Cooking dried abalone does require a lot of time and attention. As I made it in each night time after work and dinner, it didn't go too well. At first, the subtle soaking (暗焗) wasn't done in a perfect timing as I hurried to make it in less than 3 days. I skipped the first step of 8-10 hours for it to be soaked in cool water. Then on the morning of braising it, I didn't have enough time to buy some lively killed chicken. Besides, I bought the fatty pork and put in the fridge for the next day use - another mistake. So without the chicken fat, it's a bit less effective to make it soft and aromatic! Then the biggest mistake is that I didn't go out and buy some fresh mushroom but use my stock which was already too expiring. So don't use the mushroom which has turned a bit brown. Get the white ones which are dry enough.
1. Actually if I didn't mix it with the mushroom's stock, it should have been better. 2. Then a mistake in using the wrong mushrooms. It's a good lesson to me and sometimes even though I know I shouldn't, somehow I used it due to one word "hurry". I thought putting more rock sugar and dried tangerine peel would offset the "wet" flavour of the mushroom. However, it couldn't. :( OK, next time if I don't have enough time and proper ingredients, don't do it.
5 comments:
Wow, "Tom Sum" Abalone huh. This looks delicious and good enough to me.
In order to make it soft in a faster speed, you can try Coke(if you dare).
Coke is my frequently used food softener. Also this way I can put less sugar.
I did this with pork chop before as I cannot wait and need to "hurry". I soaked the pork chop in Coke so I don't need to hit the pork chop with hammer.
I think for abalone you can soak with Coke over night. I will try next time with abalone. Last time I cooked for 5 hours and the abalone is still not soft enough.
Another ingredient to soften food can be vinegar, but in this case I cannot put too much.
SS, I normally use rock sugar and it's good for softening food. However, dried abalone is a very delicate food and the cool water soaking plus hot/warm/cool water soaking are almost a must for the procedure. OK, I shall put it this way as an immigration check-list - no compromise for any step or point missing... :)
Yes I will try Coke with abalone next week and let you know. Never did that before.
SS
If you don't tell me, I won't know there were so many mistakes. Anyway, the abalones you made were not bad. Thanks for making it for us. The way cook with Coke, I will try to do with the pork chop next time but can it be used with diet Coke?
Actually quite a no. of people suggested using coke or beer for cooking. Daphne, I believe it should be the classic coke as that type of sugar will have kind of breaking effect.
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