Coquilles Saint Jacques and Souffle

a FB friend (who i'm working on getting to drink the BGE kool aid) was talking about pitching some scallop shells (i offered to take them off her hands as they could join my 40 year old escargot shells) and by the time we finished 'talking' she had decided to keep her's. ..but then a few days later, lo and behold a box showed up at my door from some kitchen store in the midwest with a dozen scallop shells from her!!! damn i love friends!!! so last night it was french night here at the house. ...classic coquilles saint jacques and a cheese souffle. .. all done on the eggs for that classic rustic flavor i like so much. ...i hadn't made scallops like this in probably 25 years (souffles i've done a lot)... .

to do it up right i went down the street to the good fishmonger and brought really good quality scallops and a container of fish stock for the velote sauce.. ..

as i like to do, i read through about 3 or 4 different recipes from the likes of julia child, jacque pepin and anthony bourdain, took those recipes and mixed and matched the elements i liked and tweaked them further with a few of my own ideas. ..the results came out really good. ...

here are the scallops.... brushed with some melted butter and lemon juice and seasoned with a little dizzy pig shaking the tree (the lemon/pepper mix took it up a notch beyond just salt and pepper)....



grilled quickly on the egg just to brown them, but get them about halfway done as they'd be baked more later in the shells and i didn't want them to get over cooked. ..



i then sauted some mushrooms and shallots in butter



next up the velote sauce.. ..classic recipe from julia child....few tablepoons of flour and butter, whisked till smooth, then added 1/2 a cup of the fish stock and reduces until smooth .. .then added a cup of heavy cream and some salt and pepper. . .kept whisking until really smooth. ..tasted unbelievably good!!....



slice the scallops in thin slices and laid them and mushrooms/shallots onto the shells, then spooned the velote sauce on top of them, then topped it all off with a little gruyer cheese... .



then into a 550 degree egg indirect until the sauce/cheese was bubbling and starting to brown. ...about 5 - 8minutes or so. . .



while all this was going on, i had made up jacque pepin's momma's souffle recipe. ..i like this one cause you don't have to separate the egg yolks from the whites. .. it doesn't rise as high as a regular souffle, but its easy peasy and tastes just as good!!

here it is on the egg and then finished





and here it is all plated. .. .along with some green beans, blanched then tossed with some bacon. ..



it was a great meal. ...a good clean egg gave these dishes a really nice rustic flavor .. ..you don't want smoke or any grease in the egg as it would definitly affect the flavor of the cream sauce and the cheese in the souffle. ...