A while back I bought some Spanish smoked black pudding and had been wondering what to do with it.  On the naïve assumption that the smokiness would be subtle, I thought I’d create a dish of with scallops and Jerusalem artichoke pure (as Jerusalem artichokes have a mildly smokey taste I thought it would work well with the black pudding).  However, I tried a piece the black pudding and it was incredibly smokey – almost had the taste of burnt fried onions – that would absolutely kill the scallops!

So, change of plan – stick with the scallops, use normal black pudding and the Jerusalem artichoke pure.  I ordered diver-caught scallops from one of my local butchers (Powells of Olveston) and picked up some of their own back pudding.  If you don’t have a good fishmonger near you, I’d suggest you check to see if your butcher can get hold of seafood for you – it has been a revelation to me that Powells they can get just about any UK seafood from  their Cornish suppliers.

I though I’d take the opportunity experiment with garnishes.  I noticed that young pea plants were being sold in our local garden shop, so thought I’d get a tray.  To add to the pea theme, I thought I’d do a pea oil to drizzle on the plate – I briefly blanched some frozen peas (it is a bit early for fresh), put them in a pan with some olive oil (not virgin as I didn’t want the strong taste) as well as a couple of the pea shoots as I had them to hand, the then heated it all for about half an hour, crushing with a masher a few times whilst heating.  In hindsight I think I would have been better off blending and straining, but the green colour came out and it had a lovely sweet pea taste.  Finally, I made a Parma ham dust to sprinkle on the top – as a garnish and seasoning which I hoped would work well with the black pudding, and to be a little more subtle than the old technique of wrapping scallops in Parma.  To do this, I put a few pieces of Parma ham on a baking sheet and put in the oven for an hour on about 90 degrees C – once it had cooled I put it through grinder.  The great thing was that I could make all of this well in advance.

Pulling it together, I stacked the purée, sautéd black pudding and scallops (I like to serve it with the corral on), sprinkled the Parma dust on to the scallops and topped with the pea shoot, and drizzled the pea oil around the plate.  My choice of plate didn’t show off the pea oil, but otherwise a successful disk I think!