Scallops in brown butter sauce with fr0zen seasonable vegetables
I recently went on the Paleo diet, aka caveman diet cause my sixpack turned into a tupac. In any case, I found this recipe, and wanted to share. It's on the diet. It's all about low carbs.
The first thing you need to do is brown the butter. I've never done that before, so it seemed weird. I remember always trying to crack the eggs in the pan fast BEFORE the butter browned, or burnt.
But there's another way. What I did is take a whole cube of butter. You have to divide it by ten. Just take a butter knife (of course) and cut it into 10 equal portions. Put it into a small 6 inch pan or equivalent. Put it over medium heat. Let it cook. It surprisingly takes a long time to boil, at least on my ancient stove, yours might be different. But when it starts to sizzle, start stirring frequently. Keep it on medium, though, don't indulge the temptation to turn the heat up to accelerate the maturity. That's the key. You want to keep cooking it until it gets to a light brown color. It's going to look kinda gross and there's going to be brown suspension-ish particles in there. But persevere.
The acid test is when you start getting thick rich chestnut aroma, that's when it's ready. Pull out a ceramic bowl and pour the brown butter in it.
Now heat up a non-stick pan, or as DiracPool did, a cast iron skillet with those ridges in it so you get the grill marks. You can either put in a tablespoon of oil, or what I did is pour a little extra virgin olive oil on a paper towel, and rub the surface. Put it on medium high heat and wait until it gets real hot. The acid test is when you toss some tap water on it, it obnoxiously sizzles.
What I do at this point is just dump a bunch of Sea Salt and freshly ground pepper on a regular dish plate and dump the scallops on them. Before I do that, though, I made sure that I bought the big Sea Scallops from the store. I live in WA state, so you can find these at Top food and local butcher shops. There a little pricey. I paid about $22 USA dollars for a little over a pound.
{INSIDER TIP} Make sure the butcher takes the time to drain the water from the scallops before putting them in the bag. As physicists we know water is heavy, and at 20 bucks a pound, you don't don't want heavy water in your scallop bag. It's both art and science trying to not look cheap coaxing your butcher to drain the liquid from the scallops...But I digress.
Ok, back to the kitchen. Now you want to rinse the scallops in cold water. After that, dump them into a paper towel and dry them off as best you can. Then dump them onto the salt and pepper plate. By this time the cast iron griddle should be sizzling. Dump the scallops on the grill and let them cook for 3-4 minutes. It might get a little frothy cause their is still going to be some water retension, but you just dump that out.
Ok, now here's the money shot. After 3-4 minutes, turn the scallops over and dump in the browned butter sauce. {INSIDER TIP} In all the recipe's online that's what they say, but in practice you just shuffle them around with the spatula. There's too many little guys to properly turn over without going nuts.
Ok, now, what I did at this point is shake some tarragon, some thyme, and some rosemary into the pan. About a tablespoon of each. I did those portions clumsily, but it worked.
Let that concoction sizzle for about another minute or two, and remove from the stove.
For the veggies is just got one of those frozen stir fry veggie bags and followed the directions, which is basically just dump it in a 10 inch skillet, cover, put on medium high heat, and let simmer for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Add the veggies to the scallops on the same plate and Bon appetite.