I missed the steamed seafood dinners I had in Shenzhen and wanted to try doing it at home. This is the first attempt at this form of cooking.

Of course you will need seafood. Any type of seafood is fine, but I recommend lots of shellfish, these produce the best umami. But be really careful when dealing with clams, because you really need to clean all the same and junk from inside the clams. When choosing fish, use sea fish. Crustaceans are good too.

You do not need to really dress the seafood except to add ginger during steaming. The natural sweetness of these shellfish will come through on their own.

Of course you can something slightly fancier, like this bamboo clams with vermicelli seasoned with Maggi seasoning (because these are frozen bamboo clams).

And you have to have some greens that you can steam.

The Process

First you need a deep pot to keep boiling water to produce the steam. Either a induction cooker and a steamer. I used an electric steamboat but it did not work as well. The important component of this method of cooking is to throw some soaked rice into the water with some seasoning. Then at the end you will have a beautiful porridge infused with the flavours of the seafood.

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Every type of seafood cooks differently, so group those that would cook about the same duration for each session.

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Look how gorgeous the loofah turned out. And the resulting porridge – WOW! This was a good first attempt.

Tips:

• Use really fresh and good seafood. The fresher and better seafood, the better the resulting porridge.
• Use a really deep pot or the boiling stock will overflow into the steamer basket.
• Remember to soak the rice before. And use Japanese rice if possible – these produce a better porridge because of the starch content.

Date cooked : Aug 2020