April 30, 2012
Amuse-Bouche
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salade de coquille Saint-Jacques et d’oignons
(scallop and onion salad)
Coquilles Saint-Jacques was a French mystery food when I was young. You would hear actors in movies order it in French restaurants. And I can still hear Julia Child pronouncing the words with her high-pitched French accent and the two silent s’s. I do not recall ever seeing the full-sized version on any menu at the fine San Francisco restaurants in the 1950s. These restaurants were generally not considered French, but continental, as if there was a pan-European culinary tradition. To my knowledge, there wasn’t (and still isn’t) a scallop fishing industry on the West Coast. I’d see bay scallops occasionally on Italian menus as part of pasta dishes, but these were never very interesting to me.
When I moved to Upstate New York to attend college in 1967, I started to become aware of scallops, but it would be many years until I could afford to buy them. That time occurred near the end of my Chinese cooking period, in the 1990s, when both frozen and thawed varieties were now common in seafood markets. I think I’ve only seen scallops in the shell, the way they are sold in Europe, once in the San Francisco Bay Area.
I became truly aware of scallops in 2001. That was the year I spent time in three separate restaurants in France. As I shucked scallops at each restaurant, I learned that each restaurant performed the task in a different manner. (And they all thought their method was best.)
My first experience was at La Bastide Saint-Antoine in Grasse. The restaurant was headed by Chef Jacques Chibois, and in those days had two Michelin stars. (It has since been reduced to one star.) Chef Chibois was generally only in the kitchen during part of service and left the day-to-day operation of it to his longtime sous chef. When I was there, it was one of the line cooks that showed me how they shucked scallops in this kitchen. Their method was to use a dinner knife to first remove the flat shell by sliding the knife tight with the shell to release the whole abductor muscle. Next the knife was used to dig the muscle from the concave shell, starting by cutting between the smooth muscle and the stripped muscle, and then cleanly removing the stripped muscle. The shell with everything else still attached was then discarded. The shucked scallops were piled on a plate and placed in the refrigerator.
My second experience was at Auberge du Schœnenbourg in Riquewihr. In those days, it was a Michelin one-star restaurant under the direction of Chef François Keiner. Chef Keiner has since retired, and the restaurant is no longer even listed in the Michelin Guide Rouge. I no longer remember if it was Chef Keiner or his lead cook, Sebastian, who instructed me as to how to shuck that first 12-kg (26-lb) box of scallops. By the time my stage was over, I had worked my way through many boxes of them.
As I wrote at the time: “To shuck a scallop at the Auberge, the shell is held with the flat side away from you. A large, flat-bladed, shucking knife is used to pry open the shell slightly. The tissue that is connected to the flat side of the shell is scraped off the shell. The flat shell is now released by the scallop, removed from the hinge, and discarded. The scallop, still in the other half of the shell, is allowed to rest a few minutes while the other scallop shells are opened in the same manner. When a scallop shell is opened, there’s a generous supply of sand found along with the scallop. The same flat knife is used to gently scrape the tissue, starting at the hinge, away from the shell. A lot of care is taken not to remove the scallop itself from the shell at this point. The thumb of the left hand presses the scallop against the shell so it is not disturbed. The other tissue is teased gently away from the shell and discarded. The knife is then used to separate the scallop from the small, white, fibrous muscle on the right edge of the scallop. The scallop is then gently scraped from the shell. Once all the scallops are removed from their shells, they are thoroughly washed in cold water. The scallops are placed on a perforated tray in pairs with their sloped edge against each other; as each scallop rests in the refrigerator, it takes on a more cylindrical shape. The scallops shucked this afternoon won’t be used until tomorrow at the earliest.”
My third experience was in Carantec at Restaurant Patrick Jeffroy. In those days it was a Michelin one-star, but the following year it received its second star. It is still a two-star and Chef Jeffroy is still at the helm. I was involved in another task the day the scallops were being shucked, but I could clearly see the process they were using. Once again, a dinner knife was used to first scrape along the inner surface of the flat shell and discard it. The same knife was then used to scrape the entire contents from the concave shell. The contents were unceremoniously dumped into a large sink. When all the shells were emptied. Water was added to the sink and the clean scallop muscles removed by hand from the surrounding materials. The scallops were washed again, set out on a tray, and placed in the refrigerator.
Since that year, I’ve never had the chance to use my scallop shucking skills again. Now when I buy scallops, either they are frozen in the bag, or have been previously thawed by the market. On the occasion when I’ve spent the extra money for fresh diver scallops, I was disappointed. They may have been fresh, but they were adulterated and full of water. The practice, judging by all the 100-year-old books on food adulteration in Google Books, has existed for a long time.
A while ago, I found a partially used bag of Japanese wild scallops in my freezer. They were in good condition, but there was wasn’t enough of them for a meal. This was at the same time I started to experiment with miso pickling. So I packed the scallops into a small deli container between two layers of aka (red) miso. Two small squares of muslin separated the scallops from the miso. The scallops were in a single layer, but tightly together. By the time I checked them after a week, they were a brown color and much thinner. Their texture was also firmer. In the end, it was about a month before I served the scallops, but I didn’t perceive much difference in flavor from they way they tasted three weeks earlier.
To serve the scallops, I cut each in half horizontally and leaned both pieces against a small mound of sauerkraut-style cured onion. A little diced, Japanese, pickled, red ginger and a couple of marigold petals completed the amuse-bouche. I’m always amazed how (due to the miracle of lactic acid fermentation) something that has sat for four weeks in something salty like miso isn’t salty itself.

© 2012 Peter Hertzmann. All rights reserved.