Tonight’s ingredients I’ve never tried before: Sophie’s Kitchen Vegan Prawns and Wothington Vegetable Skallops!

I have to confess that the Skallops frightened me a little. First of all because they are called Skallops with a K, and I find such cutesy spellings irritating. I guess maybe the logic is that you can’t call them Scallops lest someone get confused and sue you, but this doesn’t make sense because the Prawns are Prawns, now Prajhns or something. The second issue was this instinctive sense that imitation-meat-product-in-a-can just does not bode well. I had some kind of canned seitan product once like nine years ago and it really was akin to catfood.

Upon opening, the prawns looked like (imitation) prawns, and the skallops looked like seitan chunks. I was expecting something more scallop-shaped. I decided to go for a classic seafood-garlic-lemon-pasta type preparation, so I sauteed a ton of garlic in olive oil, then added some chopped preserved lemon rind, vermouth, vegetable broth, and pepper, and let the prawns and skallops sautee in that for a while to soak up some flavor.

Mmmm, preserved lemons! They are so easy to make- here’s a recipe. Basically you just put lemons and salt in a jar and let it sit for a while until it is awesome. A little goes a long way!

I added some flour to thicken up the sauce a bit, and also some chopped roasted red pepper and parsley.

I served this over angel hair pasta. I also sauteed some green beans with chopped onion, balsamic vinegar, crushed red pepper, a splash of agave nectar, and some shallot salt (topped with almonds and crispy onion pieces), and made a quick salad with organic greens, cucumber, radish, and carrots.

I was wrong to be fearful of the skallops- they were actually quite good! Similar to seitan but different. They soaked up the sauce flavor nicely. The prawns were just ok. I think next time I use vegan prawns I’m going to try breading/frying them instead.