Nantucket bay scallop ✦ ◆

Pétoncle de baie

What it is

The commercial season runs from the first of November to the end of March, worked by hand from small boats, and the scallop lives out its two years in eelgrass meadows that hide it from crabs. When wasting disease stripped up to ninety per cent of North Atlantic eelgrass in the 1930s, the bay scallop went with it almost everywhere but here.

In the kitchen

They are the size of a fingernail and full of water: pat them dry, use a wide pan, work in small batches and give them thirty seconds in foaming butter. Crowd the pan and they release their liquid, poach themselves, and go from sweet to chalky inside the same minute.

Goes with

Butter Lemon Chives Tarragon Cream Fleur de sel de Guérande Hazelnut Apple

In season alongside

Northern sweet shrimp Brocciu Clam Dungeness crab Fugu shirako Haddock

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