Macgregors Seafood Notes

If you're in the food business and you really love food, you'll know that the two most abused items are surely Chicken & Scallops. Quality runs the gamut. Both are items that are habitually "pumped". What does this mean? It's a process of soaking the product in water / sodium / phosphates to add weight, change appearance or extend shelf life. In the scallop world product is differentiated by the terms "wet" and "dry" pack. But "dry-pack" doesn't always tell the whole story. Dry pack scallops, while they may not have been soaked to pick up weight, have usually been treated with a sodium based product called Purogene. Because a lot of these scallops are caught by Trip Boats, meaning they're out for 7-10 days at a time, Purogene is applied to help the scallops retain water and extend shelf life. While not necessarily picking up water, they are not not necessarily a natural product either.

So how do you get the real deal, all-natural scallop experience? The experience that, until you've had it, you never realized it could be so good? One is to find restaurants / vendors who are actually selling a Day-Boat, or Diver caught scallop. Day-Boats and Diver's literally go out and come back same day - scallops are then hand shucked, sorted and shipped same day, 100% as mother nature intended. These scallops will vary in color from orange to opaque off white. A surefire sign you've got a treated scallop is a real consistency and uniformity in color. Furthermore, the taste is pure and sweet and the texture (if cooked well) is at the same time firm and buttery smooth and delicate.

Now, to go one step beyond and have a real scallop experience, as mother nature intended, is to find roe-on scallops. On a scallop, the roe sac, or coral, is a pale to bright orange crescent moon shaped sac connected to the abductor muscle (scallop). Europeans wouldn't have it any other way, yet in North America it's discarded, which once you've tried it will agree is embarrassing.

I recently brought in Diver Caught Scottish King Scallops, roe-on (Pecten Maximus), a slightly different specie than the North American Sea Scallop. When I saw these scallops, absolutely pristine & untouched, I had to go out and have a real experience with them, beyond what I could accomplish cooking them at home. What better place to have a King scallop than at Crush Wine Bar on King st. West in Toronto. Remarkably simply prepared, pan-seared to give a nice crust on the exterior, rare throughout, perched atop a small bed of flavorful lentils. But it was the roe that made the dish. Mother nature has come up with the perfect compliment to to the dense scallop muscle! The roe, when cooked, is rich and creamy and candy sweet. It's an unbelievable combination.

Seek out seafood in it's most natural state, and you'll find it's truly rewarding. Beyond that, Diver Caught and Day-Boat caught are indicators that you're buying from small scale producers, not huge factory, industrial vessels. There is a respect for the resource and it shows right down the experience I had at Crush, which was phenomenal.

Paul