Recipe for today

On one of my adventures in the kitchen, I made Pan-Seared Scallops topped with the Scallion Beurre Blanc sauce from this recipe (maybe next time I'll actually try it with the chicken, but I wanted to do something different since a lot of my recipes include chicken). The scallops were sort of a challenge to myself - I love seafood, but I very rarely make it at home, and when I do, it's usually just cooked frozen shrimp or canned crab meat. Scallops can seem intimidating, because there's a very fine line between undercooked and overcooked, but mine came out really well. I also got to try out the fresh seafood shop down the street. Anyway, I seasoned the scallops with just salt and pepper, and then dredged them in flour. The trick to a good pan sear is to make sure the oil is really hot, and once you put the scallops in, don't move them around. Just let them sit and get that nice golden-brown crust. They only need 1-2 minutes on each side, and will continue to cook once you take them out of the pan, so you want to cook them to just almost done, but not quite.

The beurre blanc sauce was delicious, of course (it's basically butter, how could it not be delicious?), but a little thin - which I notice was a complaint from some of the commenters on the website. It was just fine for the scallops, but it definitely didn't look like Rachael Ray's picture there. I really liked the flavor the scallions added - I've become something of a scallion fan, I think. (I even added them to my eggs the next morning!) The recipe made way more sauce than I needed, so I had it over pasta with shrimp later in the week, which was also rather tasty.