Chaoshan Raw Pickled Seafood 潮汕生腌海鲜

More traveling eats!  We’re still got more to talk about the absolutely marvelous food we had on our trip to Chaoshan 潮汕 area of Guangdong 廣東.  Oh dear readers, it was so fabulously food fulfilling!  It’s always so lovely to find yourself in a place where everything you eat is delicious, amirite!?

Pssst...check out our other traveling eats posts from this trip, Shantou Street Food 汕頭街頭美食 and Chaoshan Beef Hotpot 潮汕牛肉火鍋.

So this post is about the Chaoshan speciality, Raw Pickled Seafood 潮汕生腌海鲜.  Fresh, fresh seafood pickled in soy sauce, wine and aromatics is a rare delight.  It’s a straightforward process to make, requiring only soy sauce, aromatics, a touch of oil and a bit of time.  The only and important! trick to raw pickled seafood is that the seafood has to be super duper fresh.

We had heard about the famous Chaoshan raw pickled seafood of course.  Oh, how I had drooled away when watching the first season of Flavorful Origins documentary series featuring Chaoshan cuisine.  Omgoshdarnnitall!!  Pickled crabs!  Pickled shrimps!  Pickled every kind of shellfish!  So amazing the raw pickled seafood of Chaoshan!  

Chaoshan Crab Congee 潮汕砂锅粥

Oh, so pretty, amirite?!  We've had lovely, lovely seafood on our minds after our recent trip to Chaoshan 潮汕 where we feasted, among other things, on marinated raw seafood of all kinds, omgosh, sooo good.  (We're still writing that amazing experience up so stay tuned.)  So yummilicious seafood been on our minds alot lately.  

Inspired by our trip and the wonderful food consumed we made this simple congee that is a delectable treat for all seafood lovers.  Just fresh crab and some rice and you're on your way to this authentic super duper Chaoshan Crab Congee 潮汕砂锅粥!

Chinese Crab Sauce Noodles 蟹肉醬麵

This Chinese Crab Sauce Noodle is a dish to impress, no doubt about it, and it's perfect both to amaze with its gorgeous sexy looks as well as its sublime knock it out of the ball park taste explosion of ultimate crabbiness.  Luckily for us the ones we most like to impress with good food is ourselves...meaning me... because we're making this for my birthday!  (I'm a summer baby.)  

It's the Chinese custom, for those of you who don't know, to have a bowl of noodles to celebrate a birthday and what better celebration of my wonderful self (hehe) and our love of pure foody goodness than this bowl of sinfully decadent Crab Sauce Noodles 蟹肉醬麵, slippery chewy noodles smothered with a generous golden dollop of rich umami packed crab meat and roe sauce.

Soy Sauce Marinated Crab 醬油醃蟹

This marinated crab dish is SO AMAZING!  Crazy amazing!  Super duper seafood delight-O with stars bursting in the sky amazing!  

I've been wanting to make it this for ever so long ever since I heard my mother 媽媽 reminisce how her mother made this dish frequently for the family when she was a child growing up in Zhejiang 浙江.  They made their marinated crab quite simply by soaking in rice wine and I remember thinking...interesting...how would that even work?  

Well, that crabby thought floated around in my head for a long time until I recently watched the Netflix food show 'Flavorful Origins' and had my mind totally blown away by...well, everything that food show had to say really.  If you love Chinese food, you've got to check that show out...I think I watched it 3 times in a row!  

Anyways, back to crabs, this Soy Sauce Marinated Crab is inspired by the 'Marinated Crab' episode (drooling!) and the result is raw crab meat and roe completely transformed into something succulent, meltingly tender and mindblowingly TASTY!

Chinese Stir Fry Eggs with Flaked Crab Meat 蟹肉炒蛋

This deceptively simple looking egg dish is a fancy dinner party dish in comforting disguise.  You start with a familiar Chinese comfort food, the tenderly folded stir fry egg (see our Tomato Egg Stir Fry 蕃茄炒蛋 recipe and Shrimp & Eggs Stir Fry 蝦仁炒蛋 recipe for more traditional takes on egg stir fry) and pair with something fabulously posh like crab meat and WHAMMO!  You've got yourself a dish you could serve an Empress!

This Chinese Stir Fry Eggs with Flaked Crab Meat 蟹肉炒蛋 is one of those food matches made in heaven: tender just set egg perfectly complemented by the delectable bits of sea sweet, soft crab meat tucked gently into the golden folds.   A royally yummilicious dish to treat family and friends to!

Chinese Chilled Crab with Vinegar Dip 凍花蟹

In the long hot months of the summer, there are few things more pleasurable to serve for dinner than a cold dish.  Actually I love Chinese cold dishes.  I have always found the taste of food chilled overnight to be especially tasty.  

