Grilled Scallops with Coriander and Hazelnut Butter

Recipe

The easiest, and by far my favourite method for cooking scallops - cook them in their shell, under a hot grill, in a beautiful butter.

I love the addition of the roasted, crunchy nuts in this recipe - to complement the delicate scallops and add some lovely texture and depth of flavour. This butter recipe is based on one by the king of seafood - Rick Stein.

For my mum’s 70th I swapped it out for the Tetsuya’s truffle butter recipe (made with his jarred truffles), as an easy cocktail party course. Scallops love a punchy butter and so many would work beautifully here - a simple soy and lime one, basil butter, or garlic butter. Café de Paris butter would be special.

Make a batch of the compound butter and store it ready to go - can be rolled in to a log and wrapped in baking paper, then foil to keep its shape, ready to slice – stored in the fridge it can keep at least a week, and in the freezer, it can keep up to 3 months. Check the base ingredients to know their storing times.

The other great bit – you can cook as many as can fit on your tray.

Tip - buy the first round of scallops in the shell and keep the shells for future grilling and presentation.

Serves 2. GF.

Pictured: Grilled scallops with a coriander and nut butter

12 scallops, roe on or off, in the shell or a small baking dish

Salt and freshly ground paper

Coriander and Nut Butter-

20g roasted hazelnuts – I like a mix of pine nuts and almonds too, you can mix this up

75g unsalted butter, softened

A handful of coriander leaves

2 tbsp parsley leaves

2 spring onions, roughly chopped

1 tsp lemon or lime juice

Extra virgin olive oil – EVOO – to drizzle.

Prepare the nut butter – roast the nuts and cool them ready to blitz in a food processor with all the other ingredients – taste for balance, you should love the butter already before it melts over the scallops.

Lay the scallops on a baking tray and preheat the grill to high. Season with a little salt and pepper, drizzle with a little EVOO to get the cooking started.

Grill for 1 ½ minutes, take the tray out and drop a good teaspoon of butter over each scallop, and grill for a further 1 ½ minutes or until the butter is melted and scallops cooked through.

A quick step if you are happy to really roast up the butter is to place the butter on from the beginning of cooking and cook through the 3 mimutes.

Serve immediately.