Main Chinese restaurant-style Chinese Dairy-free Nut-free
Seafood with Vegetables
Prawns, squid and scallops in a pale garlicky white sauce with mixed vegetables, the restrained dish on a menu full of loud ones. Each of the three cooks at a different speed, so each is seared separately and returned at the end, and the sauce is deliberately light and clear rather than dark, because soy and oyster sauce would flatten the sweetness that makes fresh seafood worth buying.
Prep25 min
Cook12 min
Servings3
Christoph's version of the restaurant seafood and vegetable stir-fry, each of the three seafoods seared separately and a deliberately pale sauce so the shellfish still tastes sweet.
Ingredients
Written for a 30 cm pan
Units
Temperature
Servings
Seafood
- 250 g raw prawns, peeled and deveined rounded
- 250 g squid, cleaned, scored and cut into pieces rounded
- 200 g scallops, patted very dry rounded
- 15 ml Shaoxing wine rounded
- 8 g cornflour rounded
- 3 g fine salt rounded
White sauce
- 300 ml chicken or fish stock rounded
- 22 ml Shaoxing wine rounded
- 15 ml light soy sauce, light only; dark would muddy the sauce rounded
- 5 g sugar rounded
- 16 g cornflour rounded
- 5 ml toasted sesame oil rounded
- 2 g ground white pepper rounded
Vegetables
- 40 ml neutral oil rounded
- 4 garlic cloves, finely chopped rounded
- 15 g fresh ginger, finely sliced rounded
- 150 g carrot, sliced thinly on an angle rounded
- 200 g broccoli, small florets, blanched 90 seconds rounded
- 100 g snow peas rounded
- 100 g baby corn, halved lengthwise rounded
- 2 scallions, cut into 3 cm lengths rounded
Dietary labels are a guide, not a guarantee. If you have an allergy, read the ingredients yourself.
Method
- Prepare the squid properly. Score the inside of the tubes in a fine crosshatch without cutting through, then cut into pieces. The scoring makes them curl decoratively and, more usefully, lets them cook through in under a minute.
- Toss the seafood with the Shaoxing wine, cornflour and salt, keeping the three kinds in separate bowls. Pat the scallops dry again just before they hit the pan; a wet scallop will never brown.
- Blanch the broccoli for 90 seconds and drop it into iced water. Drain well.
- Mix the sauce, cornflour last, and stir again before use.
- Sear each seafood separately and remove it. Very hot wok, a little oil each time. Scallops first, 60 to 90 seconds on one side only until browned. Then prawns, 60 to 90 seconds. Then squid, 45 to 60 seconds. Each comes out slightly underdone. Cooking them together guarantees rubber.
- Cook the vegetables. More oil, garlic and ginger for 20 seconds, carrot for 2 minutes, baby corn for 1 minute, snow peas for 1 minute.
- Sauce and thicken. Pour in the stirred sauce and boil 1 minute until glossy and just thick enough to coat.
- Return everything for thirty seconds. Add the broccoli, all the seafood and any juices, and the scallions. Toss briefly to heat through and serve immediately.
Notes
- Three seafoods, three timings, three separate sears. This is the only real technique in the dish and skipping it is why home versions come out chewy.
- Keep the sauce pale. Dark soy and oyster sauce belong in beef with broccoli and would bury the seafood here. Light soy, stock, a little sugar and white pepper is all it needs.
- Squid is either under a minute or over half an hour. There is nothing usable in between, so err short.
- Scallops need a dry surface and one undisturbed side. Turning them repeatedly gives you pale rubbery discs.
- Frozen seafood works but must be thawed fully and dried thoroughly, or the wok floods and everything steams.
Ingredient substitutions
- Any two of the three seafoods make a perfectly good dish if the third is hard to get. Mussels, clams or firm white fish in chunks also work; add fish last and fold it in rather than tossing so it does not break up.
- Snow peas can be replaced with sugar snaps or green beans blanched for 2 minutes.
- Shaoxing wine substitutes with dry sherry, or stock plus a splash of rice vinegar.
Good with
From Christoph Mayer