Scallop

This recipe is a great example of how to prepare a classic French dinner in minutes and in only one pan.

If you love spicy food, this dish is for you. The combination of blackening spice and chutney will tantalize your taste buds.

The traditional zuppa di pesce that you most likely encountered in Italian-American restaurants was based on garlic and tomato sauce, which was simmered along with assorted fish to make a savory dish. Sometimes the sauce was used to dress pasta, and the shellfish and fin fish would be enjoyed as a second course. This version is more in a brodetto style, lighter and clearer than the traditional version, with saffron as a flavoring ingredient. This kind of preparation can be found with slight variations along the entire coast of Italy from Liguria to the Adriatic coast to the heel, Puglia, and the island of Sicily. I have given you the recipe with fish fillets, although traditionally zuppa di pesce is made with slices of whole fish with bones and skin intact. But it is tricky to eat that way, even though the flavor is more complex.

I came up with this one because we always have sweet vermouth on hand to make Manhattans, but we use it for nothing else. It’s a big bottle. This sauce is so good that we may actually need to get another bottle one day soon! (Who knew you could make such a sexy meal so simply? Hey, there are some things you should never be too tired for, wink-wink, nudge-nudge!)

Serve with a green salad.

These scallops are first cooked sous vide and then finished in a hot sauté pan. (Sous vide, or “under vacuum,” is a technique where foods are vacuum sealed in food-grade plastic bags, then cooked slowly in a circulating hot water bath at precise temperatures; see a fuller discussion on page 199.) In all of our recipes using sous vide, we give you the option of substituting a zip-top bag for a vacuum-sealed one; as long as you are able to accurately control the temperature of your water bath, you will achieve a comparable result. It is important to squeeze as much air as possible out of the bag because this will affect how efficiently the heat is conducted through the food. The brining and first cook can be done as soon as you get the scallops into your kitchen. The first cooking seems to firm up the flesh and intensify the flavor. We utilize the first two steps even when we’re planning to serve the scallops in a raw, marinated preparation. It makes them easier to work with and gives them a slightly firmer texture. When we sear the scallops just before serving, we find that they cook more evenly and do not exude as much liquid as raw scallops do.

You can buy tamarind paste (page 46) from Middle Eastern stores. Serve the scallops as an appetizer accompanied with a leaf salad.

For me, there’s no better way to dress spaghetti than with a fresh seafood sauce. And this sauce, from the old fishing port of Termoli in Molise, is as simple and delicious as any. In the restaurants by the docks in Termoli (near the old citadel called Tornola), just-caught seafood is served in a brodetto. You eat the seafood, and then the kitchen will toss spaghetti into the sauce you’ve left in your bowl. In my version of spaghetti di Tornola, the calamari, scallops, and shrimp are part of the pasta dressing, but you can eat the brodetto in separate courses, Termoli-style, if you like. In summer, I use my mother’s home-grown, sun-ripened cherry tomatoes to make an exceptional sauce, but in winter, a couple of cups of canned plum tomatoes make a fine substitute.

I love all kinds of Italian fish soups, having sampled countless versions of zuppa di pesce, served with just enough tomatoey sauce to slurp up with a spoon, as well as brodo di pesce, a flavorful fish stock usually with nothing but rice. A new discovery for me, though, was this Molisano version of brodo di pesce, with chard and peppers floating between chunks of seafood in a savory broth. Served with grilled bread or a slab of grilled polenta, it is indeed a complete meal. Relish it with a glass of crispy white wine from the region’s distinctive Falanghina grape varietal, and you can taste Molise beckoning you.

Soybeans are the only complete vegetable protein, delivering all nine of the amino acids that help build fat-burning muscle.

In any coastal region where you find limes, you'll find ceviche, going by one name or another. In Mexico, it's frequently made with a combination of scallops, shrimp, conch, and octopus (the last two usually precooked to the point of tenderness), and those are all good fish for the mix. If you can find spanking-fresh fillets of your local white fish, you can use that here too, although scallops alone are easy and fabulous. If you happen to have a couple of different colors of bell peppers, mix them; it'll make the dish really sparkle.

You can never go wrong by adding a little crunch to scallops when you sauté them. Usually, you dredge them in flour, cornmeal, or bread crumbs before adding them to the hot pan, and it's something that most everyone seems to like. But you can take that crunch and give it an intense flavor by dredging the scallops directly in a spice mix. Although you can't do this with everything—dried herbs don't get crisp, and some spices are far too strong to use in this quantity—it works perfectly with curry powder, which not only seasons the scallops and their accompanying sauce but gives them the crunch we all crave.

When I developed this recipe, there were many arguments among the tasters, otherwise known as my friends, about whether or not it was too spicy. Some people liked the kick and others did not. I like it spicy, but if you want less heat, lay off the chiles: use one chile instead of two. Serve the ceviche with tortilla chips for a play on texture. I recommend using aquacultured bay scallops for this dish as they are grown and harvested sustainably. Bay scallops are in season from October to January. It's also perfectly acceptable to buy frozen scallops and defrost them; the dish will be just as successful.

While visiting Lima, Peru, food editor and stylist Paul Grimes, who developed this recipe, ate a dish called "hot ceviche."Inspired by the playful concept, he tried something similar in the test kitchen.

Being the northernmost city in the South, Louisville has a complex blend of relatively unsung ethnicities, one of them being old-world German. The convergence of sauerkraut soup—what families in neighborhoods like Schnitzelburg call home food—and barbecue-rubbed scallops is both quirky and logical in a very Louisville kind of way. The flavor combination is extraordinarily delicious—one taste and you'll understand what Edward Lee is all about. For sources for sumac.

During the summer you can grill the asparagus outdoors. The smoky flavor of a wood charcoal fire adds complexity to this substantial meal. While I call for green asparagus, try making the dish with a colorful array of asparagus—green, white, and purple. White miso, which is called shiro-miso in Japanese can be found in health food stores. Smooth rather than grainy miso is preferable for this recipe.

In a country known for its fascinating, wide-ranging cuisine, ceviche just may be Peru's national dish. Combinations of sparklingly fresh raw fish marinated in a piquant dressing (often made with ají amarillo and lime juice) are served everywhere, from the lowliest fish shacks to the finest restaurants. For food-safety reasons, we choose to gently poach the scallops, but otherwise, this version, accented by tender sweet-potato cubes, chewy kernels of choclo (a type of Andean corn), and red bell pepper, is entirely classic. Don't forget to drink up the delicious liquid that remains after the ceviche has been eaten. Peruvians prize this leche de tigre as a hangover cure.