Tomatillo Guacamole (粘果酸浆鱷梨, Nim1 Gwo2 Syun1 Zeong1 Ngok6 Lei4)

I regularly make this guacamole to use as a sandwich spread or for coating the interior of burritos. The tomatillos add a slightly citrusy taste to the guacamole and the spiciness comes from the Jalapeño and chipotle peppers. Since the amount of spiciness is a personal preference, feel free to adjust the amount of peppers used in the recipe. The chipotle peppers actually supply most of the spiciness and come canned with an adobo sauce (some of which is added to the guacamole), so use fewer of the peppers if you want less. Although the picture doesn’t really show it, the guacamole is chunky and not pureed, so the avocados are broken up with a spoon rather than placed into the food processor.

Enjoy!

Steamed Ground Turkey and Salted Radish with Preserved Duck Egg (皮蛋菜脯蒸火雞, Pei4 Daan6 Coi3 Pou2 Zing1 Fo2 Gai1)

I recently posted this recipe: Steamed Ground Turkey and Salted Radish with Salted Duck Egg (鹹鴨蛋菜脯蒸火雞, Haam⁴ Aap³ Daan⁶ Coi³ Pou² Zing¹ Fo² Gai¹), which is the version of this dish using salted duck eggs. This recipe uses preserved duck eggs in place of salted, which for some people, can be disconcerting because of the appearance of the preserved duck egg. For those who feel that way, I say close your eyes and try eating it. I think you’ll like the taste, although I admit it is acquired.

Steamed meat dishes are a staple of many Chinese-American home-style dinners. The dishes are simple to prepare and cook quickly. I’ve previously posted some steamed pork recipes: Steamed Pork with Salted Duck Egg (鹹鴨蛋蒸豬肉, Haam⁴ Aap³ Daan⁶ Zing¹ Zyu¹ Juk⁶) and Steamed Pork with Salted Fish (Haam⁴ Jyu⁴ Zing¹ Zyu¹ Juk⁶, 鹹魚蒸豬肉). Pork is usually the meat of choice, but ground chicken and turkey can also be used. Corn starch plays an important part in producing a tender mouthfeel to the meat. I have found that 1 Tbs. (15 ml.) corn starch per ½ lb. (250 g.) ground meat results in the best texture in the cooked dish. In this recipe, ground turkey is used together with salted radish, shiitake mushrooms, and a preserved duck egg.

Enjoy!

Garam Masala Beef Hong Kong Noodles (胡荽牛肉炒雲吞麵, Wu4 Seoi1 Ngau4 Juk6 Caau2 Wan4 Tan1 Min6)

This is a slightly spicier version of the Beef Curry Hong Kong Noodles (咖哩牛肉炒雲吞麵, Gaa³ Lei¹ Ngau⁴ Juk⁶ Caau² Wan⁴ Tan¹ Min⁶) recipe using Garam Maslala. Hong Kong noodles are thin egg noodles and the literal translation in Cantonese is wonton noodles. While there aren’t any wontons in this dish, these noodles are typically used together with wonton in a soup broth, hence their name, and that leads to no end of confusion if you use the literal translation. So you’ll find dishes named in English referring to thin egg noodles, Hong Kong style noodles, and even vermicelli (whose use isn’t quite correct). Adding cabbage gives the dish an added crunch when you eat it in combination with the noodles.

Enjoy!

Oyster Sauce Mustard Green Shrimp (蠔油芥菜蝦, Hou4 Jau4 Gaai3 Coi3 Haa1)

Mustard greens are slightly bitter and is a great taste combination with the oyster sauce. Shiitake mushrooms are also another ingredient that is often paired with mustard greens. Altogether just the previous mentioned ingredients are a menu item in most Cantonese restaurants. Seafood is added to this dish to make it more luxurious, with the most common being sea cucumber (if you’ve been to a Chinese banquet, you’ll often see this combination). While I plan to make the sea cucumber dish eventually, I used shelled shrimp for this recipe. The shells add flavor to the dish, but need to be removed before eating (unless you’re strange like me and eat the shells). The usual method for eating the shrimp is to suck on the shelled shrimp to extract the flavors, and then remove the shells before eating the shrimp meat. If you’ve never seen this done before at a Chinese restaurant, you’re likely to be surprised the first time you see how this dish is eaten. Try this shelled shrimp eating method and you’re likely to do the same!

