Milbrandt Rosé, Wasabi Crusted Scallops & First Snow Cheese

Do you have a twitter account? Do you like wine? Have you ever done a twitter chat? Twitter chats take place for around an hour and a bunch of people get together to discuss a monthly topic. It’s all text, well, except for the #pinksociety chat. They have videos, crazy memes and usually a dance party portion. A very fun way to get together and drink pink wine! I’ve been part of the #pinksociety since it’s inception and another cool part of it, is that you can win prizes, which brings me to today’s #WineAndCheeseFriday entry.

Back in August the #pinksociety chat featured Milbrandt Winery in Washington. During the Q&A portion of the chat, the wasabi crusted scallops recipe that the winemaker, Butch, likes to eat with his rosé was mentioned. Being a scallops/seafood fan, I was excited to find the recipe. It sounded so delicious and then the next day, it was announced that I won a bottle of the rosé. There was no question in my mind that I’d be making that scallop recipe to pair with the wine. And really, anyone who knows me, can probably guess that I’d be eating some cheese with it too!

The cheese came from Cheese Importers one of our favorite resources here in Longmont, CO. They carry over 300 cheeses from around the world and they are all stored in a giant walk-in refrigerator. We had picked up "first snow" there because it was an ash coated goat cheese and something we always enjoy. When we purchased it, we didn’t know which wine to pair with it but this rosé seemed like a great idea.

So we had our wine, cheese, and the necessary ingredients to coat our scallops but we still needed the main ingredient, the scallops. We were able to use another local shop for the seafood! There was a place just down the road from us called Blue Reef Seafood and they source tons of fresh seafood. The shop owner, let us know that they were dry packed which meant that they wouldn’t shrink when we cooked them. And when we prepped the meal, Neil said that they were so fresh that they smelled amazing, like the ocean!

I’ll include the recipe at the end of the entry so the you can create these scallops at home if you’d like. FYI, it’s my interpretation after watching the quirky video on the Milbrandt Winery blog.

We lined up all our dry ingredients for the coating and mixed them all together. Just a quick note, for our 14 scallops, there was a lot of extra breading, so you could probably cut it down. The recipe also included an aioli as a drizzle but we chose to use sesame ginger salad dressing instead. We didn’t have a blender at our apartment and I was a little hesitant to take on creating an aioli with raw egg without one.

The recipe is pretty straight forward, create the aioli, then create the breading. Dip the raw scallop in the sesame oil/soy sauce, then coat with breading and fry for about 2 minutes on each side. Simplicity and a good list of flavors, I’m ready! Neil is our fry cook so he did the cooking and I “prepped" the cheese 🙂

We did a quick wine tasting before we ate so we’d know our tasting notes of the wine on it’s own. Neil picked up strawberry and watermelon flavors. I noticed a sweet peach aroma and crisp peach and watermelon flavors. I had heard these tasting notes during the #pinksociety and figured it would be a nice rosé.

The scallops looked wonderful, all golden brown, and sitting a top that bed of lettuce! Neil said they were probably the best scallops he’s ever had. I agree that they were so good! They were moist and the dressing went really nice with it too. We both felt like the lettuce really lightened up the whole meal too. And the rosé, seemed to get more rich and buttery with the meal. There was more flavor in the wine too. We felt the entire meal was so tasty and decadent.

But wait, there’s still cheese to discuss! We figured the cheese would be nice with the meal and I was a little concerned that my 7 scallops wouldn’t be enough food for dinner. As I looked for aromas in the cheese, I could definitely identify the goat’s milk. The cheese had a thick texture, some salt and it was so rich. Neil quietly said “mmm" and that the cheese was really good. Neil thought the wine brought out the flavor of the goat’s milk for the cheese. I thought the cheese made the wine more strawberry as well as giving it a little more minerality.

So wow, a rich goat’s milk cheese, a new scallops recipe (that was pretty easy), and a Washington wine that sounded good on a chat and tasted equally good. I’d say it was pretty great night. We should do that more often. Thanks to the #pinksociety for setting it all up for me!

Wasabi Crusted Scallops

recipe on the Milbrandt Winery website within their video.

make aioli: lime zest lime juice egg yolk olive oil ginger red onion 2 cloves garlic

make breading: panko breading 2 cups 2 tbsp sesame seeds garlic powder (granulated) 1 tbsp coriander seeds 2 tbsp wasabi powder

he uses about 10 scallops

make dipping sauce for “attaching” breading Equal parts soy sauce & sesame oil

cook in oil, not to cover about 2 minutes each side

lay prepared scallops over bed of thinly sliced lettuce