Mmmm Scallops

Anyone who's watched Top Chef knows that sea scallops are a risky business. More than one contestant has landed on the bottom and even had to pack up their knives and go home due to their inept cooking of the delicate white bivalve mollusks.

And the cost! I've never seen sea scallops for less than $12 a pound in my New England supermarket - and that price appeared so briefly that I failed to take advantage of it. Often I will order scallops in a restaurant, simply because I believe it is the one dish I could order where the cost is actually less expensive in the restaurant than it might be if I made the same dish at home.

But, sea scallops can be so delicious. And they are particularly delicious when prepared as part of the recipe for Seared Scallops Over Bacon Spinach Salad with Cider Vinaigrette, from the March 2008 issue of Cooking Light. This recipe with the absurdly long name is freakin' delicious. And so, when I found myself in the grocery store one evening without a plan and without a list, I decided I would make it for dinner.

Normally, other than cutting everything in half to accommodate a two-person household, I follow recipes to the letter. (Except for red onions. No dragon breath for me). Anyway, I did look at this one on my phone before I went into the Data Dead Zone (aka grocery store), but when I got home I discovered that not only had I intentionally compromised by choosing to use the romaine heart salad I already had (instead of spinach), and a Fuji apple instead of Granny Smith (because it was on sale), I had also unintentionally neglected to buy apple cider, AND, to top it off, the bacon in the fridge was fuzzy. Gross.

Fortunately, I managed to successfully work around this.

• Since I didn't have any acceptable bacon, I found a jar of Hormel Real Bacon Bits. Not quite the same, but it did the trick.
• Since I wasn't cooking real bacon, I couldn't saute the shallots in the bacon fat. Instead I used a tablespoon of olive oil.
• Since I didn't have the apple cider to cook down and mix with the shallots for the salad dressing, I decided to make a modified version of my mother-in-law's simple salad dressing. With the tablespoon of olive oil (now infused with delicious carmelized shallots), I added two teaspoons of honey, and less apple cider vinegar than the recipe called for -- about a teaspoon. This was super fun because my honey was a granular rock, and therefore had to be soaked and stirred in a pan of hot water before I could do a thing with it.

But, it was worth it. The resulting salad dressing was freakin' delicious, and made enough for the two of us.

Compared to all that, cooking the actual scallops was easy. Just dust them with seasoning (cumin, salt, and cayenne red pepper for a bit of a kick), and plop them in a frying pan with olive oil for three minutes on each side. They were halfway done when my husband came home. "Wow, we're eating rich tonight!" he exclaimed when he saw the scallops frying. Indeed we did.