Welcome Back Mom! Here are some Scallops!

My mom came home from a 3 month business trip yesterday and the first thing she wanted to do was go to the supermarket. Living in New York we take for granted the variety of ingredients we have so easily accessible to us. Walk into our supermarkets and most of the ingredients are fresh and of high quality. Our fruits and vegetables are fattened from fertilizers and steroids. Authentic ethnic ingredients are flown here from all over. Just back from China, my mom said our Chinese supermarkets have more Chinese ingredients than the motherland. That's because we get goods from all of China and not just specific regions like they do there.

My mom was a kid in a candy store picking up items with cool wrappings that she's never tried before. In our cart went tons of meat, some destined for the freezer, bags and bags of fresh veggies and fruit, and some shrimp chips and red bean pops for snacking. Upon walking in my eyes fell upon these beauties:
Fresh Scallops

I don't often see fresh scallops in their shells in the market, let alone still moving! One of these suckers clamped my finger tip! Now I know they are fresh!


I came home and scrubbed the outside with a wire brush. Then I opened the scallops by first sticking a butter knife in and scraping the meat off one side of the shell. After doing this the shell can be opened and the side with no meat cracked off and discarded.


Remove all the weird parts leaving just the scallop behind. Rinse the scallop and shell in cold water to remove any debris and sand. Using your butter knife loosen the scallop from the shell so it will be easier to eat later.


I spooned some thinly chopped garlic, scallions, salt, pepper, and oil on top of each scallop and set it over a steamer. Steam for a minute and a half.

When removing from the steamer make sure not to loose all the juices that are left in the shell because it makes a nice sauce.

Next time I will put some cellophane noodles along with the garlic and scallions before they go in the steamer so it will absorb all of the sweet juices from the scallop.