Seasonal Scallops Order

At this time of year, i.e. the interregnum between Christmas and Springtime, it's easy to find things difficult with the short days and chilly weather. Some people call this Seasonal Affective Disorder and others the Winter Blues. Either way the experts say one of the best ways to combat it is to eat lots of green vegetables and seafood.

The Sunday Dinner I had in mind combined both these ingredients with a tasteful sauce thrown in as part of the bargain. Often I find that my weekend dinners consist of binging on Cheese and Crackers after a morning walk with my mouthy Terrier. Sometimes it's good to break the mould though and, as a good friend of mine often says, get out of my comfort zone.

If the recipe was something out of the ordinary for my Sunday Lunch, the choice of music wasn't. Sometimes at this time of year or when I think the chips could be stacked against me, or both, I'll go back to familiar things from my past and so the album on the player was Dire Straits' 1984 double live record "Alchemy" that I purchased one dark and wet February as a fifteen-year old about to survive his GCSEs. It's an album that is still top drawer after all this time and with Mark Knopfler's Guitar sounding like a highly amplified Spanish Guitar throughout proceedings what isn't there to like about it?

Scallops are food that's the province of specialist and generally high end restaurants. I'd first tasted them several years previously at a long defunct country pub and then again a few years later in Glasgow at a specialist seafood restaurant with an exciting companion and a bottle of champagne. In the food budget of a (fairly) young homeowner they can make a little bit of a dent but expensive luxury that they are, one of my New Year's Resolutions has been to save more but spend money on good quality food instead of other more trivial things.

These Scallops had come from the seaside via my freezer and I defrosted them by rinsing them thoroughly in a colander which in turn stopped them from sticking together.

While the Scallops defrosted I laid out four large Lettuce leaves on a dinner plate, having first washed them, the Lettuce came from my local independent fruit and veg shop that generally runs rings round the local supermarkets in terms of price, quality and variety.

Next I lightly fried the Scallops in a small amount of sunflower oil in a frying pan for ten minutes while turning them occasionally to stop them sticking to the bottom of it.

In between turning the Scallops I made a sauce. I did this by melting three ounces of Margarine in a sauce pan and then mixing two ounces of chopped chives, a pinch of Black Pepper, a pinch of Mustard, the zest of one Lemon a tablespoon of White Wine Vinegar and four ounces of Pine Nuts into the Margarine. This created a rich sauce that contained at least one super food.

I warmed the sauce through and then put the Scallops, once cooked, onto the Lettuce and poured the sauce evenly on top of them. As I sat in the conservatory watching the rain close in from the hills I started my lunch. The flavoursome and fresh taste of the Scallops coupled with the, local Lettuce, Pine Nuts and the rest of the sauce made this feel a healthy yet delicious lunch that was a departure from the norm. A sign of things to come perhaps?

Golden Globes: the Scallops taste best when smothered in this sauce.