I made the Cocktail Tomatoes with Brown-Butter Scallops that is located on page 280 last night.
The cocktail tomatoes have to rest for a week in the fridge, so plan ahead if you want to make this.
Here is a picture of the cut up tomatoes that I used. As I said above, I chose some smaller 4th of July tomatoes and I left the skin on--which was difficult for me lol.
And, the finished tomatoes just after the brine was poured over. Like @blue_dolphin said, there are a lot of ingredients that go into this mix. In the interest of full disclosure, I didn't grind up my coriander seeds because I was lazy. I left them whole and I don't think it made a difference.
It's certainly a very pretty sauce.
Also, in the interest of full disclosure, I didn't use Vivian's recipe for grits. I did mine in the IP . Her recipe uses all milk for the liquid, the one I used calls for chicken broth and a bit of half and half. I felt like that was ok and went the easier route for me using the IP.
I'm sad to report that this dish did not trip our trigger. Someone else may love it, it just wasn't for us. The cocktail sauce is, well, cocktail sauce--like the kind you dip shrimp in. The tomatoes do not retain their flavor at all, if that makes sense. So, it tasted like cocktail sauce over grits with scallops on top.
I have some of the sauce left over (I only did half of the recipe and I'm glad) so I think I'll whizz it up in the food processor and use it maybe in bloody mary's or even just as cocktail sauce.
My plate
Ronnie's plate--he doesn't care for grits, so I thought a bit and decided that rice might be a good sub. He decided to try a bit of both (he did kind of like the grits by themselves so maybe there is hope for him after all lol).
I actually liked the dish better with the rice--and I love grits.
By the time the sauce was done heating, a lot of the skins had fallen off, so I picked them out 
#teamnoskin lol. I think @blue_dolphin was smart to peel hers.
Anyway, I'll be interested to know what others think. I hope I didn't discourage anyone from trying this out--like I said, others might love it.
