Seafood Winter Melon Soup (海鮮冬瓜羹, Hoi2 Sin1 Dung1 Gwaa1 Gang1)

I made this tasty soup for my family’s 2015 Christmas dinner. The soup is loaded with lots of seafood and is a special occasion type dish. The other main ingredient is winter melon. Winter melon is really a gourd used mainly in soups, but I’ve also used it in these stir fry recipes: Chicken and Rock Shrimp with Winter Melon (冬瓜蝦仁雞, Dung¹ Gwaa¹ Haa¹ Jan⁴ Gai¹), Winter Melon with Dried Shrimp (冬瓜蝦米, Dung¹ Gwaa¹ Haa¹ Mai⁵), and Stir Fried Beef with Winter Melon (冬瓜炒牛肉, Dung¹ Gwaa¹ Caau² Ngau⁴ Juk⁶). So winter melon can be quite versatile, but cooks quickly and becomes mushy if overcooked.

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to use fresh local crabs due to a deadly neurotoxin contamination, so I used imported (from another state) freshly cooked crab from my local grocery store. I used the meat from two cooked Dungeness crabs and that produced about 1 lb. (500 g.) of meat. If you’re not fortunate enough to have freshly cooked crabs available, canned or frozen crab can be used. Crab is not the only seafood that can be used, and abalone or sea cucumber can be used as substitutes.

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!

Seafood Pasta Salad

 

This recipe was updated on 11 July 2013. Some instructions and ingredient quantities were changed, and metric measurements added.

I was thinking about making a pasta salad with seafood, and low and behold, shrimp came on sale. So my timing was good since you can really use any available seafood to make this salad. I decided to add two “fake” seafood ingredients, imitation crab flakes and imitation shark’s fin. Most people are familiar with imitation crab flakes, but probably not with imitation shark’s fin. I’ve always used imitation shark’s fin in soup, so this is the first time I’ve used it in a salad.

Imitation shark’s fin is a gelatin-based product that is made to resemble the real shark’s fin long transparent cartilage strands. Both the real and imitation shark’s fin have no taste, but it’s the texture that makes it an interesting ingredient. The imitation version comes packaged frozen and when defrosted, look like transparent brown noodles. I prefer to use the imitation given how the real version is obtained.

Another interesting ingredient is fresh seaweed. You can get fresh seaweed (and the imitation shark’s fin) at your local Asian market and it comes as long strips or tied into bow-ties. I used the bow-tie version in this dish and it gives an added crunch to the dish, as well as a distinct flavor.

Enjoy!