Reddit by mthmchris
Canto-Western Seafood Baked Fried Rice with Cheese (白汁芝士海鲜焗饭)
This week, I wanted to teach you how to make a some classic Hong Kong chachaanteng fare, a dish that’s perhaps one of my top-5 Chinese comfort foods: ‘baked’ seafood rice.
‘Baked’ is in quotes because it’s really more of a quick broil. At its core, this dish’s some egg fried rice smothered with seafood and bechamel, topped with cheese… then briefly tossed in the oven for a quick melt.
Now, from the description you could be forgiven for wonder just how Chinese this dish actually is. Bechamel? Cheese? Those ain’t exactly traditional Chinese ingredients. Historically, Hong Kong chachaanteng started as European restaurants aimed for the local market, and as the decades progressed started to morph into very much their own Canto-Western thing. Next to the baked seafood rice on the menu you’ll find all sorts of mashed up influences… from British-style curries, to steak served on a sizzling hotplate with a thick black pepper sauce, to deep fried French toast stuffed with Peanut Butter.
Ingredients:
Advantage of doing a Canto-Western dish? We have a new member of the Western supermarket club! The only ingredient here you’d need to sub is the Shaoxing wine – dry sherry’s generally the go-to sub, but with this dish you could absolutely use white wine.
Jasmine rice, ~160g. Ok, so we’re assholes and forgot to measure the amount of rice pre-cooking. We used 300g cooked Jasmine rice, and IIRC that should be about 160g uncooked rice. As I’ll go over in the process below, to fry the rice you can either use day-old rice left to dry overnight in the fridge -or- cook the rice at a dry ratio (1 part water to 1.2 parts rice) and be good to go immediately.
*Egg, 1.*Beaten. To fry the rice.
Fried rice seasoning: 1 tsp stock concentrate (鸡汁) -or- ½ tsp chicken bouillon powder (鸡粉), ¼ tsp white pepper powder (白胡椒粉), ¼ tsp salt, ½ tsp sugar, 3 tbsp water. All mixed well. Usually, I wouldn’t recommend use Western stock concentrate in Chinese dishes, but for this sort of Canto-Western fare? Go for it, use your better-than-bouillon. Also, if you happen to have some homemade stock in your freezer, feel free to swap the water and stock concentrate for stock.
Seafood: 60g fresh shrimp (虾仁), 80g squid (鱿鱼), 60g crabstick (蟹柳) -or- whatever the hell you feel like. So for the seafood in this dish, we used shrimp, squid, and crabstick… but at chachaanteng they often throw the whole kitchen sink in. Mussels, deep-fried fish, fishcakes, octopus… whatever. Go with whatever kind of seafood you’re feeling, aiming for 200-250g total.
Basic Cantonese Seafood Marinade, plus sugar, for each of the fresh seafood you add in: 1 tsp liaojiu a.k.a. Shaoxing wine (料酒/绍酒), ¼ tsp white pepper powder (白胡椒粉), ¼ tsp salt, ¼ tsp sugar. So this is the basic Cantonese marinade for seafood, with sugar added (some subtle sweetness is nice here). Add this combination to whatever sort of fresh seafood you’re going with – so here, we marinated the shrimp and the squid.
Liaojiu, a.k.a. Shaoxing Wine (料酒/绍酒), ½ tbsp. For frying the squid, if using. Again, feel free to sub white wine here, would definitely work.
For the Bechamel: 3 tbsp butter (牛油), 3 tbsp AP flour (中筋面粉), 2 cups whole milk. This feels strangely presumptuous to include ‘how to make a bechamel’ in this recipe… but hey, what the hell I think it should be there for completeness. The process listed here’s how I make bechamel (minus steeping the milk with onion and bay, figured chachaanteng probably don’t do that step lol), but feel free to do whatever you’re used to.
To season the Bechamel: ¼ tsp salt, ¼ tsp white pepper powder (白胡椒粉).
Cheap-o bagged melty mozzarella cheese (马苏里拉芝士), 60g. Like… the pre-shredded sort. I know, I know. I’m actually equally pretentious at my core. But you want a cheese that melts well – I’ve actually played around with good cheese a while back, but it just wasn’t gooey enough. Plus, living here in China, this’s what’s available at our market and… hey, the chachaantengs use it.
