Happy Baked Sea Scallops!

Dinner: January 6, 2009
Originally uploaded by whatstepheats

These scallops were originally intended to be part of a Christmas Eve pasta dish, but the man threw a little fit - insisting that the pasta be made with shrimp, not scallops, because that's how he remembered it from his childhood - so what could I do but relegate these succulent sea scallops to a temporary freeze and rush out to get some shrimp. I found the Salvation Army bells (and the rest of the human race) especially grating that afternoon. I wanted to hit the bell-ringer over the head with his instruments, in fact! Bah, humbug. Hey, I'm human.

We all get a little nuts around the holidays. I can't hold it against the Dinnerman, who can be rather volatile on a good day. Our life histories have ways of surfacing when we least expect them to, in ways we could never anticipate. Mom and dad may have tried their bests, but often what's embedded in the grown-up psyches of their posterity is not what they had planned. I am no stranger to this dynamic. He (or she) who is without blame...right? That's not me. My day-to-day is more often than not speckled with hauntings of my past.

So admittedly, the Christmas Eve shrimp linguini dish I made was made with a little more angst than love. It wasn't one of my best efforts, to say the least.

But these scallops last night? These babies are another chapter entirely. I thawed them out and they smelled so sweet.
I was actually looking forward to cooking as I hadn't been doing much in the way of cooking this past week.

So, when I got home from my first spinning class of 2009, I got to 'work'. I popped some red potatoes in the oven first. I wanted to taste that crispy skin.

Then I spread the scallops on a baking sheet and drizzled a tiny bit of olive oil on them. They got a dusting of the pistachio panko crumbs I am fond of from Whole Foods, and a pat or two of butter. Into the oven they went!

While the scallops cooked and perfumed our home with their sweet, sweet perfume, I prepared a salad of romaine lettuce, red onion, chick peas, grated carrot, thinly sliced jalapenos, tangerine zest, tangerine supremes, olive oil, and a splash of cider vinegar.

Yumminess on a plate!