Came across some women selling kalyong (a species of scallops) along the road from Matalom to Maasin last weekend. Impressed by the large specimens (of the scallops, I mean), I bought a pundok (batch). Price: ₱100, or about ₱40 a kilo (I had them weighed).
Since I was there: “How do you prepare scallops?” Oh, I knew, all right; it wasn’t like I was expecting a demo from Gordon Ramsay — just something hopefully less meticulous.
“You brush the dirt off the shell, sir, see?”
“Uh-huh.”
“That’s it.”
“Ah. What about inside?”
“What about it?”
“Anything I need to take out?”
“To eat, yes.”
“Of course.”
And that, ladies and gentlemen, was how I came to grill those scallops as is. They opened right up, whereupon I spooned a good dollop of lemon-garlic butter and grated cheese (cheddar and mozzarella) into each cavity. So far, so good. Could it really be this easy?
If only. I should have figured scallops that big (they were actually twice the size of those in the second photo) to be tough around the edges. While the roe and adductor muscle were perfectly succulent, the rest was chewy and frankly inedible, and it was difficult to tell which was which underneath all the cheesy goo.
Take the time to prep scallops — it’s a bitch, but it makes all the difference in the world.
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