Scallop-Palooza 2011

Whenever Chris goes out of town, I immediately take advantage of the time to celebrate foods that he finds to be slimy, gross, or otherwise distasteful. Now that we live near Cape Ann and have even easier access to fresh, affordable seafood, I've been trying to expand my horizons in the realm of fish and shellfish. Thankfully, with the Cherry Street Fish Market less than 10 minutes away, I have a lot of great options to choose from.

This time, my friend Megan and I decided to focus on the scallop. Having never cooked scallops before, I was a little nervous, but the results were a resounding success. "Scallop-Palooza" will have to become an annual event.

We started off with the basic appetizer option of bacon-wrapped scallops, jazzed up by rubbing the bacon with a combo of dark sugar, curry powder, and mild chili powder. It was extremely hard to keep moving forward with the rest of our plans after that -we would really have been happy just cranking those babies out for the rest of the night.

We moved on to Julia Child's master recipe for sauteed scallops and paired them against ginger-lime sauteed scallops from the Silver Palate Cookbook (which turned out to be the long-shot winners of the evening).

As a break from the scallop texture, we also tried out a recipe for fish salpicon - a lot like a sauteed ceviche. We added some chopped avocados to this recipe, which would probably make a great taco filling for a quick weeknight dinner. UPDATE: Yes, it does.

Throw in a baguette from A&J King Bakery to help sop up the extra sauce, et voila!