Coquilles St Jacques — Scallops with mushrooms in white wine sauce #frenchchic

This is our family dinner classic! I prepare Scallops with Mushrooms in White-Wine Sauce at least once or twice per year. These ones I served with garlic potatoes and baguette.

You can find the recipe from Epicurious, and you can follow my pictures and videos here below for the method.

Epicurious has been my favourite recipe site since 1997. My former colleague from Pennsylvania told me that it had useful search functionality. Indeed you could type in, for instance, what main ingredients you want to use or the dish type/course, and it gave all recipes that matched those specifications. You could also create custom shopping lists. Since then Epicurious has evolved in many directions. I think it is equally good than BBC Food or All Recipes.

I always start by making the white wine mushroom sauce. First prepare roux with flower and butter. Then combine egg yolks and cream (see video below), now mix this with the roux to create a base for your sauce. Mix, on low heat, until sauce is smooth.

Cut and then fry the mushroom in butter and evoo. Season with salt & pepper. Set aside.

You need to prepare a broth for the sauce base. Boil in a pot 3 dl water, 4 dl white wine, 3 bay leaves, crushed black pepper, parsley and 2 chopped shallots. Put the frozen scallops into this pan for couple of minutes until the broth boils again (Scallops should remain raw), then remove the scallops and put them in the ramekins. The scallops give extra flavour to this broth. Continue boiling the broth until it reduced to half in its volume, sieve it (discard the aromatics), and pour the broth into the sauce base whisking vigorously. Do not bring to boil as the eggs will scramble.

Add into the white wine sauce the fried mushrooms. Your sauce is done. Next start toasting the breadcrumbs (see video below). Be careful not to burn them.

Mix together parsley, Parmigiano-Reggiano and the toasted breadcrumbs.

Cover the scallops with white wine mushroom sauce and spoon over some breadcrumb mix. Now these are ready to go to the oven.