Pan Fried Scallops with a Sweet and Sour Dipping Sauce

We have a small problem.

When we try something we like, we tend to eat it. A lot.

Great for us. Bad for you, since, y’know, you come here to find out about new recipes. Not the same recipe, over and over and over. Yeah, it’s a hard life being a food blogger.

If you hadn’t guessed by now, from the title. Or the picture. Or my incessant babbling, we’re going to do another scallop dish.

And since I’m the New Englander, of all things sea food, I’m the primary on this, even though we more or less tag-teamed the whole recipe, played mostly by ear.

We started working with sea beans last year. Adding them to an emmer pasta salad, putting them on our daily lunch of salads.

They are a unique taste. Salty, smoky and a condensed leafy green. Slightly tricky to work with, and you definitely need to be careful with the salt in whatever you’re making.

These scallops again come to us care of Oyster Bill and this dish was so good that we again didn’t have any leftovers.

Pan Fried Scallops with a Sweet and Sour Dipping Sauce on a Bed of Sea Beans

Serves 2

• Sea beans, 1 good sized handful per person
• Milk, enough to cover the scallops
• Scallops, 1 lb.
• Panko bread crumbs, as much as you need
• Salt, a pinch or three
• Pepper, a few good sized grinds
• Honey, tablespoon
• Champagne Vinegar, quarter cup

Before we start cooking anything, the scallops need to soak in milk for a little bit. So, put some milk in a bowl and start adding the scallops. Add more milk as you go. If you want to make it a little spicy, maybe add in a shot or two of tabasco to the mix. Now that that’s going, let’s start cooking.

The Sea Beans

Grab a non-stick frying pan, we’re going to use that for most of the recipe.

Add in some oil, or lard, and get it heated up over medium to medium high heat.

Once it’s warmed, throw in the sea beans. If you’re cooking a lot of them, you may need to either cook in shifts or wait for some of the beans to cook down a smidge to let you add more into the pan. You aren’t looking to cook these to soft, you want them to remain crisp. Al dente even. They shouldn’t take more than 5 minutes in the pan. Oh, and I’ll put this in bold: don’t add salt. Trust me, these babies have a great salty quality to them just as they are. They don’t need help. Try one, even raw, and you’ll see what I mean.

After the five minutes in a pan, put them in a bowl for safe keeping. They don’t need to be served warm, they were just as tasty cool, but if you want them warm, a stoneware, ovensafe bowl and an oven on a low temperature should keep them while you cook the scallops.

The Scallops

Spread the panko in a plate, mix in some salt and pepper.

Fold a couple of paper towels and lay the scallops on them, flipping once or twice to soak up excess milk, then transfer to the panko, coating both sides.

Once that’s done, add some oil (or lard) to the frying pan and get it hot. Again, depending upon the size of your pan, you may need to do this in shifts.

Add the scallops to the pan so that they are comfortably spaced. You want to be able to easily flip them. They should take about five minutes a side.

Once the scallops are done, all that is left is the dipping sauce.

The Dipping Sauce

All we need to do is deglaze the pan. Which is a fancy word that means put some liquid in the pan and scrape up the bits and cook it down, so guess what we’re going to do now…

Pour the champagne vinegar and the honey into the pan.

Scrape up the bits with a spatula and cook down the liquid until it’s about half as much as was in there.

Give it a taste, add salt, pepper, or more honey if needed. Or crushed red pepper. Or maybe even smoked paprika.

Plating

We don’t normally talk about plating, because, honestly, we’re not that fancy. We cook, we eat. This recipe, though, is great for presenting and making it look like you’ve done a wonderful thing.

Spread the sea beans on a plate.

Artfully display the scallops atop the beans.

Drizzle with the sauce, and provide extra sauce for dipping if so desired.

Notes: Another possible change for this recipe: caramelized onions mixed into the sea beans.

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Tagged as: Quick, scallops, Sea Beans, seafood