After my last post on Social Media I got talking to a friend of mine  who had some spare leeks in her fridge that she had grown in her allotment. She kindly offered them to me as she had some spare and for me the more local the better. This is only my third week on Social media and my second post on the blog and i’m amazed at how many great people I have ended up speaking to online. Who said that social media was anti social? Instagram has been a revelation for me, its enabled me to meet like minded people around Cornwall and enabled me to follow what i’m interesting in, there also seems to be no winging  and click bait which makes for an enjoyable experience.

So being able to get some leeks from  a friend who I haven’t spoken to really in years was amazing. Ideally I would like to get all of my produce from as close to home as possible especially if people have excess supply of stuff as it saves it from going to waste, especially after all the hard work that growers put into creating magnificent produce.

Foraging for 3 Cornered Leek

It was a weeknight, a Tuesday so I didn’t have much time to cook and I wanted to put some shots up on line.  So I needed a recipe that was quick to prepare and up to standard  . I decided to cook them with Scallops and bacon but I also wanted something else, if I had garlic I would have gone for that but there is no garlic in season at the moment. I got speaking to my friend who said that 3 cornered leeks had just started sprouting and flowering so off I went foraging on the coastline for 10 minutes and was lucky enough to find some. Not bad for 30 minutes work, picking up some leeks and foraging some 3 cornered leeks, all within 15 minutes of my house.

The Leeks

I’ve done a few recipes with Leeks lately and they are my favourite vegetable at the moment ,they just need to be cooked for a minimal amount of time with butter to bring out their sweetness.  My favourite cooking instrument at the moment is also a mandolin, it allows you to thinly slice these leeks really quickly and that’s just how you want them so that they don’t require much cooking.

Ingredients

• Roddas Butter or any local butter
• 2 Small Leeks

Mandolin the leeks and softly sweat them in a pan  on a gentle heat with some butter until soft, they don’t take long at all about 3-4 mins.

3 Cornered Leeks

So these can be foraged at present and their stems are like a spring onion with a hint of garlic. They do pack a good bit of flavour and are perfect for adding another subtle element to this dish.  I Sliced the stem finely and then put it into a pestle and mortar and bashed them up with a little Cornish Rape Seed Oil

Bashing them released their flavour and also produced a great green liquid that  looked and tasted amazing.

Bacon

For the bacon I just took 2 rashers of local bacon and grilled it until crispy

Scallops

Ok so the king of the show the Scallop. Its essential to get a good local, fresh scallop if you want maximum flavour. 3 or 4 was plenty for me as this amount just enables you to savour them. This whole dish really revolves around the scallop, its all about  trying to get the most sweetness out of the scallop as possible.

Ingredients

• Local fresh Scallops
• Cornish Sea salt
• Cornish Rape Seed Oil
• Roddas Butter

How to cook the Perfect Scallop

Season the Scallops with salt. Heat your oil in the pan on a high heat along with a good knob of Butter. Once the pan just starts to smoke ,add the scallops to the pan. Don’t touch them for 3 mins this will allow them to caramelise. Flip and cook for a couple to one minute on the other side.

Combining the ingredients together

So you can cook the leeks to start off with and reheat them just before you serve. You can also crisp up the bacon before hand. Put both of these onto the plate, add the scallops on top and add a few drops of your 3 cornered leek juice. I also fried some leek strands for a garnish

The result

The buttery leeks really bring out the sweetness of the caramelised scallops , they enhance the flavour of the scallop and the 3 cornered leeks add a lovely onion sweetness to the dish. I’m really happy with this dish  and highly recommend it. I don’t really think you need the bacon as for me the whole journey of flavour was the incredible sweetness of the leeks and scallops and the sauce.

Tuesday night = Treat night. Hope you enjoyed the post

Mr Whealfood

 

 

 

 

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