Enjoy!

Steamed Ground Turkey and Salted Radish with Salted Duck Egg (鹹鴨蛋菜脯蒸火雞, Haam4 Aap3 Daan6 Coi3 Pou2 Zing1 Fo2 Gai1)

Steamed meat dishes are a staple of many Chinese-American home-style dinners. The dishes are simple to prepare and cook quickly. I’ve previously posted some steamed pork recipes: Steamed Pork with Salted Duck Egg (鹹鴨蛋蒸豬肉, Haam⁴ Aap³ Daan⁶ Zing¹ Zyu¹ Juk⁶) and Steamed Pork with Salted Fish (Haam⁴ Jyu⁴ Zing¹ Zyu¹ Juk⁶, 鹹魚蒸豬肉). Pork is usually the meat of choice, but ground chicken and turkey can also be used. Corn starch plays an important part in producing a tender mouthfeel to the meat. I have found that 1 Tbs. (15 ml.) corn starch per ½ lb. (250 g.) ground meat results in the best texture in the cooked dish. In this recipe, ground turkey is used together with salted radish, shiitake mushrooms, and an uncooked duck egg. Uncooked duck eggs can be hard to find and luckily my local farmer’s market has a vendor that sells them, but cooked salted duck eggs can be substituted and are sold at your local Asian market (just follow the Steamed Pork with Salted Duck Egg (鹹鴨蛋蒸豬肉, Haam⁴ Aap³ Daan⁶ Zing¹ Zyu¹ Juk⁶) recipe to find out what to do with a cooked salted duck egg).

Enjoy!

Oyster Sauce Green Bean Scallops (蠔油青豆角扇貝, Hou4 Jau4 Ceng1 Dau6 Gok3 Sin3 Bui3)

Cooking scallops in a wok needs to be done quickly, otherwise the scallops become tough if overcooked. So that means you need to use the scallops that are not cold (i.e. just taken out of the refrigerator), the highest setting available on your heat source, and the scallops should look undercooked after cooking in the wok. Ideally, small whole Shiitake mushrooms are paired with the scallops so that they visually match the size of the scallops, but if you don’t have Shiitake mushrooms the size of the scallops, just cut the Shiitake mushrooms into pieces. Finally the dish uses Japanese chilies for added flavor, which can be purchased at your local Mexican market. Japanese chilies provide more flavor than spiciness to a dish and the amount to use is a personal preference, so feel free to increase or decrease the amount (or omit) from the dish. Dried red chilies can be used if you really like more spiciness (heat) in your dishes.

Enjoy!

Black Bean Chili Oil Ground Turkey with Zucchini (黑豆辣椒油意大利青瓜火雞, Hak1 Dau6 Laat6 Ziu1 Jau4 Ji3 Daai6 Lei6 Ceng1 Gwaa1 Fo2 Gai1)

This dish is usually made with ground pork, but ground turkey makes a good substitute when it’s handy. The dish is really simple to make and if you’re pressed for time, marinating the ground turkey can be omitted. This is a very inexpensive dish to make, since it’s basically ground meat with vegetables in a (spicy) sauce, and it’s one of the dishes I grew up eating. You can use any ground meat and any vegetable that’s in season to make variations of this recipe. I added Shiitake mushrooms, but the mushrooms can also be omitted if desired.

Enjoy!

