Today's recipe is a very "predictable" one, very commonly found in restaurant menus - "Seared scallops with fennel salad". It can be really boring dish, but with a few additional ingredients with pretty colors and flavors, you can elevate it to a simple but exciting dish. With help from blood orange, meyer lemon and a bit of chopped parsley, you can impress your guests!
Seared Scallops with Meyer Lemon Beurre Blanc
served with Blood Orange Fennel Salad
(Yield: 4 servings / Cooking time: 45 min)
The recipe includes three individual recipes; (1) Seared scallops (which I have covered a few times already in this blog), (2) Meyer lemon beurre blanc, and (3)Blood orange fennel salad.
Let's start with the salad first...
Blood orange fennel salad
Ingredients:
+ 1 fennel bulb
+ 2 blood oranges
+ 50ml extra virgin olive oil
+ 20ml balsamic vinegar
+ chopped parsley
+ salt and pepper for seasoning
Procedures:
1. Slice fennel bulb lengthwise very thinly – ideally, use Japanese mandolin, and put the slices in ice water. Ice water makes the fennel slice more crisp and curly. However, if the slices of fennel are left too long in ice water, the flavor can be diluted. Once the fennel slices become curly, take them out and dry with a salad spinner or paper towel.
Slice the fennel into a bowl of ice water.
Curly fennel slices
2. Make blood orange segments*. Keep the juice.
* Please refer to my previous posting on June 7th, 2010 "Impress others with a simple presentation" to see how to make citrus segments (suprême).
! STOP here, and make beurre blanc sauce and sear the scallops. Please remember that you always dress the salad right before serving.
3. Toss the blood orange juice & segments, chopped parsley, balsamic vinegar and extra virgin olive oil with fennel slices right before serving. Season with salt and pepper.
Meyer lemon beurre blanc
Ingredients:
+ 1/2 shallot, brunoise
+ 2 meyer lemon (juice and long curly zest)*
+ 25 ml heavy cream
+ 50 ml white wine vinegar
+ 100 ml dry white wine
+ 60g small cubed unsalted butter (about half stick)**
+ 1 spring of thyme
+ salt and pepper for seasoning
* Curly zest can be made with lemon zester.
** Traditional beurre blanc recipe, which doesn't have meyer lemon a an ingredient, requires much more butters. In this recipe, as the meyer lemon juice is reduced it thickens like syrup, and the thick texture will help the sauce to reach to the desired sauce texture before adding a lot of butter.
Procedures:
1. In a sauce pan, combine shallot, a spring of thyme, white wine and white wine vinegar. Reduce the mixture by half over medium heat. Strain the liquid to remove shallot and thyme.
2.Add about 50 ml meyer lemon juice and reduce again by half. The liquid should be a bit syrupy.
3. Lower the heat to low, add heavy cream and let the liquid simmer for a minute. Start adding cubed unsalted butter one by one while whisking thoroughly with sauce whisk. Add more cubes after all the butters are incorporated to the liquid until the sauce has desirable thickness and taste.
4. Season with salt and pepper and keep it warm*.
* If you add too much butter or if you keep the sauce too cold or too hot, the butter and liquid will separate. This is referred to as a situation where "the sauce is broken". If the sauce is broken, you can feel that the texture is not smooth but oily.
Seared scallops
Ingredients:
+ 8 large dry* scallops
+ Oil (grape seed oil**)
+ salt and pepper for seasoning
* You should see a label if the scallops are "dry" or "wet" from seafood market. Wet scallops are soaked in liquid solution which make the scallops weigh more and gives more shelf time. This liquid soaked scallops are hard to sear due to the high water contents. Bottom line: always buy dry scallops if available.
** The scallops are usually seared with clarified butter. However, in this recipe, because the scallops are served with butter sauce, I am going to use neutral oil, such as grape seed oil, to sear the scallops.
Procedures:
1. Clean the scallops – sometimes the scallops has a muscle attached at the edge. Gently remove the muscle.
2. Season the scallops with salt and pepper, both sides.
3. Heat your pan with high heat, and add oil when the pan is very hot. After the oil is heated (2-3 seconds), add scallops to the pan. Make sure not to add too many scallops at a time. If the pan is too crowded with scallops, the scallops are going to be steamed not seared.
4. Once the bottoms turn dark brown, flip the scallops and sear the other sides also until the surfaces become dark brown. Please do not flip the scallops more than once.
5. Place your seared scallops over wired rack or paper towel to drain the excess oil. Cover loosely with cooking foil to keep them warm and moist until use.
Plating
Place two scallops on each plate, with salad aside. Spoon meyer lemon beurre blanc sauce (~1 or 2 tsp) over the scallops and decorate with a curly meyer lemon zest.
Enjoy~
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