Sea cucumber, 海参 in Chinese or Gamat in Malay, is an animal, found on the sea floor worldwide. The sea cucumber is an oblong shaped, gelatinous creature that is distantly related to star fish and sea urchins. The sea cucumber comes by its name honestly: it is indeed shaped like a cucumber
Sea Cucumber is high in collagen content. Zero calories. It has high nutritional value.
Available in dried form and can be quite pricey depending on the size & species. Normally found in the ethnic grocery stores or Chinese dried seafood stores. Those need to be soaked for several hours before cooking.
Sea Cucumber (those thick & fat ones especially) is one of the most expensive delicacy which was eaten by most Chinese during the Chinese New Year apart from bird nests, abalones & shark fins. Like tofu, sea cucumber is flavorless, but has the ability to soak up the flavors of foods and seasonings it is cooked with. It can be use in soups, stir-fries, and certain braised dishes.
This is actually one of my childhood dish that I will only get to eat once a year during Chinese New Year. Normally my mum will just stirfry the sea cucumbers with pork strips and ginger.
Here, I reinvented this by adding radish & chinese mushroom. Radish will soaked up all the flavour in the sauce. You will have juicy radish with all the goodness.
Ingredients: (serves 3)
4pcs Chinese Mushroom (soaked) - cut into pieces.
80g Pork Loin - cut into strips
110g Sea Cucumber (small size)
210g Radish - cut into small pieces
10g Ginger - thinly sliced
Seasoning :
2 tbsp Cooking Oil
1 tsp Light Soy Sauce
1/2 tsp Dark Soy Sauce
150ml Water
1 tbsp Oyster Sauce
1/2 tsp Sugar
1/4 tsp Salt
Starch for thickening (optional)
I bought the soaked sea cucumbers from the wet market. It's soft, slippery & bouncy. But it's not thoroughly clean on the inside although it has already pre-cut opened. Those white strips-like is their intestines.
How to clean Sea Cucumber.
Boil a small pot of hot water, add few slice of ginger. Then boil the sea cucumbers for about 10 minutes. Then turn off the heat & let it cool down. Do not overcook, otherwise the sea cucumber will melt in the water. Unless the sea cucumber is very hard. Once cool down, use a metal spoon the scrape off the inside of the sea cucumber to remove all the whitish thing inside. Then rinse under running tap water.
You can wrap them with plastic wrap and freeze them if you are not going to use it soon. When ready for use, thaw them in the refrigerator overnight and then cut them into the desire sizes
For this dish, cut into desired size. Not too small. Like 2cm length will do.
Step by Step:
1. Heat cooking oil in the pan. Saute ginger till fragrant.
2. Add in pork strips and lightly pan fry until cook. Add light soy sauce and continue to stir for about 30 secs.
3. Then, add in radish and chinese mushroom. Stir for about 1 minutes and add in dark soy sauce to give some darker color.
4. Then add water to it. Followed by oyster sauce, sugar & salt.
5. Let it simmer on low heat with lid covered for 15 minutes. Stirring occasionally.
6. After that, add in sea cucumber and cover back the lid and continue to simmer for another 5-8 mins. Becareful not to overcook or it can turn into mush.
7. Use a fork to poke the radish, it should be soft by now. If not, continue to cook for a few minutes more. Add some water if the sauce dries up. (Optional - Add starch to thicken the sauce)
8. Dish up & serve with hot steamed rice.
Cooked with Queen's Xense Casserole Marble Coated Anodised Coating. Non stick 5 layer marble coating. Durable & Long Lasting. High heat efficiency. Easy cleaning & maintenance.
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