margarita scallops

This is is a wonderful and zesty marinade that develops into a thick sauce to coat pan fried scallops.

Sadly we don’t find large, fresh scallops on abundance in South Africa, and this delicately flavoured shellfish is a bit of a treat. For this recipe I used frozen ones which shrunk down considerably in size.

Nevertheless this makes a wonderful starter or tapas snack and takes about 5 minutes to make. Essentially the sauce consists of the ingredients of a margarita cocktail with garlic and jalapeno added, cooked down to concentrate the flavour.

• 1 1/2 cups / about 250 – 350gms of scallops
• 1 T of olive oil

For the marinade I used about

• 2 T of lime juice
•  2 T of lemon juice
• 2 T of water
• 1 garlic clove crushed
• 1T of finely chopped pickled jalepeno chilli
• 1 T of sugar
• 2 T of tequila blanco (but any good quality tequila will do).

Mix all of marinade ingredients together until the sugar dissolves. Pat the scallops with paper towel to dry them and heat the olive oil in a non stick frying pan. Fry them until they just turn golden brown on each side and then turn over. Add the marinade to the pan with the shellfish and bring it the boil.  Depending on the size of the scallops they will cook through within a minutes.  Remove from the sauce and set aside. Continue to cook the sauce until it starts to thicken and pour it over the meat.

Serve with wedges of lime and fresh coriander (optional).