Pasta with Scallops

Another favorite, and made much more frequently than other seafood pastas in this collection simply because of the availability of quality scallops over many other kinds of shellfish. If I lived closer to clean water, I might do different. I use clam juice to form the basis of this sauce; this is different from the cooking liquid above because it is the raw juice from freshly shucked clams, not the liquid in which they cook. If you’re shucking them yourself for another recipe, by all means use fresh; otherwise, try to find a bottle of something that seems high-quality. Otherwise any shellfish stock would do wonderfully, so feel free to use that shrimp or lobster stock you have in the freezer.

And of course, get the best quality scallops you can find and accept nothing less than incredibly fresh. (Here’s a general rule of thumb – with something like this recipe, and many others like it in this collection, think of it as something to turn to if you happen to be in the market and the scallops look amazing, so you buy them and need something to do with them. If you read this recipe and decide to make it because it sounds good, then head out to find all the ingredients and you end up settling for less than superior quality scallops, you’re defeating the purpose of everything I’ve set out to do. Let the market determine what you eat that night as much as your personal hankering for whatever.) All this being said, the good news is that good-quality, fresh diver scallops are pretty easy to find, especially during the winter months. This should go without saying, but you want dry scallops. If you don’t know the difference between dry and wet scallops, click here.

Since the scallops kind of sit on top of this dish and aren’t thoroughly incorporated into the sauce, a long pasta like spaghetti or linguini is preferable.

Ingredients:

• 1 large shallot, chopped fine
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 8 large diver scallops
• 8 oz clam juice
• 2 oz white wine or vermouth
• 1 TBS high heat oil, such as sunflower or safflower
• 1 TBS olive oil
• ¼ cup parsley, chopped
• 1 sprig fresh thyme
• 2 TBS butter
• 1 tsp red pepper flakes
• juice of ½ lemon
• 2/3^rd box of linguini
• salt and pepper

Directions:

Put a large pot of water on to boil.

Begin by mincing the shallot and garlic; hold them together on one side of your cutting board and wipe the rest down, leaving a work-space for your scallops. Or, if your cutting board is small, remove the shallot-garlic mixture to a bowl and wipe down your cutting board.

Begin with the scallops by removing the small muscle that is attached to the side of each scallop, then discarding it. Rinse the scallops well to remove any sand (even if it seems they contain none) and dry very thoroughly with paper towels. Lay them out on your cutting board, standing them up on the flat side (if they were a coin, they would be lying on their face, not their side). Mould them into place if necessary – but if they’re very very fresh they should be firm and will stand up on their own. Film the bottom of a heavy skillet (ideal is a good quality non-stick skillet, but anything heavy duty will do) with safflower oil and turn the heat on to high. You want this to get quite hot. While it is heating, rain salt and pepper on the scallops, turn them over and repeat. When the oil in the pan is just smoking at its edges, place the scallops in the pan, one by one, face side down. Do not touch them. After about 30 seconds to 1 minute (you’ll have to use your judgment) the scallops are ready to flip. They should have a wonderful crisp brown crust on them, and should be just about half-way cooked through. Gently turn them over using tongs or a fish spatula and leave on for another minute or so – you’ve got more leeway on this side, since the first side is all about giving them a great sear and the second side is about cooking them through (but not over-cooking them). The side with the great sear, obviously, will be the side facing up when you serve them.

When the scallops are done, remove them to a small dish or bowl (you want something that will collect the juices they exude, as you’ll need these later). Keep the bowl near the stove so it will stay warmish. Deglaze the pan with the white wine, scraping the bottom to lift all of the fond up into the liquid. There should be these really great brown circles surrounding where each scallop sat – make sure you complete scrape these up. When the wine has almost completely evaporated, add the olive oil and the shallots and garlic. You may reduce the heat at this point if it’s still really screaming hot. You don’t want the shallots to burn of course, or to color too much at all. Cook them till they’re soft, then add the clam juice and bring to a brisk boil. Add the black and red pepper, leaves from the thyme sprig, half the lemon juice, and reduce by about a third.

At the point where it is reduced by about this much, add the butter and stir to incorporate. Continue to cook briskly but be careful not to reduce it by too much so it disappears. At the point that you add the butter you can probably start the pasta.

Drain and add the pasta to the happily bubbling sauce when it is about two minutes away from done. Reserve some cooking water and add this in tablespoons at a time if necessary. This is really an important technique for finishing a lot of pasta dishes – cooking the pasta in the sauce initiates a mutually beneficial exchange as the sauce infuses the pasta and the pasta bleeds starch into the sauce. You’ll have to get good at sort of judging how liquidy a sauce should be at the outset of this phase so the pasta itself doesn’t overcook while the liquid is reducing on one hand nor stick to the bottom because it has dried up on the other. The good news is it’s not hard to master, and relatively forgiving, as long as your push or pull in any given direction isn’t too severe. When the pasta is about a minute away, add the scallops and any liquid that they’ve exuded to the sauce, along with the parsley, and stir to combine. Drain the pasta when it’s finished and add it to the sauce. Sprinkle the remaining lemon juice on top, tossing to combine. Serve the pasta into bowls without scallops, then remove the scallops from the mixture and place on top of the pasta, seared side up.

You don’t need to serve with cheese, but since scallops are robust enough – like lobster – they can stand a bit of parmiggiano reggiano if that’s what you like.

Alternatively, this dish can be made with bay scallops, with the following changes: instead of placing the scallops reverently in a pan to sear, place them in olive oil (no need for high heat) and cook with salt and pepper, stirring constantly, for about 1 minute until they’re done. At the end, do keep them mixed into the sauce, not separated out. It’s quite good this way too.