Process: Basic high level overview here: (1) make some egg fried rice, toss in a mini-casserole dish (2) prep and marinate the seafood (3) give the seafood a brief stir-fry (4) make a bechamel, then fold in the fried seafood (5) top the egg fried rice with the seafood bechamel mixture and mozzarella cheese (6) broil for five minutes.
Cook the rice. Rinse your rice about three times to remove the excess starch. If saving the rice overnight in the fridge, cook the rice at a 1:1 ratio. Once finished, lay out the rice on a plate uncovered in the fridge and come back the next day. If cooking the rice to make this immediately, cook the rice at a ratio of 1 part water to 1.2 parts rice. Again, we should have about 300g of cooked rice total.
Prep and marinate the seafood for at least ten minutes. Deshell the shrimp and chop them in half. Toss in a bowl and marinate with the seafood marinade above. For the squid, pull the tentacles out of the body and throw out the hard bit on the inside. Chop off the little protrusions on the side of the squid, then remove the skin. Cut a checkerboard pattern into the bits that you just cut off, cut the body into rings, and chop the tentacles into individual two in sections. Marinate in a separate bowl with the seafood marinade above. For the crab sticks, just chop into one inch chunks.
Beat the egg, mix together the fried rice seasoning. Really go at the egg, beat thoroughly until no stray strands of egg whites remain.
Fry the rice. As always, first longyau: get your wok piping hot (like, steak searing temperature), shut off the heat, add in the oil – here about one tablespoon – and give it a swirl to get a nice non-stick surface. Heat on medium-high now:
Cooked rice, in. The idea here is to break up the clumps and dry out the rice. To do so, continuously alternate between pressing down on the rice with your spatula (to break up clumps) and pulling the rice up (to prevent sticking). Visual of what’s going on is at 1:22 in the video.
After ~90 seconds, once most of the larger clumps of rice are broken up, add in half of your fried rice seasoning. This is added in batches so that the rice doesn’t re-clump. Continue frying with the same motion.
After another 90 seconds or so, add in the remaining fried rice seasoning. Continue frying.
Once the liquid is gone, ~30 seconds, add in the beaten egg. We chose to add the egg in later here in order to add a nice golden color to the rice (in order to contrast with the bechamel).
Continue frying for ~3 minutes. The rice will be done once basically all the clumps are gone and it can flow off your spatula.
Transfer the rice to the mini-casserole dishes.
Fry the seafood. Same deal. Longyau: get your wok piping hot, shut off the heat, add in ~1 tbsp of oil, give it a good swirl. Heat on medium-high:
Crab stick, in. Fry for about 30 seconds. Remove and set aside.
Add a touch more oil, no need to rinse. Squid, in. Fry for ~45 seconds. It will release a little moisture, this is normal.
Add in a swirl of liaojiu wine around the side of the wok. Continue to fry for ~45 seconds.
Squid, out. Give the wok a quick rinse and wipedown with a paper towl. Longyau again, same medium-high heat as before.
Shrimp, in. Fry for ~45 seconds until completely pink. Remove and set aside.
Make the bechamel sauce.
No special Cantonese technique here or anything, really just a bog-standard white sauce. Before making, add your milk to a separate pot and heat it up over low heat – make sure it doesn’t boil. With your pot of hot milk by your side, toss a separate saucepan over a medium-high flame and:
Add in the butter. Wait for a minute or two until is starts to get frothy.
Sprinkle in the flour. Whisk the flour into the butter and let it cook for ~2 minutes to make a roux. You want the roux to be a pale blonde color.
Add in the hot milk, bit by bit. I dunno, roughly 1/3 of a cup or so in each go. Whisk continuously. I know some people are believers in cold milk-hot roux, this is just the way I do it. Both believers of the cold milk and hot milk theories insist that it helps prevent lumps in the final product, I’ve had better luck with the latter.
Once all the milk is in and incorporated, let the bechamel bubble for ~5 minutes. This will thicken the sauce and also help remove any lingering flour taste. The sauce is finished once it can coat a spoon and your can ‘draw’ a line in the bechamel with your finger.
Shut off the heat, whisk in the seasoning: ¼ tsp salt, ¼ tsp white pepper.
Fold in the seafood.
Assemble the plates. Pour the sauce over the egg fried rice in the mini casserole dish. Top with the grated cheese.
Broil for five minutes at 250C. So the big thing here is that we don’t want the bechamel to set, we want a creamy sauce… not something custardy. Once the cheese is melted and slightly browned, take it out.
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