Recipe A Day #1: Seared Curried Scallops with Coconut Rice

Today's recipe, the first of our June Recipe-a-Day experiment, was inspired by Rebecca Katz's spectacular The Healthy Mind Cookbook. This recipe isn’t quite laughably cheap. But it is laughably easy. And with a little practice, you can get this meal on the table in just 15 minutes or so.

And it is amazing. You'll see, as you look over the ingredients, that the ginger, the coconut milk, the lime juice and the scallops combine to make this a world-class recipe. Truly, truly incredible. You'll love this recipe, and it's worth paying a little extra for scallops, something we here at Casual Kitchen don't often eat.

Seared Curried Scallops with Coconut Rice

Ingredients:
12 medium to large sea scallops
2-3 Tablespoons olive oil
curry powder
salt
2 teaspoons grated fresh ginger
1 cup coconut milk
1 Tablespoon lime juice
White rice, cooked

Directions:
1) Season scallops with a few generous shakes of curry powder and salt. Then, heat oil in a large, non-stick skillet to medium-high. Place the scallops on in the pan (six at a time for a large skillet, perhaps four at a time for a smaller skillet so the scallops are well-spaced). Sear for 2-3 minutes per side, until lightly browned and firm to the touch, then flip and sear another 2 minutes on the other side until done to your liking.

2) When the scallops are done, place in serving dishes on beds of warm white rice. This will keep the scallops warm.

3) Reduce heat to medium-low. Place the grated ginger in the skillet you just seared the scallops in, saute for 1 minute in the remaining oil and leftover drippings from the scallops. Add the coconut milk, simmer for 2 minutes or so until the sauce is simmering and beginning to thicken. Add the lime juice, stir well, remove from heat and ladle over the scallops and rice. Serve immediately.

Serves 2-3.
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Recipe Notes:
1) I tend to lack confidence with cooking seafood, particularly shellfish, and I never know when a scallop is really done. This is an additional challenge if your scallops are different sizes. And I'll be honest: the first time I made this recipe, I undercooked some of the scallops a little bit. But it didn't matter. This recipe was so delicious it literally didn't matter at all. So don't lack confidence!

2) One note on the cost of this recipe: CK readers are used to truly hilariously inexpensive recipes here, some of which cost well less than a dollar per serving. This is not one of those recipes. I’d estimate the cost of this dish to cost about $15 in total for 2-3 servings. But then again, if you want to compare this to a restaurant meal of comparable quality (feel free to go ahead and imagine, say, Brooklyn or San Francisco hipsters paying $20-30 a plate for this in some snazzy restaurant, which they will), it just goes to show that you can cook even relatively pricy foods at home for a fraction of what they’d cost in any restaurant.

3) Finally, if you'll forgive the plug, please take a look at Rebecca Katz's The Healthy Mind Cookbook. It's full of an incredibly wide range of exceptional recipes, and I'm planning to sample from it repeatedly over the course of this month. Keep in mind if you follow any of the links here at Casual Kitchen over to Amazon, I'll receive a small commission on any product you buy, at no extra cost to you. This is a great way to support your favorite writers and bloggers!





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