I took some photos of this dish to test out a new lens I bought and to practice some more picture taking, ideally with natural light. It came together very quickly, looked great and tasted so good that I decided to make a short post about it and record my process. No real recipe, just a few easy techniques for a delicious pasta and seafood dish that would work equally well with firm white fish or shrimp.
For the scallops, I had bought about 12 good sized ones (about 10 to a pound maybe). I trimmed them, usually there is a loose small side muscle looking thing and I diced 3 of the less “attractive” ones. I reserved all that to make the sauce. The rest of the scallops got brined, as usual, in a 10% salt solution for about 12 minutes then patted dry and scored in a cross-hatch pattern.
For the pasta sauce, I sauteed the scallop trimmings and dices scallops with some shallots and garlic. Then, I deglazed with a glass of white wine and reduced by about half or so. In the meantime I boiled squid ink pasta in salted water. When The pasta was ready I added a few knobs of butter to the sauce, seasoned with salt and lemon juice and added the pasta to the pan with a ladleful of pasta water and tossed the whole thing together.
To finish the scallops, I first crisped a few slices of home cured pancetta in a pan and removed them. In the same pan, I added butter and cooked the scallops on both sides. Then I sliced each scallop in half across to give me a nice alternating brown-white look. That’s it. A nice serving of pasta with rounds of scallops topped with crispy pancetta.