How to Make Shrimp with Paired Vegetables, Step by Step

Cuisine: Fujian cuisine

Ingredients/seasonings:

1 red shrimp, 300 g heart of Chinese cabbage, 300 g heart of leaf mustard. Appropriate amounts of refined salt and MSG, 1 ladle each of lard and chicken fat, a little flour, a little edible alkali and pepper, 500 g milk broth, 500 g peanut oil (about 50 g consumed).

Preparation process:

1. Rinse the red shrimp, steam it in a steamer basket until cooked, then pick out the clean meat and the crab roe, and chop the crab roe with a knife into grains the size of mung beans; set aside.

2. After rinsing the heart of Chinese cabbage, cut it straight from the root-stem end into long strips at 1 cm intervals, with every 2 root stems left joined together; drain the water, then put it into an oil wok and fry until the vegetable is tender; take it out and rinse off the oil with boiling water, then arrange it neatly in a bamboo strainer.

3. Remove the old stems and leaves from the heart of leaf mustard, cut each plant into 8 cm long strips by dividing it into four equal parts, and blanch in water. Add a little edible alkali when blanching; after taking it out, rinse off the alkali taste and the steam with cold water, then arrange it neatly in a bamboo strainer.

4. Place a wok over medium heat, add the milk broth, season well with refined salt and MSG, and over low heat use two woks to respectively put the two bamboo strainers of Chinese cabbage hearts and leaf mustard hearts, together with the bamboo strainers, into the milk broth to simmer. After the vegetable hearts have absorbed the flavor, invert the vegetable hearts respectively onto the two ends of a serving plate (a long plate), with the leafy heads facing each other and a gap left in the middle (keep the remaining broth for later use).

5. Wash the wok clean and place it over medium heat, add lard, and when it is 60% hot add the flour; stir-fry it with a spatula until it changes color and becomes fragrant, pour in the simmered milk broth to make a flour-thickened sauce, and drizzle with some chicken fat and a little pepper.

6. Pour 2/3 of the thickened sauce over the vegetable hearts, leave 1/3 in the wok, add the shrimp meat and crab roe, bring to a boil, and pour it over the vegetable hearts and into the gap in the middle; it is then ready.