Inspired by a lovely lunch we had on a freezing cold day in a restaurant in New York, this is a surprisingly complex dish, for such a simple set of ingredients. The sweet seafood flavour of the scallops is in perfect balance with the apple, while the leaves and dressing wrap them up in a sophisticated crunchy green salad. The use of caramelised onions in the dressing is a lovely touch, and riches up the flavour of the balsamic and the walnuts very nicely indeed, without being ignorant and over bearing. The secret of the leaves is to get a good balance between light and sweet, and a more bitter, robust flavour. The original dish used endive, but we found that a red romaine is even nicer.

The salad:-

Salad leaves for two, a combination of light sweet leaves such as frisse and a more bitter robust leaf like red romaine, the latter cut into inch wide strips across the head

1 medium size Braeburn apple, unpeeled, cored, halved, and very thinly sliced

8 of the very best unsoaked scallops you can get, plus a splash of groundnut oil to fry

15g walnuts, roughly chopped

a pinch of lime powder (optional)

The dressing:-

1 tbspn avocado oil or light olive oil

1 tbspn walnut oil

2 tbspns groundnut oil

1 tbspn white balsamic vinegar

half a medium sized onion, very finely chopped, plus a little oil to fry

1 level tsp demerara sugar

15g walnuts, very finely chopped

salt and pepper to taste

To make the dressing:-

• Fry the onions in a little groundnut oil until they’re caramelised, stirring the sugar in when they’re nearly done. Meanwhile, put the avocado, walnut and remaining ground nut oil into a jar with the vinegar and finely chopped walnut and shake it up well. Then stir the onions into the dressing with the oil it was cooked in, shake it up again, season to taste, and set aside

To make the salad:-

• Put the leaves into a large steel bowl and toss well with a tablespoon of the dressing. Add the walnuts and the apple

• Put a splash of groundnut oil in a frying pan and get it good and hot, nearly smoking. Quickly put the scallops in one by one in a clockwise direction and fry for 1 minute, so they’re getting good and browned. Then turn them over in the same order you put them in, dust them with a pinch of lime powder – that’s a pinch for the whole pan, not a pinch for each scallop – and fry for one minute. Take them all out of the pan, and cut each one in half vertically. Dress each plate with half of the dressed salad, and add eight half scallops to each one. Serve