The humble pea. I could eat nothing but peas for an entire day, for the price of a single scallop.

But they’re really not so different, the scallop and the pea. Sure, one is considerably more difficult to harvest than the other. Setting aside the whole procurement issue, though, you have two foods that are considered savoury yet pack a surprisingly sugar-rich wallop.

You don’t really think of scallops as being sweet, but the rawer you consume them, the more pointedly sugary they taste. Working garde manger in my cooking school days, I snacked on half a raw scallop for every five scallop ceviches I sent out. The preferred snack format was a thin cross section of the raw flesh spread over a crisp wafer of baguette stolen from the waiters’ bread basket, topped with Maldon salt flakes pinched from the hot appetiser station. Sweet and wobbly, the scallop could have been a slab of quince jelly.

As for peas, they’re the gummy candies of the vegetable world, sweet and tender. But you’d never know it from their appearance at a traditional English roast, boiled to the colour and flavour of khaki.

I like to make a puree out of peas, lightly-browned shallots, and just enough heavy cream to hold it all together without dulling the bright, Kermit green. A generous handful of mint chiffonade goes in with black pepper and a bare minimum of salt, and you have a bright-green bed on which to plop a sauteed scallop, so unexpectedly and luminously sweet you won’t believe there’s no added sugar.

Seared Sea Scallops with Minted Pea Puree – serves 2

INGREDIENTS

3 sea scallops, cut in half crosswise
1 tbsp butter

1 tbsp butter
1 shallot, finely diced
1 cup frozen green peas
3 tbsp heavy cream
15 mint leaves, chiffonade

METHOD

Sweat diced shallot in 1 tbsp butter over medium heat until lightly browned. Reduce heat; add frozen peas, stirring constantly until cooked through, about two minutes.

Remove from heat and transfer to glass or plastic bowl. Add heavy cream. With hand-held (immersion) blender, puree to a chunky consistency.

Shortly before serving, melt 1 tbsp butter in smoking hot pan. Cook halved scallops for 1-2 minutes on each side, until surface is a rich brown but the texture has not yet become stringy.

Immediately before serving, fold the chiffonade of mint leaves into the puree, reserving a few ribbons for garnish. Place three equal-sized dollops of puree onto each plate and top with seared scallop. Garnish with remaining mint.

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