Scallops flambé

I always encourage experimentation, because even when things go so terribly wrong, they can bring something to light. Litterally.

Last sunday I was grilling with a friend in the backyard. My friend is also an avid foodie and had recently bought a great deal of lardo from Rome and was anxious to try a recipe involving wrapping scallops with lardo from Dag Tjerslands excellent book, Italia. The idea here was that thinly sliced lardo wrapped around the scallops would allow the pork fat to melt gently into the shellfish and create a magical combination.

It didn't quite work out that way. We had trouble slicing the lardo in paper-thin slices since we didn't have a slicing machine, even though we had stuck the lardo in the freezer first to facilitate slicing. So the slices got a bit thick, but oh well, we'll try anyway.

Then we wanted to grill them instead of frying since we were out grilling anyway. No big difference, right? Well, as any experienced griller should know, fat which drips down into the grill causes it to flame up. And boy did it. The lardo meltet right into the flames and so it seemed doomed to failure. The little toothpicks holding the lardo in place burned to a crisp, it became difficult to turn them for the high flames licking up, and the morcels themselves turned into little black crisps.

But one might as well give it a shot. As I grabbed the first scallop and transfered it to my friend's paper plate, I had to blow it out before placing it in front of him. It was black and burned outside.

But then came the surprise... Inside the former lardo was a perfectly done scallop, perfumed by the lardo and the coal, helped along by the jerusalem artichoke salad and saffron vinagrette which accompanied it. The lardo layer was thick enough to protect the delicate shellfish, and the taste was in fact not dominated by carbon, only a hint of "burned" flavor was left, which actually added a nice contrast. It went lovelily with a slightly oaky white from Bordeaux.

So the moral of the story is: the scallops aren't done until you have to blow them out.