Scallops with Angel Hair

Week 509, and the dark arriving early, the kitchen warm against the cold, the soups simmering, the bread rising. I am 68 years old and the days have a rhythm now — the morning writing, the afternoon visits to Cedarhurst, the evening cooking, the weekly blog post — and the rhythm is the structure, and the structure is the sanity, and the sanity is required because the rest of it, the losing and the loving and the carrying, requires a sane woman at the helm, and I am sane, mostly, except when I cry in the car in the Cedarhurst parking lot, which is not insanity but its opposite: the specific, targeted release of emotion in a contained space, which is the most rational thing I do all week.

Gazpacho; tomato sauce; preservation; faith in winter needing summer. These are the facts of the week, the data points, the things I would put in a report if I were writing a report, which I am not — I am writing a life, and the life includes the facts but is not limited to them, because the life also includes the way the kitchen smells at six in the morning when the coffee is brewing and the challah is rising and the house is quiet and the quiet is both the grief and the peace, simultaneously, and the simultaneous is the condition, the permanent condition of a woman who is 68 and alone and not alone, who is a grandmother and a wife and a writer and a cook and a caregiver and all of these things at once, always at once, braided together like the challah.

I made gazpacho and tomato sauce this week — because it was what the week needed, because the week always needs something and the something is always food, and the food is always the answer, and the answer is always the kitchen, and the kitchen is always mine, and the mine-ness of the kitchen is the one thing that has not changed in sixty-seven years of living, from Sylvia's kitchen on the Grand Concourse to this kitchen in Oceanside where I stand every morning and every evening and many of the hours in between, making the food that is the chain, that is the love, that is the thing I do when I don't know what else to do, which is always, and especially now.

I brought food to Marvin at the usual time. The visit was what visits are now — quiet, steady, the feeding by hand when necessary, the reading aloud always, the holding of the hand that may or may not know it is being held but that is warm and alive and present, which is the definition of love in this particular year: warm and alive and present. He ate what I brought. He received what I gave. The receiving is the relationship. The receiving is the vow. In sickness and in health, in recognition and in forgetting, in the recliner and in the kitchen, the receiving is the marriage, and the marriage continues, one container at a time, one visit at a time, one day at a time, at two o'clock, every day, because the chain does not break.

The week that produced the gazpacho and the tomato sauce also produced this — because once you have stood over a pot of simmering tomatoes with preservation on your mind, you want something that honors that same brightness at the table, something that takes very little time and yet tastes like it cost you everything. Scallops with angel hair is what I made on the evening I came home from Cedarhurst with my hands still warm from holding his. It is fast and it is serious and the sauce — tomatoes, wine, garlic, butter — is the cousin of every tomato sauce I have ever made, and that lineage matters to me: the chain does not break, not even on a Tuesday night in winter.

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 20 min | Total Time: 35 min | Servings: 4

Ingredients

1 lb large sea scallops, side muscle removed, patted very dry
8 oz angel hair pasta
3 tablespoons olive oil, divided
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, divided
5 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved
1/2 cup dry white wine
1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
1/4 cup fresh flat-leaf parsley, roughly chopped
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
Lemon wedges, for serving
Freshly grated Parmesan, optional

Instructions

Boil the pasta. Bring a large pot of generously salted water to a boil. Cook the angel hair pasta according to package directions until just al dente, about 3–4 minutes. Reserve 1/2 cup pasta water before draining. Drain and set aside, tossed lightly with a drizzle of olive oil to prevent sticking.
Season the scallops. Season scallops on both sides with salt and freshly ground black pepper. Press gently with a paper towel one final time — dry scallops sear, wet scallops steam, and the difference matters.
Sear the scallops. Heat 2 tablespoons olive oil in a large heavy skillet (cast iron or stainless) over high heat until the oil just begins to smoke. Add scallops in a single layer, leaving space between each. Sear without moving for 2 minutes until a deep golden crust forms. Flip and cook 1 minute more. Transfer to a plate and tent loosely with foil.
Build the sauce. Reduce heat to medium. Add remaining 1 tablespoon olive oil and 1 tablespoon butter to the same skillet. Add garlic and red pepper flakes; cook, stirring, for 60 seconds until fragrant and just golden at the edges. Add cherry tomatoes and cook 2–3 minutes until they begin to burst and release their juices.
Deglaze and finish. Pour in the white wine and scrape up any browned bits from the bottom of the pan — those bits are the flavor. Simmer 2 minutes until slightly reduced. Stir in the remaining 1 tablespoon butter and the lemon juice. Add a splash of reserved pasta water if the sauce needs loosening. Taste and adjust salt.
Combine and plate. Add the drained angel hair to the skillet and toss gently to coat every strand in the sauce. Divide the pasta among four plates or wide shallow bowls. Nestle the seared scallops on top, 3–4 per serving. Scatter parsley over everything. Serve immediately with lemon wedges and Parmesan if desired.

Nutrition (per serving)

Scallops with Angel Hair — The Food That Carries Love Across Any Distance