Sweet seared scallops

BEFORE YOU SAY a word about seasonality, allow me to stop you right there. Scallops are officially not in season right now, so I do apologise. But, if I’m being honest, the whole raison d’être of this dish was the delicious sweet chilli sauce from Kiwi mega-chef, Peter Gordon, which would happily glide over grilled chicken or other fish such as monkfish or salmon.

I could also see it as a perfect dunking sauce for chargrilled prawns. So enamoured was I with its flavour and appearance that I briefly contemplated starting up a cottage industry, dedicated to selling this condiment. So many commercial brands of sweet chilli sauce look like sickly-sweet, bright red syrups with chopped up bits of chilli blobbing around. They are hard to stomach straight from the bottle, but a useful addition when you want to give sweetness to marinades. But this sauce was fragrant, floral and much less one-dimensional in flavour.

Peter Gordon was considered one of the main proponents of fusion cuisine and this recipe was one of his signature dishes when he was head chef in London’s The Sugar Club (which has subsequently closed). Fusion really hit its stride in the mid-1990s, but quickly became a dirty word in cooking when the concept was taken to extremes in clumsy hands.

However, Gordon seems a very thoughtful and considered chef, and fusion in his hands was always a bit of a culinary adventure rather than a scary palate-rollercoaster. In defending the whole fusion movement, he points out that without “fusion” or perhaps globalisation of food, the Italians wouldn’t have polenta, Thais wouldn’t have chillies, peanuts or coriander – and the Irish wouldn’t have had their beloved spuds.

The other recipe is for when you want to eat something green, but tastier than just a plain old spinach salad – and it is a regular feature on American restaurant menus. Over there, they make them into a bit of a feast by adding sliced mushrooms, hard-boiled eggs, bacon, even blue cheese. Sometimes it can get a bit too much, but this one is a little more simple, but still full of flavour and would be an ideal dinner party starter or lovely summer lunch.

Seared scallops with sweet chilli sauce and creme fraiche

Sweet chilli sauce

250g caster sugar

10 cloves garlic, peeled

4 red chillies

½ of a large piece of ginger, peeled and roughly chopped

8 lime leaves

3 lemongrass stems, roughly chopped

Big bunch coriander

100ml cider vinegar

3 tbsp fish sauce

3 tbsp soy sauce

Put 200ml of water in a heavy-based saucepan and add the sugar. Don’t stir, just heat until the sugar dissolves and then gently simmer until the sugar turns a nice caramel colour. Meanwhile, whizz all the other ingredients together until they form a slightly chunky paste. You don’t want it as smooth as soup, but you do need to make light work of the hunks of ginger, garlic and lemongrass. Take the caramel off the heat and carefully add the paste (getting splattered with hot caramel is not nice) and whisk gently. Putting it back on the heat for a few minutes will help all those flavours to open up. Cool and drizzle over the scallops – or whatever you like.

Seared scallops

Between three and five scallops per person

Bunch rocket

One small tub crème fraiche

Salt and pepper

Squeeze of lime juice

To finish, sear the scallops in hot oil for a minute or two on each side. Season lightly and then place them on some rocket. Season the crème fraiche with the lime juice, salt, pepper and drizzle on top of the scallops, along with a few blobs of the sweet chilli sauce.

Baby spinach and avocado salad, with bacon and almonds

Serves four

100g whole, blanched almonds

200g streaky bacon, diced

Pinch soft brown sugar

220g bag of baby spinach

2 large avocados

Dressing

2 tsp Dijon mustard

1 tsp caster sugar

100ml olive oil

2 tbsp red wine vinegar

Salt and pepper

1 red onion, peeled and very finely diced

First, make the dressing. Whisk the mustard and sugar together and add the olive oil in a slow, steady stream so that it thickens up. Add the vinegar, season and mix in the onions. Set aside until ready to use.

Toast the almonds on a baking tray in the oven at 150 degrees/gas mark two, for five to 10 minutes, until they are golden brown. Season them with some salt and pepper.

Fry the bacon with a splash of oil and the brown sugar, until caramelised and crisp. Drain on kitchen paper. Scoop out the avocado flesh, then toss with the spinach, bacon and almonds and vinaigrette. Serve straight away.

See also itsa.ie

Top tip

The Organic Supermarket in Blackrock, Co Dublin has a great range of organic baby food, including the hard-to-track-down Hipp Organic follow-on milk formula for babies over six months. If you don’t live nearby, don’t fret – they deliver non-perishables nationwide. See organicsupermarket.ie