Scallop Cakes with Lemon Tarragon Cream Sauce

These delicious Scallop Cakes are crispy on the outside and pleasantly creamy on the inside with a sweet perfume of fresh scallops. The silky taste of the scallops is complemented with a Tarragon cream topping sauce that augments the flavor in your mouth. Paired with Jost Silkie Frizzante, these scallops cakes are a great, easy to make the appetizer for any occasion.

“There is nothing more shocking than to see scallops being blended!” That was my first thought when Ken talked about this recipe. Scallops are delicious on its own, they are so full of flavor and yummy that it would seem like a waste to blend them and mix them with other ingredients in a scallop cake. However, this could not be further from the truth, and thankfully I thought so after tasting this delicate recipe. Of course, you don’t have to buy whole scallops to make it. Some markets offer the choice of buying scallop pieces for a much better price and for a lesser cringing sensation when you are blending the scallops, but most of the times, this is reserved for restaurant kitchens, as they pay better prices for the food to the distributor. Having said that, this recipe is well worth the try and the results are surprisingly good. It is the perfect feeling of crispness followed by a burst of tarragon perfumed scallop flavor that will leave you wanting more.

I do have to confess, Tarragon was never a favorite of mine. I always found it too overwhelming until I tried this Tarragon cream. The strong taste of the Tarragon is balanced out by the added lemon juice, mellowing it down and making it totally addictive. Needless to say, we ate these cakes for the following three days that followed the filming of the video, and made them again and again since the episode!

I cannot finish this post without mentioning the biggest surprise of our video, Jost Selkie Frizzante. We were not expecting much of it as Ken and I are not fans of bubbly other than Champagne or Prosecco, and you could not put it into the classification or either, so it would be unfair to compare it to any of the two. The Frizzante is a completely different category on its own as the “bubbliness” (if you can call the amount of gas in the wine) is not as prevalent as with any of the sparkling wines. It is just a texture, a soft, tantalizing, sexy texture that plays with your sensory, filling your mouth with delicate flavors. We highly recommend it!

So, we hope you will enjoy our episode of today and you will prepare these out of this world scallop cakes! Hoping you won’t feel like you went crazy when blending the scallops! Please leave us a comment and share your thoughts with us. Life is boring without communicating and it adds years to your life to do so! Share and live longer!

Here is our Easy to Print recipe:

Scallop Cakes with Lemon Tarragon Cream Sauce

These delicious Scallop Cakes are crispy on the outside and pleasantly creamy on the inside with a sweet perfume of fresh scallops.

Course Appetizer, entree, Main Course
Cuisine Comfort Food, Fish and Seafood
Servings 12 medium sized cakes

Ingredients

Scallop Cakes

  • ¼ Cup Butter
  • 1 Cup finely chopped carrots
  • 1 cup finely chopped onion
  • 2 cloves minced garlic
  • 1 2/3 cups all purpose flour
  • 1 ½ cups milk
  • 1 lb scallop pieces puréed
  • 2 tbsp chopped fresh parsley
  • Salt and Pepper
  • 4 lightly beaten eggs
  • 1 cup fine dry bread crumbs
  • Peanut Oil for frying

Lemon Tarragon Cream Sauce

  • 1 tsp butter
  • 2 tbsp chopped fresh or dried tarragon
  • 1 cup whipping cream
  • 1 tsp fresh lemon juice
  • Salt and freshly ground pepper

Instructions

  1. - Purée scallops with a blender or hand blender.
  2. - Add butter, garlic, chopped onions, chopped carrots, salt and fresh cracked pepper to a skilled. Cook for 6 minutes on medium heat. Add 2/3 cup flour, mix it in covering all the ingredients without burning it and add the milk a little at a time mixing it with a whisk until smooth. Cook it for about 1 minute after adding all the milk.
  3. - Add the puréed scallops, chopped parsley to the mix. Rectify the salt and pepper and set aside to cool down.
  4. - While the scallop mix is cooling down, add 1 tbsp butter to a small frying pan and add the tarragon, add the whipping cream, salt and pepper and then simmer while stirring to reduce for about 3 to 4 minutes.
  5. - When the mix is creamy and bubbly, stop cooking and add lemon.
  6. - When the scallop mix has cooled down, make balls the size you want to make the portions and roll them into the first into the flour, then the eggs and last into the bread.
  7. - After breaded, make them into pucks for better frying and deep fry them for 3 to 5 minutes until golden brown.
  8. - Serve them with a lemon wedge and top them with the Tarragon Cream Sauce.

Recipe Notes

- You can use any size scallops you want. We recommend buying scallop pieces when available.
- The uncooked cakes can be kept covered in the fridge for up to 3 hours. In this case, you will need to cook them 1 minute longer.
- You can make the cakes in the size you want. However, remember to add time to the frying according to the size.

2 thoughts on “Scallop Cakes with Lemon Tarragon Cream Sauce”

  1. This recipe looks delicious. I will definitely try it but I don’t have a deep fryer.
    Would they be as good pan fried?

    Thanks

    1. Thanks for your comment!! The difference between deep frying them and pan frying them is that they might not cook the same inside. When you deep fry them, they get evenly cooked all around as opposed to when they are pan fried when they only get cooked one side at a time. You could try it but when shaping them, make them thinner and turn them over often to make sure they cook evenly. Please let us know how yours turned out!! We would love to know!

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