These scallops are one of our all time favourite wood-fired fish recipes – super impressive and all the prep gets done in advance so all you have to do is put them in the oven when you’re ready to eat. We’ve found that the scallop shells do get really hot so be careful when you’re bringing them out of the oven, as you don’t want them to wobble and lose all that gorgeous sizzling garlicky butter. 

If you scrunch up some kitchen foil on your baking sheet or roasting tin and nestle the scallops into it, they are much less likely to wobble. Either that or a jam tart tin, which works really well too. Fish is a real winner in the woodfired oven – the high heat means it cooks really quickly, much more quickly than in a regular oven, so stays fabulously moist.

Ingredients

12 scallops in their shells

90g/3oz butter

 1 clove garlic, peeled and crushed

1 tbsp chopped fresh parsley

2 tbsp dried white breadcrumbs

Salt and pepper

Method

1. Take the scallops out of the shells. Clean and trim them as necessary to just end up with the scallop and the roe. Wash and dry the bottom round shells. Your fishmonger will probably do this for you but if a friend or you have been diving for the scallops, then you’ll need to sort them out yourselves.

2. Cut each scallop into 2 discs through the middle. Put 2 discs of scallop and a roe into each shell. 

3. Scrunch up some aluminium foil to put in the bottom of a shallow roasting tin. Snuggle the scallop shells into the foil which will stop them wobbling around. You can reuse the foil so don’t think it’s wasteful!

4. Put the butter in a pan in the oven door to melt with the garlic and parsley. 

5. Spoon the butter over the scallops making sure they are covered with the buttery mixture in order to stop them scorching in the oven.

6. Sprinkle the breadcrumbs over the top. We drizzle over a little olive oil as well but this is optional. 

7. Put the roasting tin in the oven and bake the scallops for 2-3 minutes until bubbling and golden. You want a good bed of embers for heat and flames as well, so you can grill from above. Add small pieces of kiln-dried kindling to the fire in order to create plenty of flames. You may have to turn the tin round in the oven so they cook evenly. 

8. Serve at once but remember the shells will be very hot. We eat the wood-fired scallops with some great home-made bread. Perfect for mopping up all those buttery juices.