Because I live in a coastal city, everyone in my family likes to eat seafood. New Year’s Eve dinner is the most important family feast of the year, and seafood must be a must.
Seafood is the most beautiful part of your family’s New Year’s Eve dinner, so naturally you can’t be too careless. You should eat something good during the Chinese New Year! Isn’t it just once a year? So I am going to buy these kinds of seafood:
Abalone
Although abalone looks more expensive, it is actually not too expensive. Generally, medium-sized abalone only costs more than ten yuan a piece. Only, plan to buy nine abalones. Eight of them are simply steamed, and the remaining one is paired with other seafood to create a seafood family portrait.
The method of steaming abalone is very simple. This is how I usually make it:
Wash the live abalone clean with a brush, then cut out the abalone meat with a knife and remove the black bits. Wash the internal organs.
Cut the abalone meat side with a cross knife, wash the abalone shell, blanch it in a pot of boiling water and take it out.
Put the abalone meat with the modified knife in the shell, add some ginger slices and a few drops of cooking wine. Turn on the steamer and steam the abalone for 5-6 minutes. Take it out.
Pick off the ginger slices from the steamed abalone, top with steamed fish soy sauce, add shredded green onions, heat the oil and drizzle it.
Nowadays, most abalone is farmed, but the texture and taste are acceptable. After all, my family does not eat it often. Generally, nine abalones cost more than 100 yuan, which is acceptable.
Sea cucumber, conch, scallop, shrimp, mullet (or squid), bird shell
There is a big dish on the New Year’s Eve dinner in my family. This is basically a must-have every year. , a seafood family photo stewed with various seafood. This is also a traditional old dish here and a must-have dish at the banquet. This is how I usually make this dish:
Clean the ingredients: cut the sea cucumber into long strips, slice the conch into thin slices and wash them with salt to remove the mucus, remove the shrimp devein and clean it, and cut the mullet into cross cuts. , clean and wash the bird shells, and slice the abalone into thin slices.
Process the ingredients: After marinating the shrimps and fish fillets, add egg white and water starch to sizing oil. Blanch conch slices, sea cucumbers, abalone slices, mullet flowers, and bird shells in the slightly bubbling water around the pot, take them out, and quickly cool them down for later use.
Stew: Pour oil into a pot and sauté onion, ginger and garlic, blanch and stir-fry the oiled ingredients. Use cooking wine, pepper, dark soy sauce, sugar, salt, and water starch to prepare a bowl of gravy. Pour it into the pot until the ingredients are covered with the gravy and serve.
Features: This dish has a rich variety of seafood and is extremely delicious. You can taste the taste and texture of different seafood in every bite. It is a very popular dish.
The consumption of these kinds of seafood is not large, and the most expensive one is sea cucumber! Generally, one tube costs about 20 yuan, and buying two is enough. You can buy less of everything else, but generally you will buy more conches and shrimps, because they are also used to wrap the dumplings for the New Year’s Eve dinner. The cost of this dish is also about 100 yuan.
Opium fish or turbot fish
The live fish that could be bought years ago were basically these two fish that were mainly farmed. There must be fish on the Chinese New Year table, and the whole fish must be served to reflect wealth and fish. This kind of live fish is basically used for steaming. Steaming fish is my specialty. Let’s see how I make it:
Cleaning ingredients: Slaughter the live fish and clean off the gills, internal organs and Fish scales are added to the fish body with a flower knife.
Marining: Take large pieces of onion and ginger and use your hands to squeeze out the juice and apply it on the fish body. Add cooking wine and pepper to marinate the fish for a while.
Steaming: After the steamer is steamed, put the fish into the pot and steam for about 6-8 minutes. Turn off the heat when the eyes of the fish turn white and bulge. Take out the fish, drain out the soup, and remove the onions and ginger.
Pour the oil: put the chopped green onion on the fish, pour the hot pepper oil on top, and pour the steamed fish soy sauce along the edge of the plate.
Features: The fish meat is tender and sweet. When eating, dip the fish meat into the steamed fish soy sauce to bring out the delicious taste of the fish meat.
Generally, live turbot or opium fish may be a little more expensive in the market years ago, but I always buy them early on the 1st of the 30th. Normally, it costs more than 30 per pound, and a fish is about 50-60 yuan. Money around.
There is also a tradition here during the Chinese New Year, which is that we need to "take away the oil" to fry things before the new year. Generally, families also buy a lot of other fish, such as croaker, boss fish, Spanish mackerel, and other fish, which are fried before the year and kept for consumption during the Chinese New Year.