Dungeness Crab Scrambled Eggs (北美大肉蟹炒蛋, Bak1 Mei5 Daai6 Juk6 Haai5 Caau2 Daan6)

Scrambled eggs and seafood is a tasty combination, with the most common Chinese restaurant dish using shrimp. My versions of these dishes can be found here: Shrimp and Scrambled Eggs (蝦仁炒蛋, Haa¹ Jan⁴ Caau² Daan⁶) and Shrimp and Dungeness Crab Scrambled Eggs (蝦仁北美大肉蟹炒蛋, Haa¹ Jan⁴ Bak¹ Mei⁵ Daai⁶ Juk⁶ Haai⁵ Caau² Daan⁶). Since Dungeness crab, a local delicacy, is in season now, here’s a recipe just using cooked Dungeness crab meat. If you’re not fortunate enough to be able to obtain Dungeness crab meat, any frozen or canned crab can be substituted.

Personal preference determines the amount of eggs to use in this dish. The ratio of eggs to seafood depends (obviously) on the number of eggs used to the amount of seafood. If more eggs than seafood is desired, use more eggs, or use fewer eggs if more seafood than eggs is desired. You can, of course, reduce the amount of seafood used to increase the egg ratio. The dish pictured in the recipe used six eggs.

Enjoy!

Steamed Egg Custard Scallops (蒸水蛋扇貝, Zing1 Seoi2 Daan6 Sin3 Bui3)

Happy New Year to everyone! For my first recipe of the year, here’s a quick cooking (and it’s really easy to make) steamed egg custard dish using scallops. The classic Chinese-American dish uses ground pork instead of scallops. I can’t take credit for substituting scallops for pork, since I got the idea from a restaurant menu. I also found out that one pound of frozen scallops yields one-half pound thawed, so be sure to use enough thawed scallops in this dish. I’ve also had a version of this dish using clams in their shells, so there must be more variations that I haven’t run into yet.

The taste of this dish is greatly influenced by the quality of the stock used to scramble the eggs. The dish will taste different if canned or homemade stock is used, so I try to use homemade stock from the Bone Soup (湯, Tong¹) recipe whenever possible. Since scallops are such a luxurious ingredient, using homemade stock is a must in my mind. The scrambled egg mixture needs to cover the scallops. The amount you’ll need depends upon the size of the scallops used and the size of the steaming plate. The classic recipe uses 2 eggs and ½ cup (250 ml.) of stock, but in this case I needed more egg mixture to cover the scallops, so I increased the recipe to 3 eggs and ¾ cup (375 ml.) of stock. All the air bubbles need to be removed from the egg mixture after pouring onto the scallops or the surface won’t be smooth once it’s steamed. I’ve seen some recipes where the egg mixture is strained or the bowl is covered with aluminum foil before steaming to prevent any water from settling on the egg custard surface (which mars the cooked surface). I don’t bother to strain or cover the egg custard while steaming, but they are options you can consider.

Enjoy!

Dungeness Crab Clay Pot Rice (煲仔北美大肉蟹飯, Bou1 Zai2 Bak1 Mei5 Daai6 Juk6 Haai5 Faan6)

This will likely be my last post for 2016. Since Dungeness crab, a crab local to where I live, is in season now and making this tasty recipe is real easy, I felt that this would be an appropriate last dish for the end of the year. I hope you’ve enjoyed, and maybe tried, a few of the recipes that I’ve posted this year. I wish you and your family a Happy New Year for 2017!

As I stated earlier, Dungeness crab is a local delicacy and it’s in season right now. I’m fortunate enough to be able to buy cooked Dungeness crabs at my local Asian market. I find that to be a real time saver since I don’t have to cook the crabs before shelling to separate the meat from the shell. Dungeness crabs are usually weigh around one pound (454 grams) and yield about half their weight in meat (1/2 lb. or 277 g.). So you’ll need at least two crabs to get approximately 1 lb. (454 g.) of meat. If you’re pressed for time or can’t obtain Dungeness crab, you can always use canned or frozen crab. The crab is added at the end of cooking (when the clay pot rice rests for 10 minutes) to heat up the crab and preserve the crab flavor.

