Scallops Cooked Onna Plate with Tomato Coulis

After a day at the Giants game (Giants 2 Astros 1), neither Carol nor I felt much like doing real cooking. “Why don’t you do those scallops on a plate in the oven… that’s easy,” she said. Good idea, that’s super easy. I had two Zip-Lock bags of plump super-fresh scallops from Shogun Fish Co., purchased that morning at the market, each bag containing four scallops. (Don’t try this with supermarket scallops!) As luck would have it, I had a jar of Fresh Tomato-Basil Coulis in the fridge, made on Thursday because my tomatoes were going south.

tomato coulis and fresh scallops

I started using what I call the “onna plate” method of cooking thin sliced fish when I found a recipe for Alaskan Halibut Cooked on the Plate with Tomato Confit* in 2004 by Olivia Wu in the SF Chronicle. She described it as an “utterly simple and almost instant dish.” Slice your fish thin across the grain, put it on an oiled plate and into a 500°F oven for two minutes. I’ve cooked that way several times, usually with halibut or salmon, but I even did it once with thin sliced hanger steak.

I got out the jar of Tomato Coulis to come to room temperature while we put our feet up and had a drink and some cheese and crackers. We watched the six o’clock news and At The Movies with the NY Times’ A.O. Scott and Chicago Tribune film critic Michael Phillips. That’s a pretty good show, by far the best attempt to replace Siskel and Ebert. (It only took about 10 years. Roger Ebert teamed with this guy Richard Roeper for a while before Ebert’s extensive throat cancer treatment, but Roeper was a jerk, in my opinion.) Peas would be good with the scallop dish, so I shelled about eight pea-pods from the morning market while Scott and Phillips discussed movies I won’t see.

sliced scallops on the plate

That was a good and necessary respite. I got out the scallops and pre-heated the oven to 450°F – as hot as my oven will go. I found that if I held the scallops on edge it was easy to slice a scallop into four equal pieces – I got a Chef’s Choice knife sharpener for my birthday, so I’m able to keep my knives very sharp with ease. I arranged the slices on two oiled plates and dropped a few peas in the center. While I was doing this, Carol washed, cut up and sautéed some chard to go with. We generally don’t work well together in the kitchen, but in this case, we had our own little space and task so it worked out well and we saved some time. I opened a bottle of Bonny Doon 2009 Paso Robles Viognier I’d been saving for a special meal. Hey, in spite of the simple preparation, this was becoming a special meal. Continue reading →