Fruits of the sea

Sue Lawrence provides us with some more recipes, this time using Scotland's delicious deep sea scallops.

Rather like lobsters, scallops have become a luxury food in recent years. In decades gone by, they would have been caught and eaten simply by people who lived on the coast. Now they are served in all the best restaurants with a myriad sauces and accompaniments.

Hector Stewart at Kallin Shellfish on the island of North Uist in the Outer Hebrides says that when he was growing up, they would sometimes be able to ‘fish out' scallops with a scoop at low tide on a fine, clear day; since they are usually in deep water it was difficult to see them otherwise.

His mother would pour a kettle of boiling water over them to open the shells then she would fry them in butter and serve with a fried egg, the yolk from which acted as the sauce. Nowadays, with the help of boats, his company lands tonnes of scallops – and crab and lobster – locally. They are caught all around the Western Isles and the shores of Skye.

And although the words ‘hand-dived scallops' is popular menu jargon these days, the scallops at Kallin are dredged from the deep waters. And though his scallops are not hand dived, Hector maintains that because scallop beds are small, there is little environmental impact in the places where his boats remove the shellfish; his scallops are wild, not farmed.

They can be aged by looking at the growth rings on the shells, the more they have, the older they are. The best scallops will have five or six rings – which makes them five or six years old.

Before you buy your wonde...

To read the rest of this article you can do any of the following.

• By : Sue Lawrence
• In : Food
• Issue : 46
• Page : 47
• Words : 1,058