I followed the same procedure outlined in the Clay Pot Rice (煲仔飯, Bou¹ Zai² Faan⁶) recipe, but add mini-Shiitake mushrooms, together with the Dungeness crab meat. The rice is made even tastier by using chicken stock and the Shiitake mushroom rehydration liquid to cook the rice instead of water. I made my own stock using the Bone Soup (湯, Tong1) recipe, but if you’re pressed for time, canned or boxed stock can be substituted. The other option is to just use the Shiitake rehydration liquid.

Using a clay pot to make rice is very similar to making rice in a pot. A crust is produced on the bottom of the clay pot, similar to cooking rice in a pot, and you don’t have to reboil to release the scorched rice from the bottom. The taste of the rice is very similar to making rice in a pot. The sequence of cooking the rice in a clay pot is:

1. Pre-heat the clay pot over medium heat for 5 minutes to prevent shocking the clay pot and possible breaking it.
2. Bring the clay pot rice to a boil over medium-high heat for 10 minutes.
3. Simmer the rice for 15 minutes over low heat.
4. Scorch the rice using medium-high heat for 10 minutes.
5. Turn off the heat and allow the clay pot to sit for 10 minutes to release the scorched rice from the bottom.
6. Serve the rice.

Given that there are many variables when cooking rice in a clay pot, the cooked rice will vary from every time you cook it. If more water is used, the rice will take longer to cook. If too little water is used, the rice becomes more al dente and the volume decreases because the rice doesn’t get fluffy. Burner heat will determine how quickly the rice cooks and how scorched the rice will get. You just have to experiment and watch for the indications that signal when the rice is cooked to your personal preference. Making rice in a clay pot seems like a simple task, but you’ll find that it takes practice to get consistent results.

Enjoy!

Miso, Sesame, and Sweet Potato Dip with Tortilla Chips

I made this tasty dip, served with fresh tortilla chips from my local Mexican market, for my family’s 2016 Thanksgiving dinner. The original recipe can be found here: Miso, Sesame, and Sweet Potato Dip Recipe. The original recipe was modified to use a microwave oven to cook the sweet potatoes rather than steaming and garlic was added. Orange sweet potatoes really give this dish its color. The trick to making this dip is to add enough water to the food processor to make a smooth mixture because it’s quite stiff, but still edible, if you don’t. I also forgot to add the green onions to the dip after mixing in the food processor, but it’s included in the recipe.

Enjoy!

Preserved Duck Egg Jellyfish Salad with Mustard Dressing (芥末粉醬皮蛋海蜇沙律, Gaai3 Mut6 Fan2 Zoeng3 Pei4 Daan6 Hoi2 Zit3 Saa1 Leot6)

Here’s a tasty salad I made for my family’s 2016 Thanksgiving dinner. The recipe is very similar to the salad I made in 2015: Shredded Tofu Jellyfish Salad (白豆腐絲海蜇沙律, Baak⁶ Dau⁶ Fu⁶ Si¹ Hoi² Zit³ Saa¹ Leot⁶). It’s actually quite simple to make, consisting mainly of opening packages and cutting the fresh ingredients. The mustard dressing really brought out the flavors in this salad. Unlike most salads, the dressing is made first and then the salad ingredients are added. The salad and dressing are actually made the day before serving, so this makes an ideal dish that can be made the day before and stored in the refrigerator.

Preserved duck egg is a unique ingredient in this salad. Preserved duck egg can be purchased at your local Asian market. Wikipedia has a good article on preserved duck eggs (also called century eggs) if you’re interested in more details. Use an egg slicer to cu the egg into small pieces.

Instant jellyfish comes in a package ready to use (hence the “instant” name). If I translated the Chinese correctly, it’s “jellyfish noodles”. The traditional method to prepare jellyfish is to soak dried salted jellyfish to rehydrate it before cutting into strips (at least a two day effort with a couple of water changes to remove the salt). So you see why packaged instant jellyfish is preferable.

