To me, scallops cooked any way are a treat. But while you might think that finding big, juicy, sustainable ones in Montreal would be easy, the odd truth is that I usually eat more scallops when I come to Tucson, Arizona. That’s why it took me ages to make the scallop crudo with orange segments and mint appetizer from Becky Selengut’s excellent sustainable seafood cookbook “Good Fish.” It’s also why I went all in and made her seared scallops with carrot purée, pickled carrots, and herb oil (two pages later) as the main course.
Quick aside on sustainability
There may or may not be issues with dredging Atlantic scallops. I’m not sure about the sustainability of the not-so-far-away Digby Scallops from Nova Scotia and all the lovely scallops you can find coming from the Boston fish market, but the MSC says some are fine. Some used to be questionable because dredging the waters to harvest the scallops destroyed the habitat for other sea life. I hope the sustainability certification means that’s no longer the case.
Why Arizona seafood over Montreal?
Because the Arizona scallops are plumper, sometimes fresher depending on where you’re buying in Montreal, are less expensive, less watery when seared, and are labelled sustainable. I really hate it when you spend $40 on a pound of scallops and then half their volume evaporates when you cook them and you end up with morsels of seafood into thick, juicy hockey pucks. (I bet I sounded really un-Canadian for a paragraph there until the hockey simile…).
More about delicious things including scallop crudo
The truth is I’ve only made a handful of crudo recipes of any kind in my life, and most of what I have made has been Peruvian-style ceviche or cured salmon or other fish. Why so little? I’m still scared of using low-quality fish and of contamination. The hypocritical part is that I was quite content to gallivant around Lima, Peru, eating all the ceviche I could find (preferably sustainable, but there weren’t exactly fishers around the metropolitan area to verify). And that was before and after getting sick from the water at least once.
But last night, safely arrived back in Tucson for the holidays, I went to Sprouts Market and saw the most luscious, giant sea scallops like I never see in Montreal. (To be fair, you can get them in Montreal, but they’re usually water-packed and about $30 a pound or so, so I just can’t justify buying it when I know I’ll lose so much of the weight in water…or go broke.)
This crudo recipe really does need top-shelf seafood, though, because the fish isn’t marinated in acid, vinegar or salt at all before eating. You’ve got small pieces of supreme orange, minced mint (it’s dark in the picture because I used frozen garden mint), and a little extra virgin olive oil. I must have forgotten to season to taste somewhere in the recipe because my version was horribly bland until I generously sprinkled in salt and toss it all together. My slicing job wasn’t the best either, but that’s because I was too impatient to wait the full 20 minutes for the scallops to partially solidify in the freezer, which makes it easier to slice the scallops thinly (if you’re not a Japanese knife master, which I am clearly not).
The seared scallops, though – those I can handle. If I have a good frying pan, which I actually did this time.
Sorry I don’t have a photo of this one, but the scallops were so plump and warm that there was no choice but to eat them immediately. I got a great sear on these jumbo bivalves, and on that simple orange purée (even substituting almond breeze for the dairy, it’s still great) with some quick-pickled carrots strips, it was heaven. I’ll deinfitely make the carrot mash/purée again because it’s four ingredients and two of them are salt and pepper. And I already mentioned the other two. The art is in the method.
What about the mezcal?
Right, I was getting to that. I didn’t drink the mezcal with the scallops, but I could have. The smokiness would have been fine, and it would probably have made the scallops extra safe by soaking in high-proof alcohol in my stomach… but the mezcal came later. Really, the connection is that mezcal is just another delicious thing that I can’t get a great supply of in Montreal. While Clandestino holds down the fort bar-wise, the SAQ just doesn’t have the same selection as Arizona. That makes sense as I’m currently not far from the Mexican border, and Tucson even has its own distilled agave drink tradition, which I’ve written about before.
These three, though, were a bit of a whim.
The 400 Coñejos and Yuu Baal are both very affordable, at least in Arizona. And the El Pintor is just something I don’t think I’ll ever find in Montreal. I looked for sustainability, different agave varieties and small productions. Success, I’d say.
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