Grilled Orange Butter Scallops

I realised two things while preparing this meal: grilling scallops is made easy by the use of skewers and butter flavoured with oranges could make a really delectable topping for fresh crepes. But the crepes aren't the focus here. The scallops are.

I took this recipe from The Great Scallop and Oyster Cookbook. It's chocful of recipes for baked, grilled, raw and other preparations for these shellfish. I've also got another cookbook from the same series for mussels and clams.

There's really nothing surprising about the recipe I used. Skewer a bunch of scallops (a lady was selling them at work by the hug bag full). For the orange butter, all you need is the juice and zest of one large orange, 1 tsp of brown sugar and 1/2 cup of butter. Simple and great when basted and charred on the grill.

For the pasta, I basically repeated the flavour of the orange in a sort of simple orange sauce vierge with tomatoes, zucchini, spaghettini and parmesan. All and all, it was a nice, well balances supper.

Three Strikes Against Homemade Pasta

Turns out homemade pasta is really hard to make. The recipe in the italian cookbook you see at the left says that the basic recipe for pasta is 1 cup of flour for every egg with 1/4 tsp of oil and a pinch of salt. With two cups of flour, I had to use 3 eggs. Strike one.

After that, it was kneading time or, in other words, forearm workout. The dough ended up pretty smooth and elastic but sadly I didn't roll it thin enough. Strike two. My attempts were made with a rolling pin...now I know why I was advised not to try making homemade pasta without a pasta maker. It would have been much easier to feed in the dough and turn a crank. Needless to say we didn't eat it, which would be strike three.

Accompanying the pasta was a Sauce Vierge (literally meaning "virgin sauce" in French) which I found in the Cordon Bleu Professional Cooking book. This textbook set me back about $90 Canadian but it was well worth the buy even though I can't try everything or it would send my food budget through the roof. Anyways, the sauce is very good. Its sharp, tangy taste is mellowed out by the olive oil and tender tomatoes. Here's the recipe.

Sauce Vierge

7oz 200ml Olive oil

4oz 110ml Lemon juice

2tsp 7g Garlic, chopped

1 tbsp 7g Basil, chopped

51/2oz 160g Tomatoes, peeled, seeded and diced

2oz 50g Black olives, diced

Salt

pepper

Hot pepper sauce

1. Warm olive oil

2. Add other ingredients

3. Serve warm over pasta