Recipe: Baked Scallops in White Wine Cream Sauce

My parents and I decided to stay home for New Year’s Eve this year (boring, I know; actually it was really nice to sit and read in front of the fire and not have to go anywhere). We wanted to cook something out-of-the-ordinary for dinner, so my dad suggested scallops and said that he had a good recipe for them. The original recipe — pasted into one of my parents’ binders of assorted recipes — had unknown origins and was hilarious in that it listed some ingredients but then never said what to do with them or when to add them together. My dad and I smoothed out the bumps in the recipe and lightened it quite a lot — the original calls for an entire stick of butter; we opted to use mostly olive oil. We also didn’t have quite enough scallops so we added in some shrimp. The result was a creamy, rich-despite-the-lack-of-butter dish that we served over baguette rounds and alongside roasted butternut squash. It was easy and filling; I’d make it again (and hope that you do the same!).

Baked Scallops in White Wine Cream Sauce

Ingredients

• 1 lb scallops (we used about half scallops and half pre-cooked shrimp)
• 5 tbsp olive oil
• 3 tbsp butter
• 3 oz dry white wine
• 1/2 lb mushrooms, sliced
• 1 sm-med onion, diced
• 3 tbsp all-purpose flour
• 3 oz cooking sherry
• 1 cup cream or other milk product (we used 3/4 half & half and 1/4 1% milk)
• to taste: salt, pepper, minced parsley, paprika

Procedure

• Preheat the oven to 350F and butter a casserole.
• Saute the scallops (and shrimp, if using) in 3 tbsp olive oil until they are golden brown. Add the white wine and stir, then add the mixture to the casserole.
• Now sauté the mushrooms and onions in the rest of the olive oil until they are softened to your liking. Add them to the casserole.
• In a separate, small saucepan, melt the butter then add the flour and blend well. Add the sherry and cook for a few minutes. Slowly add the cream, stirring until blended. Season with salt and pepper.
• When the white sauce is thick, pour it over the mixture in the casserole and sprinkle the top with parsley and paprika. Bake for 10 minutes in the oven.

Enjoy!