Shredded tofu is also packaged and looks like noodles. This recipe uses both the regular (white) and marinated (five-space), but you can use all of one type if desired. The tofu needs to be parboiled before using (follow the instructions on the package), but other than that, there’s no other cooking needed before assembling the salad. The rest of the fresh salad ingredients are either cut or come already cut.

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!

Slow Cooker Red Wine Spicy Bean Paste Ox Tail Stew (燉紅酒春辣醬牛尾, Dan6 Hung4 Zau2 Ceon1 Laat6 Zoeng3 Ngau4 Mei5)

This recipe, using beef oxtails, is very similar to the recipe using beef short ribs: Slow Cooker Chinese-Style Red Wine Beef Short Ribs (燉紅酒牛肋骨, Dan⁶ Hung⁴ Zau² Ngau⁴ Lak⁶ Gwat¹). Chinese stew spices - star anise, cassia bark or cinnamon sticks, ginger, garlic, and dried tangerine peel – are used together with red wine and spicy bean paste to make this dish. So you can also think of this as a red wine beef oxtail stew with Chinese spices. Notice that rock sugar or dried dates, which are commonly used in Chinese stews, are not used in this dish. The natural sweetness from the red wine suffices in this recipe and any added sugar would make the dish too sweet. The ingredients are browned (except the daikon) before being placed in the slow cooker, but if you’re in a hurry, this step can be omitted.

Enjoy!

Grilled Rosemary Fennel Sage Turkey Breast with Pan Roasted Vegetables

I cooked for my family this Thanksgiving and I did a trial run using a whole turkey breast, rather than a whole turkey, to try out this recipe. I found the original recipe here: Roasted Turkey with Thyme, Rosemary, Fennel, and Lemon. I modified the recipe to use my gas grill and made a fennel oil paste to coat the outside of the turkey. When I used a whole turkey, I doubled the marinade (and used a bigger pot!) to fully submerse the turkey. The marinade can be omitted, since it uses a couple bottles of wine, or the turkey can be brined. I decided on the marinade since I wanted to use up some of the wine I had around the house. After cooking was complete, my whole turkey took flight when it slid in the pan and dropped to floor once I got it back into the house (the turkey was still edible, but the pan vegetables were not). A picture of the mangled bird is included, so be careful when transporting your cooked bird.

Dropped Whole Turkey

The whole fennel seeds are toasted in a pan before adding olive oil to make a fennel flavored oil. The fennel oil mixture needs to cool before placing it into the food processor, together with the other spices to make a paste. The resulting paste will have large pieces of fennel seeds and rosemary.

A gas grill with a thermometer is necessary for grill smoking a whole turkey. Maintaining a constant temperature of 350⁰F (175⁰C) and previous experience with your gas grill will determine the total cooking time for the turkey. I have found that 12 minutes per pound (450 g.) produces the right results (again, previous experience determines total cooking time). So for a 6 lb. (2.7 kg.) turkey, the total time is about 90 minutes. The 90 minute cooking time is greater than the calculated time (which is 72 min.) because the grill needs time to come back up to temperature after the turkey is rotated halfway through the cooking time.

The size of your gas grill also matters since that will determine how many burners can be kept on for indirect cooking, which influences the ability to maintain a constant temperature. My gas grill is large enough to keep both end burners on during cooking, so I’m able to center the roasting pan with the turkey between two lit burners. For smaller gas grills, only one end can usually be kept lit for indirect cooking once the roasting pan with the turkey is placed on the grate, which might necessitate an increased cooking time. Regardless, the roasting pan should be rotated 180⁰ half way through the cooking time to even out any hot spots in your gas grill.

The turkey should rest for 30 minutes or more before carving, so don’t carve the turkey immediately after coming out of the grill since all the juices will not remain in the turkey meat and will just drain onto the cutting board. Carving is relatively simple: first remove the breast meat from the bone, and then slice each breast against the grain.

Enjoy!

