Garlic stir fry mussels with rice vermicelli | Cantonese home cooking
EASY SEAFOOD DISH – Steamed black bean eel, chili crab, ginger & green onion steamed oyster and scallops… what to choose? I can’t order everything ($$$), so then we always ask what is the best pick of today. Garlic stir fry mussels with rice vermicelli
Freshness is the key factor to break or make the seafood dish. As they often say you can taste the freshness even if it’s cooked. Thus, it is not weird to see aquariums full of fish in Chinese seafood restaurants; you can literally pick the fish or crab that you would like to have. In Europe, you don’t see this very often. In Hong Kong (Asia) this is what a good seafood restaurant offers, “fresh ingredients”. Therefore, steaming or stir-fry is the best cooking techniques to bring out the freshness of these seafood dishes. Seasoning is also kept to the minimal – “less is more” – because you don’t want to have the heavy sauce to cover the freshness of the seafood.
The easiest way to enjoy these dishes is of course to go to a Chinese seafood restaurant. However, if you don’t mind to get your hands dirty and you have a wok at home or a steamer: do try out some of the seafood dishes at home! Let’s start with a beginner’s dish: garlic stir fry mussels. Relatively cheap compared to other seafood (so no worries if the dish does not turn out what you had in mind) and the success rate are almost guaranteed. So try this simple dish, ready in less than 10 minutes.
Ingredients (2 persons as appetizer):
- 10 – 12 small – middle sized mussels cleaned
- 1 slice of fresh ginger, chopped thinly
- 4 – 5 gloves of garlic, minced
- 60 gram rice vermicelli 粉絲 also known as Cellophane noodles or glass noodles
- 3 tablespoon Chinese Shaoxing wine (Chinese rice wine)
- Spring onion to garnish
Sauce:
- 2 tablespoon light soy sauce
- 1 teaspoon sesame oil
Directions:
- Soak the Chinese vermicelli in warm water until soft. Boil the Chinese vermicelli until it becomes transparent, drain it and set aside.
- Heat the wok over high heat with cooking oil.
- Add the garlic and ginger, stir-fry for a few seconds (until you smell the aroma of the garlic)
- Add the mussels, Chinese Shaoxing wine and sauce, stir-fry for about 3 minutes or until cooked. Add a bit of water if the sauce starts too vaporize to quickly.