Yesterday in the New York Times Mark Bittman has a little article about scallops, In Winter, It's Scallops. Scallops are one of my favorite foods of all time. Before I liked any seafood or fish whatsoever, I loved scallops. I missed them so much when I lived in San Francisco that, one time when I came home to Boston for Thanksgiving, I ate scallops every night for dinner for a week!! Of course, those were mostly sea scallops, not bay scallops.
FANS of seasonal, regional foods have little to celebrate in the depths of winter, especially those of us in the Northeast. Among the notable exceptions is the bay scallop, often called the Nantucket bay scallop because one of the last significant fisheries for this gem, once found from the Maritimes to the Carolinas, centers on that island.
There is no doubt that the Nantucket bay scallop is the best scallop ever, and inspired by reading this yesterday, I headed straight to the greenmarket to see if the Long Island fishmongers had any. Talk about nothing to celebrate! The greenmarket was nearly deserted (I guess because of the horrible rain) and those who were there seemed to be only selling apples and squash. Lots and lots of apples and squash. I had to settle for sea scallops from Whole Foods instead.