Get your pots and pans ready as TWH Creative Director Elouise talks you through another one of her fabulous dinner parties. Spoiler alert: also includes recipe!
I recently had the opportunity to spend the night with a couple of my fabulous neighbours reliving an old trend, “The Progressive Dinner”. Popular in the 70’s, this en vogue repertoire of entree, main and dessert is split between 3 houses, with each house is responsible for a course. What fun! We assigned a French theme and I grabbed entree as my dish. After consulting my dusty copy of Shannon Bennett’s My Vue, I settled on a pea soup with scallops and bone marrow. What I liked about this dish was that it looked tres fancy, when really it was very easy. As a time poor working mother of three hungry boys, one skill I have successfully developed in the kitchen is the ability to choose recipes with maximum flavour for minimal effort. Shoes for this event?? The ballet flat coupled with neck scarf. A red lip was necessary to complete my ensemble. A good choice as we were travelling with bubbles beaucoup!!!
Pea Soup with Roasted Scallops wrapped in Pancetta
Prep: 30min max Cooking time: 20min max Shoes: Chanel ballet flats of course!
Serves 6
Ingredients:
500g veal bones with bone marrow
500g peas(Shannon says fresh-I used frozen!!)
2 tbsp olive oil
1 onion
2 cloves of garlic
1 cup of baby spinach
2 cups of chicken stock(use good quality one for best flavour!-Coles has them)
About 10 thin slices of prosciutto or pancetta
14 large scallops cleaned and roe removed
Juice of ½ lemon
Salt and pepper
100ml of double cream
Method:
- Ask your local butcher to push the bone marrow out of the bones and then cut it into 1cm slices. You need enough to put on top of each scallop. Have a couple of extra slices as back up. Soak the discs in iced water for about 12 hours. (I put this on first thing in the morning and then went about my day-just adding ice when needed) N.B: If the notion of bone marrow puts you off-you could leave this off as the dish would still be delicious.
- Wrap the pancetta/prosciutto around each of the scallops and fix with a toothpick. I did this in the morning and put in a container ready for cooking.
- Heat a couple of tablespoons of olive oil in heavy based saucepan and saute the onions and garlic gently until transparent-about 4 minutes. Be careful not to colour them!
- Add the spinach and cook until wilted. A couple of minutes maximum!
- Add the frozen peas or your blanched fresh peas and chicken stock and then either blend with a stick blender or transfer to a bench blender. Blitz this until very smooth. It will be a vibrant green colour!
- Add a couple of tablespoons of olive oil to a frypan and cook scallops for about 1 minute each side. Don’t brown the pancetta!
- Transfer the scallops to a tray and place a piece of the bone marrow on each one and cook under a hot grill for about a minute or until the bone marrow is translucent. N.B: Don’t leave under grill too long. The bone marrow melts!! Also the scallops will become tough!
- Season scallops with lemon juice and salt and pepper.
- Pour the cream into the soup and bring to the boil for about 2 minutes. Season to taste.
- For serving, place a ladleful of soup into your serving bowl and then place 2 scallops in the centre. If you put too much soup in the bowl the scallops sink so beware- You can always go back for seconds!!
Our evening continued with Ms N serving a delicious Beef Bourguignon and finally Ms J completing a perfect session with an amazing cheese and petit fours display. Bubbles a plenty and dessert wines to finish rounded everything off nicely. The ballet flats were extremely handy while navigating the trip back home. After all that food and drink, Antoine and I were appropriately sedated!
Bon Appetite!
Images: whatgabyscooking.com, The Well-Heeled Private Collection, theyallhateus.com
