Name: Scallops with garlic cardamom butter and curry leaves
Yield: Serves 4 as a starter or 2 as a main course
Ingredients: 8 super-fresh large fat king scallops, preferably from and including the shell, cleaned, with coral kept or discarded according to preference, skirts removed and discarded; seeds from 10 cardamom pods, ground fairly finely in a pestle and mortar or equivalent set-up; 1 medium bulb of good hard garlic; 100 g unsalted butter; 12 fresh (ideally) or dried curry leaves; sunflower or vegetable oil, for dipping the scallops; ¼ teaspoon dried chilli flakes (optional); lime wedges, to serve (optional); ½ teaspoon ground turmeric; about ½ teaspoon flaked sea salt, plus extra for seasoning

Preparation info

Serves
4
as a starter

Difficulty
Easy

Appears in

What to Eat Next

By Valentine Warner

Published 2014

About

Simplicity itself, this is a cracking dish and has become one of my absolute favourites. Ideally the scallops would be coupled with a cold bottle of good, crisp white wine, condensation running down the side, and eaten in a warm breeze coming off the twinkling sea, the salt air mingling with the smell of the scallops and curried butter. Damn! I’m still here writing this in the office on a cold Sunday.

The scallops must be very, very good, preferably fresh from the shell. Wretched, l