Ginger Scallion Dungeness Crab Noodles (薑葱北美大肉蟹炒麵, Goeng1 Cung1 Bak1 Mei5 Daai6 Juk6 Haai5 Caau2 Min6)

Dungeness crab is a crab that’s native to the West coast of the North America. Whenever it’s available, I try to purchase freshly cooked crab to use in dishes. Any crab can be used in this dish if Dungeness crab is not available, and if you’re not fortunate enough to be able to buy fresh cooked crab, canned or frozen can be substituted. For this dish, I used a variety of herbs (ginger, scallion, cilantro, and mint) to give this noodle dish a fresh and distinctive flavor. The shredded spice tofu gives the dish a texture contrast (to the other ingredients) and adds to the flavor of this noodle dish.

Enjoy!

Shallot Sauce Green Bean Shrimp (紅蔥醬青豆角蝦, Hung4 Cung1 Zoeng3 Ceng1 Dau6 Gok3 Haa1)

I finally realized that I’ve been using peeled shrimp or prawn in my previous recipes. While peeled shrimp makes for easy eating, it’s not the only way to make a shrimp dish. Shrimp dishes are also made with unpeeled shrimp, and there’s a lot of flavor in the shells that makes its way into dish. The downside to using unpeeled shrimp is that the shells must be removed before eating, unless you’re strange like me and eat shrimp with the shells on. So preparation is easy for this dish, since you don’t have to shell the shrimp (you also leave the little feet on!). If leaving the shells on shrimp doesn’t appeal to you, just remove them and cook the dish that way.

Enjoy!

Steamed Striped Bass (蒸鱸魚, Zing1 Lou4 Jyu6)

Striped bass is used to make this steamed fish dish, but you can steam any fish that’s available. Like the previous steamed fish recipe, Steamed Fish (蒸魚, Zing¹ Jyu⁶), a bed of baby bok choy is used for presentation purposes, but you can omit the baby bok choy and just eat the fish all by itself. I generally buy a fish tail rather than a whole fish, since a whole fish is usually too much food for dinner (unless you’re feeding a whole family), but the cooking time is the same for either.

The fish is always finished with heated oil and a soy sauce mixture. You can use a small pot or a wok to heat the mixtures, but I’ve been using the microwave to heat the soy sauce mixture. As always, you need to be very careful when you pour heated oil and liquids on the fish, as the hot oil and liquid will pop and splatter off the fish.

Enjoy!

Steamed Chicken with Dried Shrimp and Salted Radish (菜脯蝦米蒸鷄肉, Coi3 Pou2 Haa1 Mai5 Zing1 Gai1 Juk6)

Ground chicken makes a good alternative to pork when making steamed dishes. My previous steamed ground meat recipes used pork: Steamed Pork with Salted Duck Egg (鹹鴨蛋蒸豬肉, Haam⁴ Aap³ Daan⁶ Zing¹ Zyu¹ Juk⁶) and Steamed Pork with Salted Fish (Haam⁴ Jyu⁴ Zing¹ Zyu¹ Juk⁶, 鹹魚蒸豬肉). Dried shrimp is common addition to steamed pork dishes, while salted radish is not. In general, any salted ingredient can be used in steamed meat dishes. While I marinate my ground meat overnight, this step can be omitted if you’re pressed for time.

Enjoy!

Pickled Chili Sugar Snap Pea Scallops (風味糟辣椒蜜豆帶子, Fung1 Mei6 Zou1 Laat6 Ziu1 Mat6 Dau6 Daai3 Zi2)

Scallops were on sale at my local market, so I decided to make a dish using pickled chilies. Pickled chilies are available bottled at your local Asian market. The picked chilies are broken into pieces, as opposed to being whole, so all you have to do is add them to the sauce mixture. Since the scallops were on the large size, I decided to use Shiitake mushrooms that were roughly the same size. The mushrooms were also the high quality mushrooms purchased at my local Asian herb and dried goods store, so they’re meatier than the mushrooms found at Asian markets.

Enjoy!