This shellfish looks beautiful and make beautiful dishes. Hotate (scallops) from Hokkaido. I’ve associated them with ume, the sour green plums of rainy season
Well, they were very full. I discard the black part, clean well and keep the strings and bits for a soup.
I just cut the “nut” , painted with olive oil and grilled.
Served with ume pesto :
Paste a raw ume plum, fresh oregano, roast sesame seed, a little salt. Add olive oil and cane sugar.
Then enjoy a sip of broth. Mmmmm…
Another simple Japanese rice. A delicate seafood like scallop shines in this kind of dish. If you want others see this (click on text):
I had scallops a bit… aged, their juice was getting out. In the rice cooker, I have added to the rice the juice from the scallops to the rice, a little mirin, soy sauce, a red chili, a few bits of leek. I have added the scallops 10 minutes before the end.
Chervil for the green touch.
Another scallop appetizer, very simple and tasty. That’s the 5th and last for that day and that set.
The rest of the series of scallops in their shell :
An old anecdote… That was at work and we were “dispatched” in a company that also owned a (pretentious ?) little restaurant. Probably they were good cooks, I can’t tell. Mr. Boss was really huge with all the health problems that come with over-weight. At that time, he was on a strict. Surprisingly, he invited us for lunch. That could have been nice, but he had chosen the menu and everybody was served the same as himself. The main dish was a sealed shell like this, served on a pile of 3 huge precious plates, on superb table cloth, with silver cutlery, in a dining-room where you can’t help thinking “Oh my, what happens if I let anything fall on that white carpet that seem to be made of silk. Our lunch was just that. Oh, 3 leaves of cute bonsai salads that came before. No bread on the table (too much temptation for the dietomane). Carbonated water, and flat water, in heavy crystal glasses. 3 glasses for water. Isn’t that chic ? The third to make a cocktail of the 2 liquids, I guess.
There was a dessert, to make it totally cynical : a plate of fruits with half a lichee, a slice of grapefruit and a cherry. The meal was lasting eternally. You know, that was as grand-ma said : take your time, eat slowly, enjoy conversation, don’t stuff your face. We ate every leaf of parsley, every crumb of the sealing dough, the stalk of the cherry and the rind of grapefruit -they said it was organic. That was not that bad as we had a chunk of sugar and a Creap (faux cream) with coffee.
And after that, no more time to eat our bento lunch boxes, we were good for 8 hours of hunger, well of work, plus 20 looong minutes of greetings… and then as soon I was in the street I sprinted to the nearest takoyaki booth and devored dozens.
The scallop and a set of veggies.
Yellow paprika, parsley, peel of yuzu citrus, a few bits of raw ginger.
Nanohana, it’s rape green blossoms.
Wet that with awamori, the sticky rice alcohol popular in Okinawa. It’s sweet and fruity. If you are adventurous, there is this : a condiment made of the same alcohol and small Okinawan (fierce) small chilis.
Seal with dough. I just mixed flour and water and I don’t eat it, but you can use pastry dough and then it can be eaten.
Then bake 10 to 15 minutes in a very hot oven. At 10, it’s rare and the dough is under-cooked (not eatable). At 15, it’s well done and the dough is good to be eaten. I prefer my shellfish rare, which is why I don’t try to eat the dough. If you use frozen shellfish, you can put them frozen and get them rare at the time the dough is OK.
Then you open… and it’s full of fragrances.
Just add salt and a few drops of argan oil (fragrant sesame oil otherwise).
Serve with a glass of chilled San Pellegr… I’m kidding. You should have some awamori left.
It’s really fine… to start a meal.
Hokkaido on the table. kaibara no shoyu-bataa yaki
They do some surveys about how people prefer their pizza, and it’s with cheese, how they prefer their burgers, and it’s with cheese, and how they prefer their scallops… well, you’ll be surprised, it’s not with cheese.
(click on the link to buy that paint)
Well the star of the scallops is :
… with butter (bataa).
Yes, with butter.
And with sweet corn. The thing is butter, sweet corn and scallops are three produces of Hokkaido.
kaibashira, or hotate, or hotategai… it’s scallop. The same animal. Normally, the first name is only for the white part, but not everybody makes the difference.
Shoyu is soy sauce, and butter. So roasted in soy sauce and butter. Often this recipe is done outdoor on the barbecue. I did in my oven-toaster with the door open.
Outdoor, you put the shell on the fire and you add the sauce and butter when it opens up.
If possible clean out the stomach with a knife. It is not compulsory, you can usually manage to do that after. As I was not barbecue-ing in the woods, I did it before and added the roes I didn’t use from other scallops.
The corn was reheated at the same time. Add a little more butter when serving.
Well… people are right. It is de-li-cious. The best ? Could be.
The rest of the series of scallops in their shell :
I know you had not enough recipes for scallops, so I will give one everyday, like for soup. And this blog will become “soup and scallops in Osaka”. It could be… Actually, I got a few -a bargain- and I ate them the same day but I prepared each shell differently, just for fun. So you get the series.
3 ingredients : egg, miso, sake.
Let’s say porportion would 1 ts of miso, 3 tbs of sake and 1 egg. That
would be enough for 4 shells, so I took a quail egg.
Beat well the sauce, pour it in the shell (cleaned from stomach, emptied from water). And roast on barbecue. That was oven toaster, door opened. Any table brasero or plancha you have can do the trick as you only need to cook them a few minutes (3 minutes this time).
It’s done when it’s creamy like that.
Serve hot with shichimi-togarashi (7 spice mix) and sudachi lemon.
As you can see, I had an orphaned quail egg and added it. That’s not classical but I loved it. It was less salty than usual.
Anyway you’ll be thirsty, it’s still salty. So serve :
A CUP OF WARM SAKE.
It’s a delicious Winter appetizer.
The rest of the series of scallops in their shell :
GOURMANDE in OSAKA 