Five Ingredient Scallop Bucatini

A good bowl of pasta can turn your mood around if you’ve had a bad day, fill your belly full when it’s rumbling, and be something you will always remember. There is a local restaurant in Pittsburgh called Wild Rosemary - one of my top 5 favorite places around the city. It probably seats less than 60 people, and the menu has usually around 7-8 items on it which rotate and change depending on what is in season. Reservations can be difficult to get, but I cannot recommend this Bistro enough.

Anyway - the point here is that I had an amazing Scallop Bucatini pasta the first time I ever dined there. It was just exceptionally good. Like you know when you have that first bite of something and immediately say “damn, this is delicious.” It was like that. So I wanted to try and replicate something similar at home, and so here we have my easy, 5 (ish) ingredient Scallop Bucatini.

I say 5ish ingredients because you will need some herbs/spices and butter, however there are really only 5 main ingredients in this dish:

8 Sea Scallops

1/2 lb Bucatini

1 - 1 1/2 Lemon

1 Vine tomato

1/4 Cup Parmesan

The “extras” or pantry ingredients are:

3 Tbsp Butter

4 Cloves Garlic

2 Shallots or 1 Small Red Onion

Salt and Pepper to taste

A Few Leaves of Basil

Pinch of Chili flake

A lot of this recipe relies on personal preference for your taste. The measurements above are based on what I like, you may find yourself adding more or less of any ingredient which is absolutely fine! Since the ingredients are limited here, you will want some really fresh scallops and high quality bucatini.

Start by boiling heavily salted pasta water and adding in your pasta. You will want to cook it about 2 minutes under the package recommendations. While the pasta is cooking, mince your garlic and dice the shallot or onion. Sauté both in some olive oil on medium heat for about 3-4 minutes. Once the onion or shallots starts looking translucent, add in some diced tomato along with some salt and pepper and allow it to cook down for roughly 5 or so minutes until they have really softened and started to have the appearance similar to canned crushed tomatoes.

Scoop out about 1 cup of the pasta cooking water and add this into your pan, along with the zest and juice of 1 full lemon and a couple tablespoons of butter. The sauce will seem too runny at first, but the starch from the pasta water will thicken it a bit so just give it a few minutes to come together. Add in your al dente pasta, which will also absorb some of the liquid and finish cooking amongst the other ingredients.

Right before you plate your meal, chiffonade your basil and fold into the pasta, along with your freshly grated parmesan cheese and a pinch of chili flake for some heat.

To cook the scallops, pat them extremely dry with a paper towel - this will help enable them to get a nice crust when cooking. Coat with salt and fresh ground black pepper. In a pan, heat some olive oil. Once hot, add in your scallops and don’t move them. You will only need to sear the scallops for about two minutes on each side, so definitely don’t walk away from the stove during this. Once they have finished cooking, remove from the heat and squeeze a bit of lemon over them. You will want to save cooking the scallops toward the end of the cooking process for this dish because of how quickly they will be ready.

You are now ready to plate! Be careful not to drool too much. Add your pasta into your bowl, and nestle the scallops in. Top with more fresh cracked black pepper, another zest of the lemon and just a bit more parmesan.

Dive in and prepare for your eyes to roll back into your head. Enjoy!

btw, I am pretty sure pasta always pairs well with a nice red :)