I am spending the weekend in Palm Springs with friends. When I spend a weekend at someone's house I like to say and thank you with food. So I cook.

Currently I am cooking from a new cookbook by Lucy Lean. Made in America: Our Best Chefs Reinvent Comfort Food. I think it's a good choice for a weekend of cooking with really great friends. The kind of friends with whom you feel completely at ease. Your comfort friends.

On page 174 Lucy has a recipe for Rigatoni Carbonara (with guanciale) from Barbara Lynch the chef at No.9 Park in Boston. It's a great example of the wonderful food that bubbles up in our great American melting pot. Because Carbonara is a traditional Italian dish that has found its way into our comfortably full bellies here in America. As Lucy explains it, Carbonara as American comfort food, gets its power from our great American breakfast ingredients– bacon, eggs and cheese. Mmmm, feeling comforted? But as much as I love the big 'sit right down and say hello' creaminess you associate with Carbonara, the Italian version has a bit more restraint.

Carbonara may achieve comfort status because of its familiar ingredients, well that and the fact that it is so easy to make. In fact when I make this dish it usually falls into the category of what I call default pasta. In other words I make it on a whim– with my mood and my pantry dictating the direction I will go.

I have a personality quirk. Don’t look so shocked, I am not perfect you know.

To prove my point I have a simply classic Italian pasta dish: Strozzapreti alle Cime di Rapa e Guanciale (Strozzapetti Pasta with Broccoli Rabe & Guanciale). My version has guanciale in it. This is a staple in Italy. Of course it can be made without guanciale and with any shape pasta. But I would advise that you choose one of the denser, chewier styles such as strozzapreti, orecchiette, or gemelli. I chose this dish for this rant today because I want to talk about pasta. And I mean the noodle itself.

I like 100% durum wheat pasta with no enrichment. I am not anti-vitamin. I just don’t like these additives in my pasta. I have a reason for the strong opinion. So I hope you don’t just think I am being a picky bastard just because I can. Picky eaters are a pet peeve of mine. So you can imagine that I am a bit embarrassed to admit that almost all of the pasta I see in the stores doesn’t really suit me.

Pasta was originally a Southern Italian dish. Particularly Sicilian. Eventually the cultivation of wheat moved into other areas of the country, and pasta became a common food item all over Italy.

Northern Italian pastas are generally pastas with fresh eggs and ¨soft” wheat– soft wheat is lower in protein and gluten content. Bakers tend to like flour from soft wheat for batter-based foods like cakes and biscuits. Think cake flour. The soft wheat and egg produces pasta that has a silky texture. These pastas are often prepared as stuffed pastas (like ravioli) and in Italy they are called Pasta Fresca.

The South specializes in dried durum wheat semolina pasta. These are made without egg and are typically dried, and are called Pasta Secca. They use the “hard” high gluten durum wheat because it allows the pasta to hold its sometimes-intricate shape better. Of which there are approximately 3500 different shapes.

I was in a creative mood when I made these Seared Scallops with Spicy Blackberry Sauce, Guanciale & Shiitake Risotto. You might even say I was getting a little experimental– as I was trying to recreate a restaurant dish without actually having the recipe.

In the end my recipe has a lot of steps and ingredients, which means it's not for everyone I know. Still, I am not here to apologize for that because this recipe is really just an introduction to what I really want to talk about. Scallops.

Scallops themselves should be simple to make. But they aren't always, are they?

Scallops should be served rare, if you cook them all the way through you are destroying their delicate nature. An overcooked scallop is a rubbery waste of money. But just because I won't submit to an overcooked scallop does not mean I want it improperly cooked either. In fact I like quite a bit of crunchy crusty searing on my scallops.

But how to best achieve this?

Well, choosing good scallops is the first step. Many scallops today are artificially pumped up and waterlogged by a chemical called STP. If possible get scallops without this additive. The proper term for an STP free scallop is "dry". Ask your fish monger if you are unsure. I have a whole post devoted to scallops and STP here.