Lee Westcott made this scallop ceviche for our shoot at 22 Ships in Hong Kong in January 2014. In his words, it is fresh, citrusy and delicious.
This is a restaurant recipe: the apple and the cucumber are prepared in vacuum bags, and the apple purée is blended in a Thermomix. The chef gives quantities only for the pickling liquid and the purée.
Method
- Pickled apple: bring the water, sugar, salt, thyme and white wine vinegar to a simmer, then cool the liquid down over ice. Place the apple discs and the apple balls in separate vacuum bags with the liquid and vacuum seal them tight, but not too tight.
- Compressed cucumber: peel the cucumber and compress it in a vacuum bag with olive oil and salt.
- Scallops: slice each scallop into 4. They are easiest to cut when semi-frozen.
- Lime segments: peel and segment the limes, then cut each segment into neat small pieces.
- Walnuts: toast and chop the walnuts.
- Yuzu dressing: mix the yuzu dressing and yuzu juice together, 3 parts dressing to 1 part juice.
- Apple purée: peel 10 Granny Smith apples and roll them in ascorbic acid or lemon juice so they do not go brown. Cut them into quarters, remove the cores and slice roughly.
- Warm a pan over low heat and add 30 g of butter. Cook the apples slowly in the butter with a lid on until soft. Remove the lid and keep cooking until all the liquid has gone. Season with sugar. Do not let the purée color or burn.
- Purée the apples in a Thermomix until smooth, pass through a fine sieve and check the seasoning.
- To plate, bring together the scallops, compressed cucumber, pickled apple, lime segments, walnuts, yuzu dressing and apple purée, and finish with lime zest and coriander cress.
The dish in the photograph was cooked by the restaurant for this story. Photo: Oleksandr Slyadnyev.
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