Scallop Crudo

Image courtesy of Meriem Bennani.

The past year, the artist Meriem Bennani has been making a lot of scallop crudo. This dish is a combination of bright and fresh flavors (think crisp sugar snap peas and salty pickle juice) that come together without any cooking. It's an easy and quick way to make something that feels special,” she tells Family Style. It's only natural that the New York-based Moroccan artist would choose a recipe for those in a time crunch, considering the busy year she has had with her recent exhibition “For My Best Family” at Foundacion Prada, which runs until February 2025—discussed in this magazine’s Fall 2024 issue. Like her crudo, Bennani’s sculptures and animations are a meeting point for many things: they explore themes of migration, diasporic identity, postcolonialism, and media, made accessible by humor and absurdity.

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Ingredients

• Sugar snap peas
• Shallots
• Black peppercorns
• Pickle juice
• Chili oil
• Sesame oil
• Fresh scallops
• 1 lemon (juiced)
• Salt
• Olive oil

Instructions

1. The day before, cover sugar snap peas, roughly cut shallots, garlic cloves, black peppercorns and whatever else you have in salt for 10 minutes or more.
2. Put them in a jar or tupperware and cover them in pickle juice, water, lemon, drops of chili oil, and spicy sesame oil, olive oil.
3. Put it in the fridge overnight or for a day.
4. The next day, buy the freshest scallops.
5. Slice them in two to three thin circle layers each.
6. Try one with salt and lemon while you cook, it's delicious.
7. Spread them on a large plate and squeeze lemon juice or another kind of citrus.
8. Add salt and olive oil.
9. Then take out your pickles and place the peas and shallots all around. Pour some of the pickle juice over the scallops.