Thursday, February 23, 2006
Scallops in Garlic Butter
This morning, I had the dubious pleasure of getting up early enough to catch the traders on Meath Street just after they opened. Shopping-wise this is great. The oversized, underworked bleach-blondes and their overfed, underwashed children tend to not be out before noon, the shopkeepers are still relaxed and chatty (they're always incredibly friendly, but when it gets busy there's just no time for a bit of a natter) and the goods are still fresh and abundant. By early afternoon you generally have to fight your way through crowds of people, navigating ice-cream wielding kids and old ladies with shopping trolleys, only to find that most of the things you came out for are either gone or well squashed.Despite all these clear advantages of morning time shopping, I tend to go after my midday poker tournament. For one, I am not prepared to give up my weekend lay-in. Secondly, if I do things too early, I generally mess them up. I'm just not a morning person. But today I had no choice. Months ago - in October - we bought a bed from Argos. It was relatively cheap, but it wasn't their cheapest, so we expected it to be half decent. Unfortunately, it was sold out and we had to wait for the warehouse to be restocked. The catalogue had claimed that items are generally delivered within two weeks. The lady at the till had extended that to four, answering our question as to why with a smile and a shrug. - By now we have learned that questioning delays, no, let me rephrase, questioning anything in Ireland is an exercise in futility. Life is slow. There is no question why. - After six weeks we received a phone call from an Argos representative apologising that we had still not got our bed, but they were still waiting for the shipment themselves. The bed finally arrived a week before Christmas -- all busted up and ready for the rubbish. They refused to refund part of the money and instead offered to replace the bed. I don't know why we agreed; we should have known it would take forever. It did. It was late January before the deliveryman finally came back round -- with half (!?!) a busted bed. Needless to say, we told him to take that pile of firewood back to where he'd found it and demanded our money back. I'd rather pay twice the price and have a good bed delivered when I need it. And in the future, I really don't want to have anything to do with Argos anymore. The two lamps we got from them lasted two months before they were ready for the skip, our CD shelves are bending under the weight of the CDs they were designed to hold and the few kitchen utensils we bought there were rubbish before I even unwrapped them. Anyway, the reason I'm telling you all this is that Argos finally got round to picking up their busted bed on Saturday morning. So we were up long before our usual weekend time of 10 a.m. and I had all the time in the world to shop.
I headed to Me
ath Street first to see what's on offer at the fish store. It must have been my lucky day; he had very nice looking Dublin bay prawns as well as Scallops in the shell for 50 cents apiece. Obviously, I couldn't resist and bought eight, something I regretted greatly. They were so good, we should have had at least a dozen! But I got a lemon sole to go with them and together they made a yummy fish dinner.The lady at temple bar market was almost sold out ag
ain. This is not surprising considering that she grows all her own crops and February is not exactly the most productive month in a farmer's calendar. I really have to make a point of going out earlier to the market. The problem there is that I would either miss my morning poker tourney or all the good bargains on Meath Street. 
But after weeks of having nothing but a number of different kinds of cabbage, I'm starting to believe that it would be worth it.Today I got lucky, though. She still had enough of the right vegetables to complement the fish - some little red-skinned potatoes, some spinach, some Brussel tops and lots of baby carrots. I particularly love those. They're all crunchy and sweet, great to stew with a knob of butter and a pinch of sugar to bring out their flavour. But that's a recipe for another day.
Tonight we had a proper prawn cocktail followed by the scallops. There isn't much to say about the starter that I haven't already said a few days ago. The only thing is that Dublin bay prawns can be a bit watery. If this is the case, fry them with a bit of olive oil in a large, shallow pan over high heat until they are beginning to crisp up. You can add a bit of garlic, but don't overdo it. Their flavour is quite subtle and can easily be drowned out by too many extras.
The same cannot be said about good quality scallops. I'm not saying that they have a strong flavour, but somehow they were made to be smothered in heaps of garlic butter. It doesn't matter how much of the smelly stuff you pour on them, as long as they're cooked right, they will taste divine.
8 to 10 large scallops with the roe (get more scallops if you agreewith Gordon Ramsey that the roe is for cat food)
3 to 4 tbsp olive oil
a big knob of butter, about 50 g
4 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
a few parsley leaves, chopped (optional)
coarse sea salt and lemon wedges to serve
To cook the scallops, heat the oil in a large, shallow frying pan until it starts to sizzle. Place the scallops in the hot pan. Do not move, shake or otherwise disturb them for at least one minute. They need this time to form a sticky crust on the underside, about 1 to 1½ minutes.
Once coloured with deep tinges on their border, turn them over and continue to cook for a further 1-1½ minutes. The scallops will be cooked medium-rare. Season each with a few granules of sea salt, and place to one side.
Make sure the pan is still hot, then add the butter. It should start to melt immediately. When it starts to foam add the garlic and parsley. Swirl around the pan once or twice, then pour it over the scallops. Serve with the lemon wedges.
The scallops are lovely on their own accompanied by nothing more than crusty grilled ciabatta bread to soak up the sticky yumminess of the garlic butter and the caramelised scallop juice and maybe a side salad. But as I said, we had it as part of a whole fish dinner, with the pan fried sole, roast baby potatoes, spinach and grilled green garlic.
Christine at 9:28 pm
