Coquilles Saint-Jacques with Champagne
Les Halles Cookbook, page 106
I’m honestly getting a little tired complementing this book in the form of, “if you source your ingredients locally, use what’s fresh and don’t try to dress up your food in fourteen layers of flavors, you’ll most likely turn out a decent dish.” I’m not though. Tonight’s scallops in a champagne sauce might be the crown jewel of Les Halles (thus far). I’m still not altogether sure whether it was the recipe (while brilliant, easy and altogether obvious in hindsight = I love scallops, I love champagne, cream is mighty tasty as well!), or the diver scallops procured at a bargain twice the price (23.99/lb) by my lovely wife. The texture, searing and sauce came together like magic this evening, and dining outside amidst 75 degree evening weather made it all the better. And to top it off, the recipe only used 1/2 cup of champagne! That stuff doesn’t keep friend!
Oh Kevin, you obviously aren’t reading through the recipe lines. A half a cup of champagne added to any recipe is merely an excuse to buy a bottle of bubbly and drink it. Silly toodie.
I cannot sit here and honestly say that this recipe didn’t have it’s hang-ups. I was most excited to deglaze our pan upon completing the scallop searing with God’s bubbly nectar. The problem arose in the fact that we opted to ignore the whole, “clarified butter part.” The deglazing was honestly a disaster with black (not brown) chunks of burnt scallops swimming amidst a bubbling champagne as if struggling for life.
OHMIGOD. Kevin, thought that the brown chunks were from our pan, like the actual elements of the pan. No. I was supposed to clarify the butter. But I didn’t. So the brown bits were the burnt butter fat. Not “chunks” from my beloved orange cast iron 8inch Le Creuset skillet. No. Again we had to have this conversation.
“Hey, who’s in culinary school?”
“I know but…”
“No. No buts. Me. I’MMMMMMMM in culinary school.”
It’s my trump card.
Anyway, scraping that operation altogether, we restarted with a fresh nob of butter, added a new 1/2 cup of champagne (sigh) and begin anew. The end result was a fantastic sauce of citrus, bubbly and cream. What scallop wouldn’t love that end?
Recipe Ease 9
Time 8
Make again 9, save for the price of sea scallops, dang ya’ll they expensive
