Garlic-herbed scallops — hold the butter, still delicious

Recipes cards at supermarket fish and beef counters seem a bit old-school, bu I still like to pick them up when looking for new ideas to meet my low-salt, low-fat, low-sugar diet requirements. I recently grabbed one for garlic-herbed scallops because I knew I had a package of scallops in my freezer and hadn’t been sure how to cook them.

I love garlic, herbs are fine, so I thought this would be worth a try. When I looked at the recipe, I saw it included butter and salt. I decided to leave those out. The result was a still very tasty olive-oil-based basting sauce that conveyed a wonderful taste to the scallops.

The ingredients to make enough sauce the baste eight medium-sized scallops, or about a pound of scallops:

4 tablespoons olive oil (the original recipe called for two of oil and two of butter)
2 gloves garlic, thinly sliced
1 teaspoon lemon zest
2 teaspoons lemon juice
2 teaspoons oregano
2 teaspoons tarragon

I sprayed a frying pan with olive oil to cook the scallops. I combined the other ingredients and used the mixture to first coat the scallops before I cooked them.

Once coated, I put the scallops into the hot pan to grill them, coating them with more of the mixture after turning them when one side had become seared and slightly brown. Cook the scallops about 3 minutes per side or until golden brown.

For sides, I made some sliced zucchini, baked in the oven on a cookie sheet after spraying it with olive oil and using a mixture of Italian herbs for flavor, and a small amount of whole-wheat pasta and home-made, low-salt tomato sauce.

The end product was a very tasty dinner that was simple to make, enjoy.

John