Pan fried scallops with mandarin orange sauce

I cannot remember when I bought this pack of scallops but I do know it has 6 more months to expiry. Since it is Chinese New Year period, I thought it will be good to cook it for the festive season. I was trying to decide on what recipes to use for cooking the scallops and ended up pairing it with mandarin orange since I have many leftover oranges. Found a similar recipe at Martha Stewart - scallops with orange butter sauce and simplified with whatever I have in my kitchen. It was yummy and my husband was pleased.

Ingredients
14 scallops (frozen/Australian)
1 mandarin orange
Black pepper
Salt
Butter

Recipe
1. After thawing the scallops, give it a rinse and pat dry using kitchen towel.
2. Season it with black pepper and salt.
3. Heat up the pan with some olive oil and pan fry the scallops for about 2-3 minutes each side. Place on the serving dish once it is done.
4. Peel the mandarin orange. Find a nice piece of the peel and cut some strips using a sharp knife. The peel will be used for decoration.
5. Cut the mandarin orange into half and use a manual juicer to extract the juice.
6. In a saucepan, add a small knob of butter. After the butter has melted, add in the juice.
7. Allow the sauce to come to boil then turn down the flame to lowest. Let the sauce reduce to half then season with salt.
8. Pour the sauce over the scallops on the serving dish and garnish with the orange peel strips cut earlier.

It was a new experience cooking scallops. It was not as difficult as I thought but the scallops became very much smaller. Maybe next time I shall try with bigger scallops (wait for another CNY). Also, it smelled so strong when I was pan frying the scallops that my husband came to kitchen to check on me. Lol that was a funny moment!