If you had told me, back in my 20s, how great it would be to spend Christmas Eve cooking for family as someone rustles wrapping paper in the living room and the dog snores at my feet, I wouldn’t have believed you, would have scoffed like a Gen-X Scrooge. I was content then to hold up the bar with friends and strangers, to drain Rolling Rocks and sing “Fairytale of New York,” take a swing and a miss at the midnight service, then trudge the long walk home in the cold. I’m not any longer. I cook and serve others food that is both fantastical and rich, to allow all who eat it to sleep through whatever late-night shenanigans put gifts under the tree, and to rise in the morning Christmas-excited. My children are teenagers now. But I believe they still slightly believe. The dinner helps.
Scallops are at the center of the meal. There is clarity in the water off Long Island this time of year, a crystalline purity to it that I think firms the flesh of the bivalves and makes them extra sweet. I think that’s true both of the paw-shaped sea scallops that sit on the ocean floor south of the island, and of the smaller, more delicate bay scallops that live in the shallow waters between the island’s forks. If I’m cooking sea scallops, I’ll sear them in a pan, get a good crust going on each one, then turn them once and serve them almost right away, so that you might think they’re barely done in the center. Bay scallops are smaller, more fragile. They want only warming in butter before going out on a plate: candy made of seafood.
But I don’t cook just scallops. David McMillan and Frédéric Morin, the joyously immoderate chefs who run the Joe Beef restaurant in Montreal, match seared scallops with pulled pork and hollandaise sauce. I love that preparation, how excessive it is, how appropriate to holiday cheer. But over the years, I’ve changed it to include shredded duck instead of pork, which shaves a few hours off the cooking time and somehow elevates the fanciness of the meal as well. With Christmas Eve falling on Sunday this year, you could cook the duck well in advance of dinner. The heat of the oven renders the bird’s fat and leaves the skin crisp and the meat beneath it soft and tangly. Shred the breasts and the thighs into a bowl with some diced skin and a lashing of hoisin or barbecue sauce, then heat it through in a pan right before using it on the scallops.
Finally, there is the hollandaise. A lot of people are scared of hollandaise. They eat it mostly in restaurants and consider its creation magical. But it’s just egg yolks whisked with butter to form an airy emulsion, rich and luxurious. And you don’t need a double boiler to make it, only a stick blender and a smallish bowl. The key is temperature, not tools. You want the melted butter warm, but not so hot so as to curdle the eggs. And you don’t want to add it all at once, since that will break the sauce. Once it’s thick, keep it warm on the back of the stove or in a thermos until you’re ready to use it. (Still nervous? Make a trial batch for breakfast ahead of the one you’ll make at night, and serve it with eggs and toasted English muffins.)
To serve, I like a plate with a spread of hollandaise on it, with a bunch of scallops on top, with shredded duck and more hollandaise on top of them, and a watercress salad on the side, just as if I were running a little restaurant, open once a year. But you could set the food up family-style just as easily, on a platter, or serve the components of the dish separately. You could in fact omit the duck and double the scallops. You could omit the scallops and the duck and serve the sauce with steak and smashed potatoes. You could omit the sauce and eat the scallops raw. These are gifts for you to play with, however you like.
Recipe: Sautéed Scallops With Shredded Duck and Hollandaise Sauce
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