Serves four.
1 cup Wondra or all-purpose flour
¾ pound medium sea scallops (If possible, specify that you’d like “dry-packed,” scallops that have not had liquid added.)
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
½ cup vegetable oil
1/3 cup fresh grapefruit juice
1 small shallot
1 tablespoon unseasoned rice vinegar
1/8 teaspoon sugar
1 small grapefruit (preferably pink)
2 small heads butter lettuce
1 ripe Hass avocado
20 medium chives or
1 medium scallion, green part only
¼ cup sunflower seeds
1. Spread out the flour in a pie plate lined with wax paper or parchment. Season the scallops with salt and pepper to taste. Working in batches, toss the scallops in the flour, lifting the wax paper on both sides to move the scallops around; transfer the scallops to a strainer and shake off the excess flour.
2. Heat 2 tablespoons vegetable oil in a large skillet over medium heat until hot. Add the scallops to the skillet and sauté for 2 to 3 minutes per side, or until just cooked through. Transfer the scallops to a plate using tongs and set aside to cool to room temperature.
3. Put the grapefruit juice in a small saucepan or skillet and simmer until it has reduced to 2 tablespoons; transfer it to a small bowl. Finely chop the shallot (about 2 tablespoons); add it to the reduced grapefruit juice along with the rice vinegar, ¼ teaspoon salt and sugar. Whisk until the sugar and salt have dissolved. Gradually whisk in the remaining 6 tablespoons vegetable oil. Whisk in some of the juices that have accumulated on the scallop plate until the dressing reaches the desired consistency.
4. Peel and section the grapefruit; cut each section in half. Tear the lettuce into bite-size pieces (about 4 cups). Halve, seed, peel and slice the avocado; thinly slice the chives crosswise (about 1 tablespoon). Toss the lettuce with 1/3 cup dressing.
5. Mound the lettuce on each of 4 plates and top with the scallops, avocado and grapefruit. Sprinkle with the chives and sunflower seeds, and drizzle with the remaining grapefruit dressing.
Sara Moulton wants to change Americans’ dinner habits — but she’s using recipes, not a bully pulpit, to try to make it happen.
The chef, author and food editor for ABC-TV’s “Good Morning America” — she also served as executive chef of the now-shuttered Gourmet magazine and was a Food Network chef — encourages families to keep all of their options open for their evening meal, with chapters of her latest cookbook — “Sara Moulton’s Everyday Family Dinners” (Simon & Schuster, $35) — touting appetizers, breakfast foods, soups and salads substantial enough to feed a hungry family supper.
“I want people to rethink dinner,” Moulton said in a phone interview from her home in New York City. Ingredients and dishes that were once thought of as exclusively breakfast or lunch foods — eggs, crepes, soups, salads — can easily satisfy a supper-sized hunger, the author said.
Many of the 200 recipes in Everyday Family Dinners echo the theme, and Moulton will share a handful of them at a cooking class Tuesday night at Cooks’ Wares in Springboro.
It is Moulton’s second appearance at the Springboro store in six months — but obviously, she hasn’t worn out her welcome. The class sold out more than 10 days in advance, in spite of a $90 price.
Moulton said she will make Scrambled Egg And Smoked Salmon Crepes; Chicken Potpie Soup; Garlicky Green Beans and Shiitakes; and Butterscotch Pudding Cake for the Springboro class.
“I want to single-handedly bring back the crepe,” she said, laughing when asked about the scrambled egg dish.
“Like most of us, I used to think of eggs as breakfast food. These days, when I really have no time to make dinner, the first thing I reach for is a carton of eggs,” Moulton writes in the book’s introduction to a chapter called “Egg-stra specials.”
Through her book-promotion tours, Moulton said she has found one common thread that binds Americans from all regions of the country together: the desire to cook more meals at home.
“But everyone is seemingly having the same problem of making it happen, because they feel they don’t have time,” Moulton said.
That’s where loosening the rules of what dishes “count” as dinner come in, and even how recipes are prepared.
For example, Moulton champions a more efficient way to prepare recipes. Rather than the traditional method — prepping all ingredients in advance of cooking — her recipes call for the cook to prep some ingredients while others are cooking.
Moulton, a wife and mother, said she is driven by the home cooks who come out to see her during classes and cooking demos throughout the country.
“Home cooks are every bit as accomplished as restaurant chefs, but they don’t have the luxury of making dishes one at a time as chefs do,” Moulton said. “They have to make dinner for a family.”
For more on Sara Moulton, go to saramoulton.com.
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2258 or mfisher@DaytonDailyNews.com.
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