Valentine's Day: "Delushious" Scallops and Butternut Squash Mac 'n' Cheese

We enjoy the concept of Valentine's Day, but do not enjoy the overpriced menus restaurants roll out just for Cupid.  So our tradition is to stay home and cook with splurge ingredients.  Mel loves scallops but they're way too pricey to eat regularly.  She saw a very simple "The Perfect Scallop" recipe on Chrissy Teigen's blog Delushious, so those were the first thing added to the menu.  Both of us like a good macaroni and cheese, but we know it's not very healthy to eat it too often.  Mel happened to spot a cool Butternut Mac 'n' Cheese recipe in a magazine, so that quickly became the second thing on the menu and we were ready to roll!

The Perfect Scallop

Chrissy Teigen lays out the recipe so simply on her site, so we followed it to the letter.

Pat scallops dry and season generously with salt and pepper.

Get a mix of canola oil and butter extremely hot in the pan and brown scallops for two minutes on both sides.

Teigen suggests serving the scallops on a bed of a corn salad, so we made our own variation.  We threw some thawed frozen sweet corn in the same oil that had cooked the scallops, let the corn heat for a bit and then added chopped grape tomatoes.

For some bonus leafy green action, we threw in a pack of fresh spinach and let it cook down to create a lovely warm spinach and corn salad bed for our scallops.

The end result: beautiful!

One thing we did learn though: always smell your scallops before cooking.  We made 9 total, and 8 were delicious and perfect.  But sadly one of them had a strange briney, amonia kind of taste.  DJ looked it up and discovered that such a taste occurs when a scallop is about to turn.  It didn't ruin our meal because the rest were fine, but it was definitely a good lesson.

Butternut Mac & Cheese

So of course most people consider macaroni and cheese a splurge dish because it's chock full of carbs and cheese and all the things that taste good but aren't good for us on a daily basis.  This recipe shows how a few healthy substitutions can make this comfort food less of a guilty pleasure.

One potential headache of this recipe is chopping up raw squash.  But Mel decided that since the squash isn't really the focus of the dish, it would be easiest to use frozen chopped squash.  We let it thaw for a bit, and then cooked it according to the recipe.  It softened very quickly in the milk/broth mixture.

Blend everything up and add the three cheeses to create a fabulous sauce for the pasta.

Mix cheesy sauce with cooked pasta (we used whole wheat pasta instead of the cavatappi), spread in baking dish, and...

top with breadcrumb/cheese mixture.

You pop it in the oven looking like this...

and wind up with a treat that looks like this (with our fun scallops on the side)!

Like we said earlier, we won't be making either of these dishes all the time.  Neither our wallets nor our arteries will allow for it.  But for a once-in-a-while treat, these two recipes really did the trick!