Hey people!! I’m SO excited to be sharing this impressive, complex, super fancy, and last but not least DELICIOUS summer meal with you!
This recipe features a black rice salad with avocado, blackened corn, and sugar snap peas, topped with simple seared scallops and grilled red plum that is topped with a creamy lemon herb sauce and plenty of delicious microgreens!
The recipe is complicated, but the end result is so worth it! This is a great meal for a dinner party, a fancy dinner, or whenever else you want to impress a crowd!
Different Components of the Dish –
This dish has 4 main components, each of which need to be cooked individually. They are simple to make on their own, however, it does take time to make.
The Black Rice Salad
First of all, let me just say: YUM. Black rice is seriously one of my favorite additions to any meal. It’s just like brown rice, but it looks so much fancier. In this salad, the ingredients are:
Blackened Corn, which I threw on the grill quickly to get a nice quick cook.
Cubed avocado, and snap peas!
To make the salad, just toss together the ingredients until evenly combined! It’s SO easy to make, looks SO impressive, and is the best base for this dish.
The Grilled Plums
I’m a HUGE stone fruit person. I eat nectarines like popcorn. I could eat 1,000 plums, pluots, peaches, and nectarines at once because they are just so sweet and crunchy. These grilled plums are also simple to make, just like the black rice salad, and they taste so good.
Just cut them in half and remove the pit (more instructions in the recipe below), brush them gently with a little bit of olive oil, and grill them until charred.
NOTE: I use RED PLUMS for this recipe, because they were so much more saturated in color than the black plums. However, if you do want to use black plums, you can, the end result will just look different.
The Scallops
Seafood is one of the things I was most intimidated by when I first started cooking, but honestly, now that I’ve been cooking for almost a full decade, I can confidently say how simple it really is!
All I use to season the scallops in this recipe is sea salt and cracked black pepper, just to enhance the flavors of the other components: like the plums and the black rice salad.
The first thing I did to prep the scallops was pat them down with a paper towel to rid them of some of that extra liquid. I then sprinkled some salt and pepper on to the top and seared them in a pan.
Searing is super simple, I just heated the pan to medium heat, added some oil and butter, and cooked the scallops for around 3-5 minutes per side to develop a nice sear. Personally, I like my scallops more well done, so I cooked mine for around 5 minutes per side.
The Sauce –
This sauce is ALSO a version of my favorite homemade salad dressing (recipe coming soon)!
The ingredients are: dill, basil, chives, olive oil, salt, mayo, greek yogurt, and lemon juice. The end result for this sauce is SO lemony and very fresh tasting!
I’m a fan of this technique, and if you read my other recipes you’ll know… but I LOVE making sauces and dressings in the blender! It is SO easy!
For this, I first added the herbs, oil, salt, and lemon juice to the blender and blended on high heat until slightly emulsified.
Then, I added the mayo and the greek yogurt and blended until fully combined. The ending result should look like this:
The Plating!
This is the best part of the dish because it gives you the opportunity to be creative.
What I did was this:
I first plated the black rice salad in a thick solid line across a plain white plate, then I added 4-5 scallops onto the top of that.
After that, I added a grilled plum on the side and drizzled on the sauce.
The last step is optional, but I loved adding micro greens to the top of the dish to give it some more color.
Scallops with a Black Rice Salad and Grilled Plums
Ingredients
For the Scallops
- 2 lbs Sea Scallops (I used fresh, but frozen and thawed should work fine)
- 2 tsp Salt
- 1 tsp Black Pepper
For the Black Rice Salad
- 2 cups cooked black rice (mine was called "forbidden rice" and I got it from Whole Foods)
- 3 cobs corn
- 1/2 cup sugar snap peas (chopped on the diagonal)
- 1 large avocado (cut into large cubes)
For the Grilled Plums
- 3 large red plums (you are welcome to use black)
- 1 tsp olive oil
The Creamy lemon Herb Sauce
- 1/3 cup fresh dill
- 2 tbsp chopped basil
- 1 tbsp chives (about 7-10 chives)
- 1/3 cup olive oil
- 1/3 cup greek yogurt
- 2 tbsp mayo
- Juice of 1 lemon
- 2 tsp kosher salt
Instructions
- Start by cooking the black rice: I used a rice cooker, as always! Just follow the directions on the rice you bought. It can differ from brand to brand.
- While the rice is cooking, prep the other ingredients for the black rice salad. That starts with the grilled corn. Grilling corn is SO easy: just preheat your grill to a high heat, and cook the corn for about 10-12 minutes total, rotating frequently, until the corn is blackened.
- Now, cut the snap peas on the diagonal and cube the avocado. Cut the corn off the cob and add it to the black rice.
- Turn the grill heat down to medium, and grill your red plums. The cut the plums in half, and remove the pit, circle your knife around the plum until cut, and twist until it has come apart. The pit will remain on one half. To remove it, gently pry it out with a butter knife, and then remove with your fingers.
- Brush the tops of the plums with the olive oil and grill for around 7 minutes on medium heat until caramelized. However, timing may change depending on your grill strength.
- Make the sauce: In a blender, add all of the sauce ingredients but the greek yogurt and mayo. Once blended into what will look like a salad dressing, add the mayo and greek yogurt and blend again until combined.
- To prep the scallops, pat them dry with a paper towel and season on both sides with a generous amount of salt and pepper.
- With your large skillet on medium high heat, add some olive oil or butter and cook the scallops for 3-5 minutes per side, depending on how well you like them cooked. For a more well done scallop, cook for 7 minutes per side.
- Once cooked, you can begin plating. Toss together the black rice salad, and plate it how you'd like! Personally, I plated it with a stripe of the black rice salad down the middle of the plate. On top, I layed 4-5 scallops and added the grilled plum on the side. After that, I drizzled the creamy lemon sauce over the whole dish and topped with a large amount of micro greens.
- Happy cooking!