Oyster Pancake (Kerang) OMELETTE
Oyster Pancake
https://www.reddit.com/r/Cooking/comments/6fl2kh/recipe_how_to_make_chinese_teochewstyle_oyster/
Basic Ingredients:
Oysters, 300g (去壳生蚝). You’re going to want to get pre-shucked and jarred oysters (if you’re outside China), or those big bags of pre-shucked oysters (if you’re in China). If you’re in either China or opting for fresh oysters, you’re gunna need to wash these real good… which we’ll go into in step one of the process. If you’re abroad, you probably don’t need to be so overly paranoid about washing those jarred oysters – just give them a good rinse and pick up with step three of the process.
Sweet Potato Starch”, ½ cup (地瓜粉). This is a real critical ingredient, as the sweet potato starch is going to give this dish its characteristic chewiness. If you’re abroad, because sweet potato starch is gluten-free, you can find it in some specialty stores and it’s available online (in the video description there’s a link to the starch on Amazon). Note that sweet potato starch isn’t sweet potato flour – the starch is further processed and purified.
Water, 6 Tablespoons. The ratio of the batter is four parts sweet potato flour and three parts water.
Large Egg, 1.
Green section of the green onion, ~1/2 cups (葱). Slice this up. We use the white part of the green onion as an aromatic so much, this dish is a good way to use up some of those green parts.
Liaojiu, a.k.a. Shaoxing Rice Wine (料酒), 1 tablespoon. This is just to help get out the ‘fishyness’ when blanching the oysters, so feel free to be liberal with your substitutions here – white wine would also be totally fine, you could even use baijiu in a pinch.
White Pepper Powder (白胡椒粉), 1 tsp. Used as a final seasoning, white pepper vastly preferable.
Cilantro (香菜). However much you like, for garnish.
Fish sauce (鱼露). For dipping. Again, fish sauce isn’t used a lot in Chinese cooking, but it’s used here and there in Chaozhou cuisine. This is one dish where fish sauce is pretty critical –we’re not salting this, all of the salinity is going to come from the oysters and the fish sauce when dipping.
Process:
Wash your oysters. Put your oysters in a bowl with water and a few teaspoons of salt and cornstarch. Massage them real good (don’t have too heavy of a hand, oysters can break), pick out any remaining shells, and set it aside for a few minutes. The cornstarch is going to latch onto any remaining mud or sediment on the oyster, and bring it down to the bottom of bowl as the cornstarch and the water separate. Remove the oysters, give em a good rinse, and put them in a bowl with new water. Make sure the water is more or less clear at this stage – if it’s not (let’s say) 95% clear, just keep washing and draining the water until it is.
Transfer the oysters from the water to a strainer. There’s actually a technique to this. You want to sort of let the oysters ‘dangle’ a little bit from your fingers to make sure you’re not getting any remaining impurities. It’s a little difficult to describe, so take a look at 1:15 in the video for a visual of what’s going on.
Blanch the oysters. Get a pot of water up to a boil and add in a splash of liaojiu wine – we used roughly a tablespoon. Add in your oysters and give them a quick stir. We don’t want to overcook the oysters (nobody like a rubbery oyster), so as soon as that pot gets back up to a simmer – about 1 minute – take them out and strain them.
Make your batter. The amount of oysters and batter that we’re using here is for an 8 inch skillet. If you’re using a different size pan than that, check out the note on equipment below. Mix your sweet potato starch and water and give it a real good whisk, incorporating it as much as humanly possible. Then add in your green onions and oyster, giving that a nice mix (but being careful not to break the oysters).
Pre-heat your pan, give the batter one final mix, and pour it in. We’re using ‘hot pot, hot oil’ method here, so make sure that pan’s piping hot… basically hot enough that you could sear a steak. Add in a bit of oil, I’d say roughly ½ cm deep – we’re not shallow frying or anything but you’ll want more than a coating. Give that batter one final mix right before you pour it in – sweet potato starch has an annoying tendency to separate and sink, so make sure you don’t forget to do this.
Cook on high for about a minute, evening out the batter and oysters in the pan, then lower the heat. First thing’s first, arrange your oysters to make sure that the oysters are evenly spread around the pan (you don’t want some bites being pure oyster and some being none). Then, tilt the pan to make sure the batter’s even – you can tell a place needs batter if there’s a visible bubbling of oil, like at 4:25 in the video. Turn your heat to medium low.
Pour a whisked egg over the pancake, then cut into quarters. Crack an egg and give it a good whisk. Pour the egg over the pancake, trying to get it as even as possible. Tilt the pan to spread the egg to any areas you didn’t quite get. Then, cut the omelette into quarters with your spatula, which will help it cook evenly and make it easier to flip.
Cook for about one more minute, then flip. You’ll know you’re ready to flip once the batter is a bit translucent and the egg is no longer overly runny. You’re gunna flip each quarter, but this ain’t like a Western omelette where if you screw up the flip everything’s ruined. This is going to be eaten with chopsticks anyhow, so a messed up piece isn’t the end of the world. At 5:13 in the video we actually muffed up one of the pieces a little bit, and it obviously didn’t make a noticeable difference to the end product.
Drizzle some more oil in the cracks of the flipped omelette, then up the heat to medium high and cook for two minutes. Adding some more oil between the cracks is going to help achieve a nice golden brown color. Let it cook for a couple minutes on this side – this is gunna be our ‘show’ side.
Flip it back over, turn off the heat, and season. Flip the omelette back over to get that nice golden show side and turn off the heat. Sprinkle some white pepper pretty liberally over the omelette – I’d estimate we used about a teaspoon as you want to make sure every bite has a nice seasoning.
Garnish with cilantro and serve with fish sauce. Again, notice that we didn’t add salt here – you’re really gunna want that fish sauce for dipping. Fish sauce and this omelette go absolutely perfect together too.
Note about Oyster Omelette Styles:
Some of you might be more familiar with the Taiwan street food style variety. The difference between that and this is that they’ll usually: (1) have a thinner batter (often a mix of sweet potato starch and cassava flour) (2) have a greater ratio of egg (3) flip the omelette over top some veg, like lettuce or bean sprouts and (4) smother it with a gravy. You’re left with a sloppy mess of deliciousness – it’s one of the world’s great drunk foods, to be sure.
Obviously, this Chaozhou style is quite different – almost to the point where I think we could safely call them different dishes. I personally prefer the Chaozhou style to the Taiwan street style, but in the end they’re both pretty awesome.
Here is a video on streed food Fried Egg Lala 蚝煎
Comments
Post a Comment