Scallops & champagne – as Christmas is coming soon again

Scallops with Pasta and Champagne Saffron Sauce garnished with blood oranges

Scallops & champagne – as Christmas is coming soon again

December 14th, 2017 | starter

I know some of you will think: “Now she goes mad, the wife of the captain – using champagne for cooking…” Let me say first of all: Yes, of course you can cook this wonderful dish also with Crémant or Cava. But for special occasions, even Champagne fits to perfect the scallops on Capellini with this velvety saffron sauce. The blood oranges make the icing on the cake not only optically. A dream of a starter!

Champagne is only allowed to be named Champagne if it was made in French Champagne. Crémants are those sparkling wines, also produced by bottle fermentation, which are produced outside Champagne. The quality is very similar, but the price of Crémant usually much cheaper.

Capellini are very, very thin spaghetti, probably the thinnest pasta in Italian cuisine. Capellini’s cooking time is extremely short (3 – 4 minutes). They are perfect for fine cuisine with noble sauces and for example fish or seafood.

Scallops with capellini and champagne-saffron-sauce

(serves 6 – 8 persons)

100 g shallots, in stripes

50 g butter

steam shallots soft

1 TS brown sugar

add and caramelize

2 TS dry sherry

add

250 ml Champagne

add Champagne and cook slowly for 5 minutes without lid

1 ds (0.1 g) saffron

400 ml fish stock

add, boil away for 10 minutes

500 ml cream

add and boil away for another 10 minutes, puree through a sieve

salt, cayenne pepper

season

1/2 lemon

add a dash of lemon juice and Champagne

2 blood oranges

fillet oranges

8 scallops

roast scallops in oil 1-2 minutes each side

20 g butter

add butter

salt, pepper

season - keep scallops warm

250 g Capellini noodles

cook Capellinis in 3 minutes, drain and mix with half of the sauce form "nests" and place on pre-heated plates, place scallops and oranges on top, foam up (puree) rest of the sauce and decorate the plates with it

50 g trout caviar

garnish with caviar

This is how the wife of the Captain does it:

This dish can easily be prepared before your guests arrive. You can prepare the sauce, boil the pasta and keep warm (attention: only slightly al dente, so that they don’t get too soft). The oranges can wait of course already filleted in the fridge. That means, you only have to roast the scallops and decorate the plates, when your guests are around.

You can use the scallops as a whole, but you can also halve them lengthwise (then the frying time is minimized once again, thus “buzz – buzz”…).

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November 2nd, 2017 | main dishes

Kale with air-dried ham and warm potato waffles

When I was a child I did not like kale. I qualified this statement when I travelled to Shanghai and tasted sea cucumbers. Today I eat kale, but I still don’t like our traditional German way to prepare kale. Too fat, too ugly, too heavy. And then this sausage called „Pinkel“?!? Last autumn I gave kale a second chance. I must admit it’s a very tasty vegetable. It’s only a matter of how to prepare it. Try this.