Off the Map

Flavorful Origins

Cantonese, most of us, LOVE SEAFOOD. When cooking seafood, we usually preserve the original flavors and use as little spice, add-on ingredients as possible. Even just steam shrimp/prawn without any ingredients, than dip in soy sauce, garlic sauce, pepper sauce will make an awesome, common dish in restaurants and at home. Today I am sharing steam garlic shrimp that goes a little bit extra, a bit prettier~

That does not mean I do not like seafood that are cooked with more flavors, such as Singapore’s various crabs, especially the famous Chili Crabs; Hong Kong’s Typhoon-Shelter Style stir-fried seafood 避風塘炒蟹/蝦; San Francisco Pier 39’s buttered crabs.

I still remember when I interned at Singapore when the world cup heated up the whole city, my friends and I would patrol down a food street, choose a restaurant that’s loud and crowded (sign of delicious food and good beer right? :p ), flipped over the greasy menu and order seafood. One time we have 10+ people and we ordered 4 different types of crab — chili crab, the must have, curry crab, soy bean garlic crab 蒜蓉豆豉蟹, and garlic butter crab. Surprisingly but not surprisingly, I love the garlic butter crab the most.

As I am writing this example, another memory pops up. When I was in Belgium, I had mussels that my German colleagues strongly advised me to try. That was the BEST mussels I have ever had.. And the main ingredient besides small mussels, seems to be celery (and cilantro/coriander?). The celery was much smaller than the ones we have in supermarket. I will need to look that up. This is another dish that using only one main ingredients to bring out flavorful origin of seafood.

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TAKEAWAYS

• unfreeze prawn/shrimp if frozen, dry out the excess water
• cleaning prawn/shrimp takes a while, there are veins on both sides and intestine to remove
• do not slice into 2 halves, leaving the head and tail attached help with presentation and holding in garlic sauce 🙂
• scallop shrinks soooo much!! Be generous about scallop!

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RECIPE

Step 1: Ingredients for 3 people

• if use frozen prawn & scallop (optional, I happened to have scallops), unfreeze to get rid of excess water
• 12 prawn/shrimp
• 9 scallop
• 1 bunch of vermicelli 粉絲
• 2 whole garlic
  • recipes call for 1 garlic, but if use garlic press, there will be some loss
• green onion
• coriander

Step 2: Dip vermicelli in hot water for 15+ mins to soften it and half-cook for further steaming; chop into smaller pieces

Step 3: Clean up prawn/shrimp

• split the back of prawn with scissors, slice open with knife, leaving head and tail attached (not slice into 2 halves!)
• remove vein on both sides, intestine, legs, spike and antennae
• wash in water again, especially the tail

Step 4: Fried-Garlic Oil

• heat up oil — medium high till smokes come out
• chop/smash garlic. I usually cut garlic into small pieces, but today I use garlic press to smash garlic into smaller pieces as we will consume some garlic with prawn directly, paste rather than chunks might have smoother texture
• pour in 1 big spoon of hot oil on garlic, stir, pour another spoon of oil
• + 1/2 tsp salt
  • maybe use less than that next time!
• + 1/2 tsp sugar — sugar always bring out flavor in savory dish, vice versa salt also brings out sweet flavor
• + 1/4 tsp white pepper powder
  • less strong than black pepper, Cantonese likes to enjoy ingredients’ ORIGINAL flavor, especially seafood
• mix well

Step 5: Plating BEFORE steaming and STEAM!

• heat up water for steaming
• bottom: vermicelli
• top: sliced prawn
• in prawn: fried-garlic oil mix
• after water is boiling, steam for 5 mins
  • I have two racks, lower rack takes 5mins, upper rack takes 10mins (remove lower rack first)

Step 6: Final flavors “bomb”

• heat up oil (not too much as there are oily garlic in shrimp already)
• chop green onion
• chop coriander
• chop small red pepper (if you like spice kick)
• pour a few tablespoons of hot oil on these ingredients
• mix well and gently pour on the prawns
• slowly pour soy sauce from the edge of the plate

READY TO SERVE!

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Resource

This recipe has English subtitle for general process.

I follow this recipe for more accurate ingredient measurement.

I follow this recipe for more diverse ingredients.