One of my favorite recipes is Scallops with Caramelized Grapefruit-Lime-Rosemary Sauce. It’s unusual, delicious, not difficult to cook, and makes a presentation that will wow your guests. It’s basically a combination of two rather simple sauces
For some of my other shellfish recipes, see here , here, and here.
For the Scallops
Squeeze the juice from two large grapefruits. They should yield 3/4 cup. (If you have extra juice, use it for the salad dressing below.)
Squeeze the grapefruits.
Zest the two limes and set it aside.
Zest the limes.
Squeeze the juice from them in a separate container.
Squeeze the limes.
In a small, heavy saucepan, heat the sugar over high heat.
Caramelize the sugar and rosemary.
When it begins to color, add the sprigs of rosemary, stirring until the sugar is a light-to-medium caramel color. Don’t let it get to the mahogany stage or your sauce will be bitter.
Caramelized sugar.
Avert your face and add the sherry vinegar, stirring until it evaporates. Then add the grapefruit juice, a pinch of sea salt, and some white pepper to taste. Simmer until the juice is reduced to barely 1/2 cup.
Add sherry then juice.
Strain the juice, discarding the rosemary. Set aside.
Strain the rosemary.
Mince the shallot. If there are loose pieces of scallops or any tough muscles remove, but save them. In another small saucepan, cook the shallot with any scraps of scallops over low heat with two tablespoons of unsalted butter until softened but not browned.
Cook the shallots.
Add 3/4 cup of white wine, boil and reduce by one half. Strain the liquid into the above grapefruit-juice sauce.
Strain the shallots.
Add the reserved lime juice.
Combine the juices.
Thoroughly dry the scallops on paper towels so that they brown nicely, and sprinkle lightly with salt and pepper.
Dry the scallops.
If possible use diver scallops (available November-April) or at least dry scallops—never wet scallops that have been soaked in chemicals and will never brown properly.
In a large sauté pan, heat the olive oil until smoking. Add a few scallops. (You don’t want to crowd them or they won’t brown.) Sauté on one side for one and one half to two minutes, just until nicely browned.
Sauté the shallots
Turn and sauté on the other side until browned. You may need some extra olive oil. If you are cooking the scallops in batches, keep the finished ones warm while you continue with the remaining scallops.
In the meantime, bring the reserved juices to a boil and reduce by one half. Off the heat, whisk in six tablespoons of softened unsalted butter, one tablespoon at a time.
Add butter to the sauce.
The Salad and Presentation of Scallops with Caramelized Grapefruit-Lime-Rosemary Sauce
An attractive way of serving Scallops with Caramelized Grapefruit-Lime-Rosemary Sauce is to mound lightly dressed small salad greens in the middle of each plate, and surround them with the scallops. Actually, you should prepare the greens and the dressing before starting the scallop sauces.
Remove the pomegranate seeds and set aside. The best way is to cut a square lid off the top, then quarter the pomegranate along the white webbing. Then you should easily be able to dislodge the seeds.
Cut a square of peel off the top of the pomegranate.
Slice in quarters along the pith.
Wash and dry the salad greens. Whisk together the olive oil, the grapefruit juice, salt and pepper.
Mix the salad greens and the pomegranate seeds. Dress with just enough of the grapefruit juice-olive oil mixture to lightly coat the greens. Mound the salad in the center of your dinner plates.
Arrange the scallops around the greens on plates, and ladle spoonfuls of the grapefruit- lime sauce over them. Sprinkle the scallops with the reserved lime zest.
