Sustainable fresh scallops are best treated simply, and this herby, garlicky breadcrumb topping ticks all the right boxes
As a kid growing up in West Bay, Dorset, I used to sit on the harbour wall and watch the small trawlers coming in with their catch. My friend Mark’s dad’s boat, along with all the others, would be stacked high with sacks of queenies that they’d dredged up only hours before, and Mark’s mum would pack us off to school with a tub each of queen scallop meat doused in Sarson’s vinegar and white pepper, to eat later as a playground snack. At the time, I thought nothing of it, but, looking back now, I realise quite what a luxurious schoolday treat this was.
These days, however, our local scallop fishermen don’t fish for queenies much any more, because the time it takes to shuck and clean them is more or less the same as that for larger king scallops, so they’re no longer financially viable; also, instead of all those trawlers that Lyme Bay had in the past, it’s now mostly divers who fish more sustainably for king scallops, without demolishing the sea bed in the process. There are two main dive boats that fish out of Lyme Regis nowadays, operated by Jon Shuker and Ali Day, and they’ve pretty much cornered the local market. They recently started experimenting with so-called “disco scallops”, which are caught in pots fitted with flashing lights that lure them in, which is much more efficient, crew-wise, than diving, because a boat with one diver is legally required to have a crew of four, comprising the working diver, a standby diver, a supervisor and a driver. Crazy, eh?
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