Culinary school: Scallops

Day 14, Wednesday, July 7, 2010 continued...

I seared the scallop, watching the bottom slowly turn white. Once the color white creeped its way up a third of the scallop, I turned it over. The scallop had browned nicely.

Chef X had said the top one-third should be white, the middle should be clear, and the bottom one-third should be white.

I had stopped ordering scallops at restaurants because they never seemed to taste like anything, and I was curious how these three scallops would taste. 

The butter I dropped in the pan began to brown, and I basted the scallops with it. I drained them on paper towels.

We had made a parsley sauce with garlic and shallots. I put three blobs of the parsley sauce on a plate, spreading them out with a spoon and making them look like comets. I put one scallop at the head of each whirlie.

The plate looked messy, but I presented it anyway. Chef X took a knife and sliced a scallop. He saw the layers of white, clear, white.

"Good," he said.

I put the plate on my cutting board and took a bite of the scallop. Its texture was soft and I could taste its subtlety. If scallops were supposed to taste like this, I'd make them all the time.

There was still one scallop I hadn't cooked. We only needed to present a minimum of three. I took the plate and asked Chef L what to do with the salt-and-peppered raw scallop.

"Don't come back here and try to give it back," she said. "Cook it. Eat it."

So I did, and I cooked another classmate's scallop, too.
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