A Scallop can be an astonishingly delicate fish, with a firm texture and soft buttery taste. But there is a complete absence of flavor in the Scallops we get in India
Middle Eastern foods are loaded with healthy nutritional properties. Indian Chefs have suddenly discovered the scallop, at hotel after hotel; some scallop dish has found its way to the menu. It started with the French restaurants, went on to include the Chinese outlets and now, scallops turn up at coffee shops with a terrifying regularity. At some hotels, they had at Delhi’s Shangri La where scallops have not featured in some form or the other.
For most of us, however the scallop is an unfamiliar fish. It is at its best in cold waters which pretty much rules out the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal. So, if there is a traditional India dish that uses scallops, then I have yet to see it.
And yet, the scallop is not unfamiliar to us from a visual point of view. The classic representation of a seashell as in the Burma Shell symbol for instance is a scallop. And though some of us may not make the connection, scallops turn up in all kinds of European and Christian art. The shell is a symbol of Christianity, the badge of the pilgrim and is prominently featured in such paintings as Botticelli’s Venus.
The problem is that even though Indian hotels have discovered the scallop. The scallops we get tend to have been de-shelled and are then refrigerated or even, frozen, before being packed and sent off to foreign markets.
There was a time when I would have been a little snobbish about fish that had traveled thousands of miles to get to my table. And even now, I still incline to the principle that fresh is best. But the food world is much too international for such snobbery now and packaging techniques have improved to the extent that the fish retains most of its original texture. (it is still not clear to me however why any Indian would want to eat an over-priced Patagonian tooth-fish that has crossed three continents to get here – even if it appears on the menu under the bogus name of the Chilean sea bass.)
But my problem with the scallops we get in India is with the almost complete absence of any flavor. A scallop can bean astonishingly delicate fish, with a firm texture and soft buttery taste. Unfortunately the vast majority of scallops that are exported tend to be of the farmed variety for some reason, farmed scallops taste of nothing at all. They look right (even though they are exported without their shells) but you cannot really use them in most scallop recipes because they do not taste like real scallops.
This is the distinction that chefs all over the world recognize. Most good restaurants will refuse to use farmed scallops and insist on the wild variety. If you find scallops on the menu at a distinguished restaurant, they will almost always be described as “hand dived’ or as ‘diver scallops’ to indicate that somebody actually dived into the ocean to get them.
A wild scallop is a thing of rare beauty. The classic French way is to serve it with a sauce Mornay (basically a Béchamel white sauce with lots of cheese) in which case they just call it coquilles St Jacques, which is the French word for scallop.
But there is lots you can do with the scallop. At his L’Atelier restaurants, Joel Robuchon cooks a single scallop in its shell with seaweed butter. The seaweed flavor captures the sea while the butter complements the scallop’s own butteriness.
Over the last two decades, an increasing number of Chinese restaurants in the west have begun to steam scallops in the shell. They are then served either with black bean sauce or with a simpler garlic and ginger gravy. Two scallops are more than enough for a starter (even though I tend to eat six at a time).
Indian restaurants abroad have experimented with scallops with results that have been mixed. The Bombay brasserie in London invented the tandoori scallop in the 1980s but I was never a fan. Now, chefs have worked out that the firmness of the scallops makes it perfect for a brochette, so skewered scallops grilled over a charcoal fire have turned up on many menus.
Sadly, chefs at Indian hotels have not been as adventurous. I haven’t seen too many people use scallops in Indian cooking. Oddly enough, the farmed scallops, with their lack of true scallop flavor, would probably work best in Indian dishes because the spices would mask the absence of scallopy butteriness. It can’t really be that difficult to cook sliced scallops with sliced onions in a west coast-style masala but somehow our coastal cuisine restaurants prefer to churn out things like crab in butter garlic sauce.
Chinese chefs do use scallops, usually stir frying them with vegetables in a strongly flavored sauce (xo for instance) but I have yet to eat a memorable scallop dish at any Chinese restaurant in India.
If you Have seen Scallops on menus and are Intrigued by them, Here are some Tips:-
1. Remember that scallops have the least fishy smell of almost all shellfish. If you don’t like very fishy flavors (or smells) them you will probably like them. Years ago, Richard Neat used to make a dish of scallops with potatoes at the old Long champ in Delhi. The conceit of the dish was that scallops and the potatoes looked exactly the same because of careful carving. It worked because the scallops were not particularly fishy.
2. If you are abroad and have access to scallops in the shell then be certain to try them. Scallop experts will tell you that good fresh scallops have wonderful coral or roe. I am not an expert so the scallop itself is good enough for me. But a scallop without a shell is a little like an oyster without its shell: it may be the same fish but it seems naked.
3. If you are offered scallops made according to some French recipe at an Indian hotel they are very careful. The chances are that the recipe will be designed to bring out the inherent flavor of the scallop and will now have been foiled by the frozen scallop because it has no inherent flavor of its own.
In these circumstances you are better off ordering something else instead. There are tricks that chefs can use to add some oomph to frozen or farmed scallops-a little butter almost always helps-but most Indian chefs do not know these tricks.
4. If you do want to get into scallops then remember that there are two basic kinds. The first is the big scallop with one convex shell and one flat shell. This is the most common kind, But there are smaller scallops called queen scallops in England (and vanneaux in France) which many find much more flavorful and buttery. They have two slightly hollow shells and therefore are not just smaller but actually look different from the larger scallops.
5. If you are in England and come across something called a “scallop” do not be dismayed. For some reason, English chefs tend to use this name for scallops.
6. Each scallop should have been physically collected from the bottom of the deep sea by a diver. In these circumstances, it is foolish to expect to buy cheap scallops. If however you do come across a scallop dish that seems very cheap, then rest assured that they’re using frozen farmed scallops. If you are at a Chinese restaurant, then this may be okay. If you are at a European restaurant, then steer clear.
7. What should you drink with scallops? It depends on how they are cooked. Hand-dived scallops, simply cooked, go well with white Burgundy (or with a Chardonnay-based wine but if you’re spending money on the scallops, you might as well spring for Montrachet). Farmed scallops will go with cheap Chardonnay. And the appropriate companion to frozen scallops is seven up.
I am not a great fish eater. I can’t take very strong fishy smells and much of south east Asian food is ruined for me because of the dried fish they tend to add to so many things. Therefore, I love the delicate buttery flavor of a good scallop. If you’ve eaten a rubbery scallop at an Indian restaurant where the chef has proudly imported it from some foreign fish farm then don’t let that bad experience put you off.
There are few shellfish that can match the taste of a good wild scallop, caught the way it was meant to be: by a human being diving into the water.
