CREATE-A-PLATE – Pappardelle with Scallops

It's funny how you fall into routines with new roommates. For us at La Jolla, Mondays has become karaoke night (Jordan led us in an amazing rendition of “We Are the World” last week). Wednesday night is trivia - GUT FEELING rules! By Thursday we are in full on weekend mode, so that leaves Tuesday as La Jolla Cooking night.

Previously on CREATE-A-PLATE…I tackled Lynn Rosetto Kasper’s American Apple pie, and by tackle I mean the recipe blitzed and sacked me. In Round 2, I’ll take on the grandmommy of all the splendors of slaving over the stove – Martha Stewart.

Martha and I have become BFF's every since I added her Everyday Food App to my iPhone. At around 12:40pm (right around the time when my stomach is like “WTF is for lunch?”) I get a push notification of Martha’s Dinner Tonight Recipe Suggestion.

Pappardelle with Scallops….20 minutes prep and serve. “Done and Done” I said to myself as I cruised on down to Ralphs after work to pick up the ingredients. Check out the full recipe and glamour shots of Big Momma Martha here at her website:

http://www.marthastewart.com/recipe/pappardelle-with-scallops

Ten minutes passed and I was in-and-out of Ralphs (where I heard not one, but two middle-aged adults singing along with Whitney to “I’m Every Woman”….okay fine, make it three – I was humming along too) and on my way home to get cooking.

 

 With some Christmas music to set the mood (I can see you rolling your eyes…it’s not my fault, you can blame Time Warner’s ‘Sounds of the Season’ channel) I got to work on getting dinner on the stove. In between burning the first batch of bread crumbs…

…and correctly browning the second batch, Jessie arrived home and John followed a few minutes later – each with their own bottle of white. A steadfast rule of cooking at La Jolla is that the proportion of wine bottles must be exactly equal to the number of people eating dinner…if the food sucks, at least we’ll be toasted.

While I got busy searing scallops, boiling pasta, reducing a butter/thyme/lemon sauce and sautéing spinach (my own little addition to the recipe)….

John and Jessie were busy…eating hors devours. Don’t break a sweat you two.

Twenty minutes after beginning we were about halfway through the water boiling for the pasta…thirty minutes in and the scallops were browned…at forty minutes in (and one bottle of wine down) dinner was served. 

 

Thumbs up from around the table. The breadcrumbs gave the pasta a nice crunch, while the scallops didn’t overpower with a fishy taste.

I imagine it's just the same way Martha intended us to to enjoy it....surrounded by friends, sipping our second (or was it third?) bottle of wine and listening to Mariah Carey belt "All I Want for Christmas is You".


It is, indeed, a Good Thing.


http://www.marthastewart.com/recipe/pappardelle-with-scallops