (I use Kosher salt)
fresh cracked black pepper
6 slices of prosciutto, sliced thin!
6 rosemary sprigs
for the salad…
1 box of organic mixed greens
some grape tomatoes, different colors if you can find them (red, yellow)
a few baby carrots
for the salad dressing…
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
1 teaspoon stone ground mustard
1 teaspoon mayonnaise
Here goes! In real time…
Rinse off the scallops and pat dry with paper towels. Remove the small side muscle from each scallop, and discard—the muscle, not the scallop! Place the scallops on a plate.
For the scallops you want to wrap in prosciutto, take a slice of prosciutto, remove some of the fat if you like, and wrap it around the sides of the scallop. I usually wrap the prosciutto around once, and slice off the rest.
Then, take a sprig of rosemary, about 3 or 4 inches long—enough to pierce through the scallop with a little hanging out of each side—and strip of about an inch of the leaves from the bottom of the sprig. Take the bottom end of the rosemary sprig, and pierce it through the scallop, to hold the prosciutto in place.
The end without the leaves should be poking out of one end of the scallop, and the other end–the top of the sprig–should be poking out of the other end of the scallop.
Add a sprinkle of brown sugar, salt and pepper on top of each scallop.
Put a large fry pan–large enough to hold all the scallops–over high heat. Add the butter and olive oil. When it starts to smoke, place the scallops in the pan, salted/peppered/sugared side down. Add salt, sugar and pepper to the tops of each scallop.
Cook for 90 seconds. As they cook…
Put all the salad dressing ingredients in a small cup and whisk until smooth.
After 90 seconds, use some tongs to turn each scallop over. Cook for 90 seconds.
As the scallops cook on the other side, place some greens on each plate. Garnish the sides with some grape tomatoes and baby carrots. Drizzle some dressing over the greens on each plate.
After 90 seconds, remove the scallops with some tongs. Make sure the scallops are done. Cooking times can vary according to the heat of your stove and the thickness of the scallops.
Place 4 scallops on top of the greens on each plate. And serve it up.
MANGIAMO!!!
