Seared Scallops with Ginger Cilantro Cream Sauce Recipe

There is a reason I am not a doctor, or a firefighter or an air traffic controller, because in a high stress situation I have been known to panic. Take my teeny weeny grease fire the other night. I put olive oil into a pan that was a little too hot and it promptly burst into flames. So what did I do? Screamed, held the pan away from everything in the house, screamed again, blew on it, and screamed once more until J, who is thankfully armed with good sense covered it for me. Whew. His reaction? Once the laughter had subsided of course, “You know if you are going to continue cooking you will need to learn to deal with fire.” Seriously.

Luckily for me this happened at a convenient time in my meal preparation and nothing was ruined – in fact dinner turned out quite successful. It was my first time cooking large sea scallops and I was determined to pan sear them with the help Helen from Beyond Salmon’s recent post on searing scallops. They turned out quite well although I ended up using a non-stick pan on just under medium on my stove. They were also so large that next time I would cook them a little longer (less then 5 scallops per pound). I have in the past learned that on my stove, if a recipe says medium, try medium low. I guess I learned that again during this recipe.

The sauce comes from an epicurious recipe which I highly recommend, I tweaked the proportions a bit to use less ginger and green onion and more cilantro, I also used white mushrooms rather then shitake, again thats all I could find. The recipe for the sauce is here – I would definitely try it again with tuna or even chicken.