Jamie's Sticky Pan-Fried Scallops (and Chocolate Brownies)

By Helen
Main Ingredients:

• Frozen scallops
• Honey
• Chinese five-spice
• Broccoli and asparagus
• Rice, spring onions and eggs

A good chocolate brownie recipe is closely-guarded and much envied. 

This one - although at the time seeming unnecessarily complicated and slowing me down when I wanted to get started on my main course -was pretty impressive. Dark chocolate was blitzed with butter, sugar, cocoa powder, four eggs, a morsel of flour and a handful of crystallised ginger, then poured into a tin with dried cherries and pecans sprinkled over the top (as below).

While that was in the oven I could get started on the rest of the meal - covering the scallops in oil, lemon zest and five-spice, before frying with honey, chopped chilli and a little garlic.

This was my first experience cooking scallops and the fact that they were frozen rather than fresh meant they were juicy rather than sticky. They were also smaller than I expected (only about the diameter of a penny) so at least they didn't take any longer to cook.

Carbs were provided by boiling some rice and stirring in beaten eggs, soy sauce and chopped spring onions, before sprinkling over a little coriander and sweet chilli sauce. Some simple greens (asparagus and broccoli) was dressed with oil and lime juice to add some colour.

I wouldn't usually have suggested such a rich dessert after a meal like this but it worked surprisingly well - the added fruit and nuts in the brownies meant they weren't cloyingly sweet and the hint of ginger went down well after the chilli too.

If you can bear to just have the main course, it came out at £2.77 a head - not bad considering most of that was scallops. Factor in the dessert and it's more like £4.48 a head (but that includes an extra piece of brownie each to make your work colleagues jealous the next day).

Taken from... Jamie Oliver - 30 Minute Meals

Best for... Convincing people they DO like shellfish - and rewarding them for trying something new

Chris says... I've never seen four plates quite so clean, yet somehow everyone found room for Brownie...