Even when I was a little girl I would sneak midnight snacks from leftovers in the fridge: a cold soy sauce chicken wing, an icy wine flavored shrimp, a cool knob of fatty pork.  YUM!  Literally finger licking good!  My grandma used to always yell at me for this habit of eating straight out of the fridge.  'No, no, that's not the Chinese way!' she would say, exasperated and confused by my strange behavior.  

I guess what she meant was that Chinese food was meant to be eaten hot (and at a table!).  Which Chinese food is most of the time and properly so too.  Chinese cuisine is based on things like 'breath of the wok' after all.  But luckily there are many Chinese foods which are meant to be eaten cold, like this delicious and very easy to make Chinese Chilled Crab with Vinegar Dip, or 凍花蟹.  It's the perfect seafood dish to serve on a hot summer's night!

Steamed Hairy Crab 清蒸大閘蟹

Autumn leaves do not fall in Hong Kong (because we have no trees!), but the Hairy Crabs, 大閘蟹, seem to fall out of the sky, carpeting our city streets as the northern winds begin to blow.  Everywhere you look now it is hairy crabs:  the supermarket, the wet market, the street side shops temporarily transformed over to exclusively sell the little mittened crabs.  

These little crabs, distinctive by the brown fur merrily coating their front pinchers, are originally from Yangcheng Lake and Tai Wu Lake (where my daddy grew up!) in Jiangsu province.  Nowadays these hairy critters are the impetus behind a huge annual gastronomic money making affair.  Gastronomic because the hairy crabs are revered for their richly fragrant roe and succulent golden fat.  Money making because the crabs are very expensive, costing from 100-400  HKD each!  

But hey, what's the use of money if we can't use it to satisfy our every culinary desire...

Look at that unctuous crab roe and golden fat!

Steamed Dungeness Crab and Egg White 蛋白清蒸珍寶蟹

A bit of silky egg white and a bit of luscious crab meat!

We love all kinds of crab in this household, especially Dungeness Crab.  It is one of the few crabs that preserves sweet succulent tenderness while also being quite meaty.  Unfortunately it is quite expensive in Hong Kong.  

Luckily for us, however, my 老公's mother recently arrived from Vancouver, bringing with her two beautiful Dungeness crabs, still alive and kicking!  Since we had two of these lovelies we decided to prepare them different ways to settle an old argument we've been having forever: is it better to boil or steam crab?

Drunken Crab with Chinese Rose Essence Wine 玫瑰露醉蟹

When people talk of 鮮甜, or the fresh sweetness, of seafood, they might just have had this dish, Drunken Crab with Chinese Rose Essence Wine 玫瑰露醉蟹, in mind.  Wonderfully fresh ocean flavor matched only by the incredible rose scented sweetness of the delectable crab flesh.  Ummm, just thinking about is making me drool.

We, the family, have just now (after digging out these photos from the last time we had this dish) voted to have this dish tomorrow again, yeah!  These crabs are so yummy that I don't even mind the drudgery of getting the darn crab flesh out of the shells (which I usually do mind very much!)  And it's really simple and fabulously dramatic to make!

Stir Fry Crabs with Ginger and Scallions 姜葱蟹

This is the best crab dish.  Bar none.  Even better than the popular curry crab dishes that abound (which I think are overrated anyways).  Just fresh crab, ginger and scallions.  A simple trinity of three foods to create an absolute.  Absolute of taste, that is.  Simplicity and decadence on the same white plate.

For this Stir Fry Crab with Ginger and Scallion, or 姜葱蟹, we picked up from the wet market a mud crab which is a more meaty crab.  But any crab will do for this dish as long as it is fresh. And there are all kinds of crabs, an abundance of choice really, at the wet markets in Hong Kong.  

Ah, to live by the sea!  What a dream come true.  Of sorts anyways.  We have all the seafood we can possibly cook and eat but are stuffed like sardines into shoebox sized homes piled in towering, untidy heaps along a polluted harbor.  Sigh...

Chinese Steamed Crab 清蒸花蟹

Actually in a way there is nothing particularly Chinese about this Chinese Steamed Crab 清蒸花蟹.  It's a simple straightforward preparation that celebrates fresh seafood for its sea sweetness and tender succulence.  

Or maybe I should take that back.  Thinking about it, this dish is actually very representative of the manifestos of Cantonese cookery.  Freshness first, then simple yet subtle preparation to bring out the best of the natural taste of the fresh food. Anyways this is one of the many styles in which the Chinese eat crab which they love in general with a passion.

One of my earliest food memories is of having my mother, who loves crabs but for some strange reason will never admit it, absolutely astound me with the dexterity and speed with which she crunched her way through a mountain of crab shells with the utmost of ease.  I mean, from my youthful perspective, those crab shells were like iron shields and my mother was Superman or something.