Stir Fry Baby Scallops

The beauty in cooking seafood is it takes such a short time and yields fabulous flavor.  Make sure your seafood is very fresh, and all you need is the simplest of seasonings just to enhance the fresh sweetness.



By chance we came across a flyer that was advertising the opening of a new branch by a reputable seafood supplier in our locality.  Hubby took me there and we ended up buying a basketfull of beautifully frozen seafood - I was a bit nervous whether it would all fit into my already half packed freezer! In the end, I had to do some serious re-organising of the freezer so as to fit all those chunky frozen packs, but it's all good. Whew!

We bought some unagi, peeled prawns, big pomfrets, and these lovely baby scallops.  They were actually a bit too small for my liking - I wanted the medium sized hotates, but they didn't have them - it was either the huge king size ones, or these baby guys.  But they looked to be in good condition, and were very cheap - at $10 bucks per packet of like 30.

I toyed between either steaming or stir frying them - in the end i decided to stir fry them just so I could take some photos of the shells as background prop for the dish ;P 

  

The seasonings used here are the most frequently used combinations by restaurants to bring out the natural fresh sweetness of the seafood.  Lots of ginger, spring onion and chinese wine to kill any hint of fishiness, and a sprinkling of chicken stock powder to enhance the natural flavours.  That's it.  A beautiful dish of scallops in ginger sauce.

Hungry!

Stir Fry Baby Scallops in Ginger Sauce

• 350g baby scallops (shelled weight)
• 4 stalks of spring onion, trimmed to about 5 inches in length, starting from the white part, and then cut into 1 inch length
• 2 cloves garlic, chopped
• 5 slices of ginger, slivered
• 1 tsp chinese cooking wine
• 1 tsp sesame oil
• 1 tsp oil
• Dash of chicken stock powder
• Dash of sugar, salt, white and black pepper
• Some goji berries for garnishing (can be eaten too).

1.  Rinsed the shelled scallops and drain thoroughly.

2.  Heat both the oil and sesame oil and fry the spring onion, garlic and ginger until fragrant and light golden.  

3.  Turn up the fire and add in the scallops and all the seasonings.  Toss for 1 minute, until the scallops turned just white.  Switch off the fire and adjust the taste.  Serve immediately.

Note:  If you prefer to steam this, leave the scallops in the shell.  Fry the aromatics first, then pour everything along with the seasonings onto the scallops and steam for 2 min on high heat.