Scallop & Cucumber Tartare with Pickled Rhubarb
A make-ahead, zero-skill show-stopping starter for summer entertaining.
This month here on ingredient we’re focusing on rhubarb, not the electric pink forced stuff that infuses winter plates with a welcome splash of colour, but the garden variety with giant, elephant-ear leaves that welcomes summer with abundance.
You can already find the recipe for a wonderfully refreshing Rhubarb Spritz here. Paid subscribers will be getting another rhubarb-focused recipe later in the month. Upgrade your subscription to unlock every recipe in the ingredient archive!
My cooking style is really casual. I like shortcuts, I like serving things up on big platters, and I don’t often go for something fiddly. I don’t entertain often, but when I do I have long since given up on individual portions of courses; I just select many dishes that go together and load them up on the table, followed with multiple desserts so everyone gets a choice (and also because often I’m doing said entertaining in my parents kitchen and my mother is so good at making desserts - a skill I lack - it would be a crime to ask her only to contribute one!)
But, I also love to cook. I know that is obvious given my job is more of a vocation, than a career, but I do enjoy tackling big, multifaceted projects most people shy away from, usually from chef’s restaurant cookbooks that sometimes take a couple of days up to the meal to prep. I take pleasure, enjoyment and satisfaction from executing them.
This simple scallop tartare - for all it looks like it just arrived as a small plate in a trendy East London restaurant - is not one of those recipes. I estimate it takes only about 20 minutes to make? It’s all in the gathering of ingredients and the preparation, and I think it is the perfect make-ahead starter for entertaining this summer that looks like - and tastes like - more than the sum of it’s parts.
It all starts with the ingredients
Obviously, we start with the scallops. Fresh as you can get, from a fishmonger you trust. I always get mine from Dungeness Fish Hut. As you’re not a restaurant you can afford to be generous, I think splitting five fat scallops between two here is best, though you can get away with two each. All you have to do is rinse them under a cold tap and finely chop them. But again, you’re not a restaurant and no one is going to care if none of the little pieces are the same size as their fellows.
Cucumber for freshness and crunch, that is simple, as is the dill to add a herbal note as well as to add visual interest. Both again, just simply chopped. Flaky sea salt seasons the whole thing, and a touch of your lightest, mildest extra virgin olive oil adds a much needed hit of fat in the mouth. Regular olive oil or a blend would be too mild here, but you don’t want something to grassy that would otherwise overwhelm the delicate, creamy scallops either.
All of this aside, it is the lightly pickled rhubarb, adding zing and acidity to proceedings that really makes this starter noteworthy. Made whilst I was waiting for dinner to cook last night, all you need to do is pour a simple solution of sugar dissolved in white wine vinegar over a jar of sliced rhubarb and leave it in the fridge overnight to create the ingredient that brings together the whole dish.
You’ll have ample leftovers which you should try to eat within the week to preserve crunch, and which you should try to treat like any other quick pickle - I actually just like snacking on them with drinks - Jolene Handy’s retro relish tray, and the delicious, at this time of year rhubarb-heavy pickle plates on the menu at walled kitchen garden restaurant Water Lane spring to mind here.
Yes, yes, I know for my third rhubarb recipe this month I need to provide you all with something that is not rhubarb left to infuse in something wine based, and I promise you I will, but once this recipe was in my head it would not leave me alone until I’d made it a reality.
A few notes on presentation
The key to serving this dish - like with oysters (which, by, the way, the pickled rhubarb, finely chopped in a little of the pickling vinegar would make a stellar alternative to mignonette for) - is to keep it very cold. At least store it in the fridge until you’re ready to serve.
As we’re going for that trendy restaurant vibe, I’ve served this on crushed ice (happily on hand in abundance to anyone with an American-style fridge freezer) on a small 1265 Degrees North side plate (a local brand I sadly can’t find online but can be found in all the trendy restaurants in Newcastle) in a couple of small scallop shells. If your scallops came in shells great, use them for presentation and clean and save them for future dishes - I’ve had these in the picture about 5 years now.
Or, serve this tartare in shot glasses with little silver spoons as was so popular with gazpacho a few years back, carried to the table in a bowl of ice. That will look pretty striking too.
Scallop & Cucumber Tartare with Pickled Rhubarb
Serves: 2 (designed to be scaled up), Preparation time: 20 minutes, Cooking time: 5 minutes
As long as you remember to make the pickled rhubarb the day before, and to buy the freshest, best quality scallops possible, this light, unexpected scallop tartare is something really impressive you can keep up your sleeve for your next summer dinner party, especially if ‘nothing fancy’ is your usual mode of entertaining.