Coquilles St. Jacques Nantaise

Circumstances have restricted me to minimal cooking lately, so for this week’s post I’ll look back to the holidays and the lovely scallop recipe I made to precede the cassoulet that I served on Christmas Day.

Scallops are always a treat, especially the ways that French cooks prepare them as appetizers. Because the cassoulet was going to be very rich I wanted to start the meal with something fairly light. I found what looked like the perfect recipe in Simone Beck’s Simca’s Cuisine. This interestingly quirky book by the co-author of Mastering the Art of French Cooking is arranged by menus. The one titled “An Earthy Dinner for High-Spirited Friends” was centered on a cassoulet (not the version that I was making). Its first course was Coquilles St. Jacques Nantaise, a preparation parenthetically described as au naturel.

The au naturel approach was very different from the elaborate parisienne and provençale styles, which I’ve often made from the recipes in Mastering. It turned out to be well worth knowing.

In the parisienne, the scallops are poached with mushrooms in wine, water, and seasonings. The poaching liquid is reduced and turned into a sauce with flour, butter, egg yolks, and cream. The scallops and their sauce go into shells, are topped with grated cheese and butter, and broiled.

In the provençale, onions, shallots, and garlic are sauteed in butter. Separately, scallops are sliced, floured, and sauteed. Wine, herbs, and the onion mixture simmer with the scallops until the sauce thickens. Set in shells, they’re broiled, with a grated cheese and butter topping.

In Simca’s recipe there is no precooking of the scallops, no wine-cream-egg yolk sauce, no wine deglazing sauce, no mushrooms, no grated cheese topping. But there is butter – a lot of it. That, of course, is the French notion of “natural.” I used my best Irish butter for the dish.

I cut my raw sea scallops in pieces; put them into buttered individual gratin dishes; added salt, pepper, and minced shallots that I’d softened in butter. I sprinkled on fine breadcrumbs and melted butter and baked 12 minutes at 375°.

They were delightful. The scallops and shallots had married in a pure bliss of butter. Simple as it was to make and equally so to look at, the dish was staggeringly lush. Not exactly the light starter I’d been looking for, but after consuming it, the “high-spirited friends” at my table didn’t hesitate to dig into the cassoulet. I believe I’ve discovered a new star for my culinary firmament.