Seared scallops with gingered oyster sauce and soy sauce

Created this a couple of weeks back. A really expensive dish. A few days before I made this, I had a painful experience of being cheated with "fake scallops" that tasted rubbery and chewy (would not tear even if u chew hard) at the wet market. So this one is the REAL scallops that I bought from Village Grocer in Bangsar Village.

Ingredients (Serves 3):
9 jumbo size scallops, pat dry using kitchen paper towel (defrost if frozen)
1/2 cup groundnut oil
10 thin young ginger slices, shredded thinly
2 sprigs of spring onion
2 sprigs of coriander (cilantro)
1/2 red chili for garnishing
Light soya sauce
1 tbsp sesame oil
1 tsp oyster sauce

Steps
1. Thinly shred the spring onions into 2 inch long strips and tear up the cilantro. Clean the seeds of the red chili and shred it thinly into 2 cm long strips. Soak the spring onion and red chili in water (preferably purified) for about 30 mins to get a curling effect.
2. In a wok (you can use a pan if you don't have a wok), heat up half of the groundnut oil, sesame oil and add in the shredded ginger, fry till golden. Dish out the oil and ginger and leave in a small bowl.
3. Heat up pan, heat the remaining groundnut oil and add in the scallops.
4. Sear the scallops until golden on each side, takes about 2-3 minutes for each side. Dish out the scallops, drain the oil on some kitchen paper towels, and arrange 3 scallops on each scallop shell (in my case, the shells came from Sydney when I was there for work early this year). If you don't have the scallop shells, no worries! You can use white Chinese soup spoons instead, like what you see in my "Props hunting day" post.

5. Mix the groundnut oil with fried ginger strips with light soya sauce and oyster sauce. Pour the sauce mixture over the scallops and garnish with the spring onions, coriander and chili strips.

Note: It is best to get a good quality light soya sauce that is not too salty. Otherwise, it will taste too overpowering and you will not get to taste the scallops well.


Fake "scallops" version, created a few days before the REAL scallops (without additional lighting, just built-in flash):