Abalone Asparagus Chicken (鮑魚蘆筍雞, Baau1 Jyu4 Lou4 Seon2 Gai1)

Fresh abalone and asparagus adds a luxurious touch to this dish. If you’re able to find sliced abalone at your local Asian market, you should try making this dish. Even where I live, with many Asian markets in the vicinity, sliced abalone is only available occasionally at just one market. Pairing the abalone with chicken is classic combination of seafood and meat used in Chinese dishes. Fresh bamboo shoots (used canned if fresh is not available) is the final ingredient that’s added to this tasty dish.

Enjoy!

Braised Abalone with Fish Maw and Shiitake Mushrooms (燴冬菇魚肚鮑魚, Wui6 Dung1 Gu1 Jyu4 Tou5 Baau1 Jyu4)

This recipe is loaded with lots of seafood and is a special occasion type dish. I was able to get sliced abalone at my local Asian market. Usually fresh (or thawed) abalone is very hard to find where I live (it’s usually only available frozen or dried), so I took the opportunity to use it in this dish. Since abalone becomes tough if cooked too long, the abalone is added at the last minute just to warm it in order to keep it tender.

Dried scallops are another luxurious (i.e. expensive) ingredient that is necessary to the flavor to this dish. In general, the larger the dried scallop, the more expensive the scallop. You only need to use one or two large dried scallops to flavor this dish. The dried scallop is first rehydrated and then broken into pieces. You need a large dried scallop to get the large rehydrated pieces.

Fish maw is the bladder of the fish that controls buoyancy. Fish maw is one of those weird and wonderful special banquet ingredients (at least in my experience) that is served at auspicious events such as weddings and at Lunar New Year. Fish maw can be purchased at your local Asian market or herb specialty store. If you’re lucky enough to have an Asian herb store near you, it’s worth going in to see all the dried herbs and creatures that are sold at these stores. The herb stores also have the most variety of fish maw to buy and with the prices to match!

There are two types of fish maw: dried and fried. For this dish, the fried version is used. If you purchase the dried version, like I did, there’s an extra step to deep fry the fish maw yourself. I actually shallow fried the fish maw, ladling hot oil over the fish maw (be careful when using this method). You can save a step and time by buying the fried version, however it is easier to store the dried version since it takes up less space than the fried. The best description of fried fish maw is that it looks like chicharrón, which is fried pork skin. The fried fish maw must soak in cold water for at least an hour to soften it to a spongy texture and then cut into bite sized pieces. After soaking, fish maw has no inherent flavor (so it won’t smell fishy at all) and acquires the flavors of the ingredients it is cooked with. So using good ingredients is important to the flavor of this dish.

Enjoy!

Abalone Fish Maw Winter Melon Soup (鮑魚魚肚冬瓜羹, Baau1 Jyu4 Jyu4 Tou5 Dung1 Gwaa1 Gang1)

I made this tasty soup for my family’s 2016 Thanksgiving dinner, and is very similar to the soup I made for Christmas 2015: Seafood Winter Melon Soup (海鮮冬瓜羹, Hoi² Sin¹ Dung¹ Gwaa¹ Gang¹). The soup is loaded with lots of seafood and is a special occasion type dish. I was able to get sliced abalone at my local Asian market. Usually fresh (or thawed) abalone is very hard to find where I live (it’s usually only available frozen or dried), so I took the opportunity to use it in this soup. Since abalone becomes tough if cooked too long, the abalone is added as the very last ingredient to the soup just to warm it in order to keep it tender.

Fish maw is the bladder of the fish that controls buoyancy. Fish maw is one of those weird and wonderful special banquet ingredients (at least in my experience) that is served at auspicious events such as weddings and at Lunar New Year. Fish maw can be purchased at your local Asian market or herb specialty store. If you’re lucky enough to have an Asian herb store near you, it’s worth going in to see all the dried herbs and creatures that are sold at these stores. The herb stores also have the most variety of fish maw to buy and with the prices to match!

There are two types of fish maw: dried and fried. For this soup dish, the fried version is used. If you purchase the dried version, like I did, there’s an extra step to deep fry the fish maw yourself. I actually shallow fried the fish maw, ladling hot oil over the fish maw (be careful when using this method). You can save a step and time by buying the fried version. The best description of fried fish maw is that it look like chicharrón, which is fried pork skin. The fried fish maw has to soak in cold water for at least an hour to soften it to a spongy texture and then cut into bite sized pieces. After soaking, fish maw has no inherent flavor (so it won’t smell fishy at all) and acquires the flavors of the ingredients it is cooked with. So the use of a good stock and ingredients is important to the flavor of this soup.

The soup stock was made using the Bone Soup (湯, Tong¹) recipe. You can used a prepared soup stock, but the taste of the soup is heavily dependent upon the quality of the ingredients. So if you’re going to all the trouble and expense to make this soup, you should make your own soup stock. The last Chinese character in the recipe’s name, 羹 (gang¹), signifies that this is a thick soup. A thick soup means that a corn starch solution is added to thicken the soup. The amount of thickener added to the soup depends upon personal preference, but the soup should be thicker than a normal soup and not thicker than a very thick gravy.

Enjoy!