My Wife's Birthday

December 27th

This was my wife’s birthday and the rule in our house is that the on your birthday you get to dictate the activities and meals of the day. She had chosen a fairly simple meal to prepare so that we would have time to go see a movie and watch some other ones at home as well.

For her birthday dinner she chose sautéed scallops, Brussels sprouts cooked with homemade pancetta, shallots, and white wine, and orzo tossed with garlic olive oil, and pine nuts. It was in fact a quick meal to cook, because none of them take very long to do. In fact the Brussels sprouts take the longest. I started those and then got the orzo cooking and sautéed some garlic in olive oil to mix with the orzo. I toasted some pine nuts in a pan and held those to the side. When the orzo was done I drained it and tossed it with the garlic oil and added the toasted pine nuts. I was initially going to add some cheese to it, but I was using the orzo “pilaf” as a bed for the scallops and thought it would interfere with the flavor of the scallops so I decided not to.

I dried the scallops well on paper towels to help them get a god crust and sautéed them quickly in olive oil over high heat. Scallops cook very quickly and generally one minute a side is plenty of time to cook them without letting them get tough. I pulled the scallops form the pan, added some chopped garlic, let it cook briefly before deglazing the pan with white wine and then added some butter to pull the sauce together. I added the scallops back to the pan briefly to coat them in the sauce and then plated everything. I used the orzo as a bed for the scallops and did the Brussels sprouts on the side. The scallops were tender and very sweet and delicious. I would have liked a little better crust on them, but the crust was adequate. I had a glass of inexpensive Viognier with it which went quite well.

For dessert, we had Napoleons form the Beaverton Bakery, which is one of the best bakeries I’ve ever seen. She had chosen these instead of a cake, and although we didn’t add candles, I did sing her “Happy Birthday.” The Napoleons were as perfect as anything else I’d had form them and was a great ending to a great meal.