Scallops are good. And when they're fresh, they're really, really good.

Today's scallops were really, really good.

They're also not that difficult to fabricate (prepare for cooking), though they certainly can collect a great deal of sand and other debris in their classically shaped shells. What was most surprising to me was how the fresh (and still living) scallops would move when one begins opening the shells and cutting the muscles away. It is a bit startling to have the shell jump in one's hands.

The scallops were simply seared in clarified butter for just a minute or two on each side and served in a traditional style on their own shell. In this case we used an Orange Beurre Blanc sauce.

One interesting note on the sauce. There were two types of oranges available to use for their juice: standard and blood oranges. Turns out the juice from the blood oranges makes a much more effective presentation. In a beurre blanc, one adds a great deal of butter. (I believe "beurre blanc" is French for "heart stopper".) The yellow butter thins out the color of the orange juice so much that the end result from a regular orange has a yellow, or lemony appearance (though the flavor remains, of course, orangey). However, because the juice of blood oranges is red, when butter is added, the resulting sauce has a more orange hue.

The other dish we produced was Sauteed Snapper with a Melange of Baby Vegetables and Fish Consomme. Of course, making the consomme was a priority, since it needs to simmer nearly an hour. One has to watch it somewhat carefully to ensure that the liquid isn't reduced out of the sauce pot entirely, as well. It also seemed somewhat of a pain to go through an awful lot of effort to make a "perfect soup" and then plate it with a mound of vegetables that leached oil and fat onto the surface of the consomme. One could retard this effect by pouring the soup away from the vegetables, but some of the fat would leach out regardless.

Fabricating the snapper wasn't nearly as much fun as cutting up the halibut was, mostly because of the presence of pin bones in the snapper filet that must be removed by hand with, essentially, tweezers. And, frankly, I also found the halibut much better eating than the snapper (though I still enjoyed the snapper).

After the last couple of days I will definitely be looking for more whole fish to fabricate for cooking. There is something satisfying about taking a whole animal apart and preparing it for dinner. That, and fresh scallops are simply divine.

It is also amazing to think that only a single week has gone by in course II. It feels like a couple of weeks.