Mango Scallops with Poblano and I Don't Know What All

After a few days of hospital food (routine testing for a chronic condition - no worries) (except for the cuisine), I reckon a stir-fried sock would taste good, but I decided to up the ante a little more with a scallop recipe that had caught my eye in a recent cooking mag. Unfortunately, I didn't have the recipe with me when I went to the store, nor could I find it when I started rummaging through the back issue stack at around 7pm last night. Well, in the immortal words of Mehitabel the alley cat, "Wotthehell, wotthehell and toujours gai!" Sometimes you've just got to blunder through with what you've got. I'd do it again and here's the recipe as proof.

Mango Scallops with Poblano and I Don't Know What All

Rinse a 1/2 pound of bay scallops, pat them dry and send them off to play 30 Minutes in the Closet with
1/8 teaspoon of sea salt
1/4 teaspoon of cayenne
and 1/4teaspoon of turmeric

Seed and chop a medium-sized poblano pepper, a small red onion and a large mango. (Dig how festive, tricolore & blurry things look on the counter! Man, even that sponge looks good enough to eat!)



Heat 1 tablespoon of olive oil over medium-high, add the onion and the poblano, stirring so they don't burn. When most of their pretty brightness has been leached away by the ravages of the pan, add the mangos and marinated scallops and stir for 2 minutes or so.

Now it's time to banish dull care with a splash of white wine. I used pinot grigio - a big mouthful's worth.

Give that pan a mouthful of coconut milk too.

Chop up a handful of cilantro, stems and all!

Pull some leaves off the basil plant!

If I'd' had a lime, I'd have squoze that sucker over the proceeding, but I didn't have a lime (which is why we couldn't make margaritas when Greg volunteered to fetch some tequila later in the evening)
(Instead, I substituted an ounce of salmon roe, which doesn't taste anything like lime juice, but is as pretty as those red beads Hunca Munca finds in the dolls' pantry in The Tale of Two Bad Mice. I was a picky picky eater as a child, but damn, what I would have given to eat those beads!)

Serve over a modest amount of rice ... (Leaning to hard on the white stuff is a one-way ticket to Blandsville, dig?)

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