You should put the spuds on to steam first while you are preparing the remainder of the recipe. Steaming the potatoes will give you a dryer mash which in turn will take on more cream and butter which this dish just loves!
To prepare the scallops, remove all the out connective tissues and separate the roe. Set the roe to one side for adding later. Clean and dry each scallop and cut into quarters.
Place the scallops in a bowl and lightly season before coating in the sauce.
For the sauce, add a little olive oil to a wide based pot and warm over a gentle heat. Add the shallots and bunch of thyme (which you can tie up to make it easier to remove later). Gentle sweat the shallots until see through and add the white wine, you can now increase the heat. Reduce the wine until it has lost half of it’s volume. ( remove the bunch of thyme at this stage) Now add the cream and bring this to a simmer, continue to simmer this until the cream has reduced by half and is now ready to take the cheese.
Remove the pot from the heat but ready to return to heat as you need to. Slowly add the grated cheese to the cream, whisking all the while to ensure it does not curdle. Continue to add the cheese while whisking and return to the heat intermittently to ensure all the cheese melts evenly.
Set this to one side to cool a little.
Now return to the steamed potatoes, it is best to run them through a mouli (or a food mill) this gives the perfect riced mash. Now bring the cream and butter to a simmer and add to the mash, mix this in really well with a beater to get the mash as light as possible. Put the mash into a piping bag now ready to use.
Now mix the scallops with the gruyere sauce and divide them evenly across 8 empty scallop shells which will then give you 2 per person. Place the filling into the centre as much as possible.
Now pipe the mash in a ruffle effect around the edge of the shell incasing the scallop filling. Top each shell off with a little of the remaining grated gruyere.
Place all the shells on a roasting tray and into a preheated oven at 190 degrees for 7 minutes. This should be enough to cook the scallops through. Now place the whole tray under a very hot grill just to finish them all off with a nice even browning.
These scallops are beautiful the way they are straight from the grill but a really nice addition to the dish is simple very simply sautéed samphire. Go back
