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Devilled Scallops En Brochette
Place a pound and a half fresh scallops on a plate. Season with half teaspoon salt and half teaspoon paprika. Mix well in the seasoning. Cut from a piece of lean salt pork the same number of pieces as there are scallops, exceedingly thin and half inch square. Arrange the scallops and pork alternately and evenly on six skewers. Roll in a tablespoon oil, arrange on a double broiler and broil for five minutes on each side. Remove from the broiler, spread a devilled butter over them evenly; then lightly roll in bread crumbs; replace on the broiler and broil again for two minutes on each side. Remove and place on a hot dish. Decorate with six pieces lemon and parsley greens and serve.
A clear, workable dish, but the timing belongs to a coal-fired broiler and thick sea scallops that no longer match what most fishmongers sell. Read the total cook time before you start.
- The hinge: total broiling timeFourteen minutes of direct heat will turn scallops into erasers. Modern sea scallops need roughly 2 minutes a side to firm up and take colour, then a minute or so more per side after crumbing; watch for the centres to turn just opaque and pull them.
- "Devilled butter" is not defined hereIn this period it usually means softened butter worked with dry English mustard, cayenne or paprika, and often a little Worcestershire and lemon. Something like 4 tablespoons butter, 2 teaspoons mustard, a good pinch of cayenne and a squeeze of lemon suits a pound and a half of scallops.
- A "double broiler"Not a double boiler. It is the hinged wire broiling basket that clamps food between two grids so the whole thing can be flipped over the coals at once. A rack set over a sheet pan under an oven broiler does the same job, though you turn the skewers individually.
- Salt porkCut it as thinly as the recipe insists, or it will still be raw when the scallops are done. Supermarket salt pork can be very salty; a two-minute blanch in simmering water and a pat dry is worth the trouble, and then hold back some of the half teaspoon of salt. Thick-cut unsmoked bacon is the nearest easy substitute.
- Which scallopsA pound and a half of sea scallops gives roughly 30 to 45 pieces depending on size, which is what the pairing with pork squares assumes. Bay scallops are far too small for this treatment. Buy dry-packed if you can; wet-packed scallops leach liquid and will steam rather than brown.
- SkewersSoak wooden skewers 30 minutes or use metal. Leave a little space between the pieces so the heat reaches all sides.
- Crumbing stageFresh soft crumbs scorch fast under a modern broiler. Use fine dry crumbs, press them on gently over the butter, and keep the pan a few inches further from the element for the second round.
- YieldSix skewers, so six servings as a first course or three as a main with something starchy alongside.
En brochette is simply French for "on a skewer," and it appears often in American hotel and restaurant cookery of the 1890s and 1900s, where French menu language carried authority even for a plate of local shellfish. "Devilled" is older and English: by the late eighteenth century it meant food made hot with mustard and cayenne, usually grilled, and it was a common way of dressing up cold or plain protein for breakfast, supper or the club. Pairing scallops with thin squares of salt pork is more often associated with New England than with French cookery, the fat basting the lean shellfish as it renders.