Scallops & Rice

So, here is the recipe as promised by the AG on Facebook. It started with a very hungry AG, and me looking in the freezer for something fairly quick to cook for her. What we had left over was about a quarter of a 2 lb bag of Bay Scallops from BJ's. They're shelled and cleaned and frozen raw, and about a centimetre across – that's about 50% too big to fit through the hole in a CD, for all you empirical measurists out there! We had a good portion over, and last night I made the recipe again, scaling it up from smallish portions for three to decidedly small portions for six. We had a main meal of the Italian favourite in America – meatballs and sausage in a thick tomato sauce.

So, the ingredients are:
¾ lb Bay Scallops
3 rashers of streaky bacon, if possible left out for 2-3 days to get dry!
½ bottle of white wine (the alcohol burns off in cooking!)
1 medium onion, chopped fairly fine
2 good teaspoons of chopped garlic, or three cloves, crushed. We use chopped in jars from BJ's 'cos I'm lazy!
1 teaspoon of Allspice powder. This makes the dish a little bitter ...
2 teaspoons of Ginger powder. This makes the dish a little sweet and very slightly hot!
½ stick of butter (1/8 lb)
3 teaspoons of dry chives
10-12 chopped leaves of fresh cilantro, preferably, or else 3 teaspoons of dried cilantro
2 cups of brown rice.

1.Put a pot of water on to boil for the rice. Don't forget to salt it! Least of all, don't forget to put the rice in when it comes to the boil! Stire the rice well when you put it in, and occasionally thereafter. It should take about 30 minutes to cook.
2.Melt the butter gently in a frying pan and set the onion and garlic to simmer. Minimal heat is best here.
3.Chop the bacon up as finely as you reasonably can, so that slices across the rasher are about 2 mm thick, and you slice the rashers 2 or 3 times length-wise.
4.Drop the bacon in to the onion mix to start frying. The onion should be getting translucent by this stage, but resist the temptation to turn up the heat, or the onion and butter will brown and burn.
5.Add the ginger and allspice to the fry, making sure that you stir them in and, if the mixture starts drying out, add another ½ stick of butter.
6.Add the cilantro now, again making sure to stir it in well. At this point you should have a mixture of herbs and spices with an infusion of cilantro that will gently change the taste of the scallops as they cook in it.
7.Break the scallops apart from each other (run warm water over them in a sieve) and then add them to the frying mixture.
8.Stir this mixture well, so that the scallops are well covered by the mixture in the pan, turn up the heat to about ¾, and keep frying for about 5 minutes, stirring to make sure that the scallops get cooked from all directions and don't burn at all.
9.Add the wine. It may seem like a lot, but about 15% will vanish as the alcohol evaporates, and you'll want a reasonable amount for wetting the rice.
10.After the mixture reaches a boil turn it down to a simmer and let it cook for about 5 minutes. Meantime, check out that rice! It should be almost done by now – lots more chewy than white rice.
11.When the rice is done pour it into a sieve and then into a serving bowl, and cover with a plate to keep it warm.
12.Back at the scallops, pour the whole mixture out into a service bowl.
13.Take everything to the table and wow your friends!