Recipe

Simple pasta with leeks and scallops

Simple pasta with leeks and scallops

Photo by fiveandspice

  • This recipe was entered in the contest for Your Best Seafood Pasta
  • Chef

    fiveandspice's Notes: One of my favorite extremely easy weeknight suppers is pasta tossed with caramelized leeks. It's so simple, but quite good. Then I just vary what type of protein I pair with it from sausage...

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Serves 2

  1. Heat the butter or oil in a large frying pan over medium until foaming. Add the leeks and stir to coat. Sprinkle with a little dash of salt, then turn the heat to very low and cook for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally, until they’re all wonderfully brown and caramelized. If needed, add a little water at any point if they are looking too dry.

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  2. In the meantime, bring a large pot of salted water to a rolling boil. Add in your pasta and cook until al dente. Reserve a bit of the cooking liquid, then drain your pasta.

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  3. Add the leeks to the pasta. Then, pour your wine into the pan that you cooked the leeks in, turn up the heat to medium-high, and cook for a couple of minutes, scraping the browned bits from the bottom of the pan into the liquid. Pour this over the pasta and leeks and toss everything together, adding a little pasta water to moisten, as needed. Cover lightly and set aside as you prepare the scallops.

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  4. Pat the scallops dry and sprinkle them with salt and fresh ground pepper. Heat the oil in a sautee pan over medium-high heat. Add the scallops and sear on each side until they are brown and crisped on the outside and just opaque in the middle - this only takes 2 minutes or so per side.

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  5. Divide the pasta with leeks between two plates, then perch half of the scallops on top of each. Sprinkle the lemon zest and some freshly ground pepper over each dish. Finally garnish with the parsley, and serve. And don't forget to serve the rest of the bottle of white wine.

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2 Comments on Simple pasta with leeks and scallops

John-george-brown-xx-eating-the-profits-1878 Reply

I like how simple yet ellegant this is. I happen to also like raw leeks and thought it can also make a nice salad variation with some other pasta shape .Thanks for the idea.

Sausage2 Reply

Thanks!

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