Asian seafood?!
dried shark fins
dried sea cucumber
dried squid
Are these common Asian entrees? They were everywhere!
How are they prepared and eaten?
Answers: I went to Chinatown in Chicago the other day and I'm curious about the following items:
dried shark fins
dried sea cucumber
dried squid
Are these common Asian entrees? They were everywhere!
How are they prepared and eaten?
They are common among the Chinese. Shark's fin & sea cucumber are not so frequently eaten except in restaurants and during special occasions like wedding dinners & Chinese New Year.
Shark's fin has been a controversial food for some time, mainly due to protests by Western animal rights activists. Among the younger Chinese, it has also become less socially acceptable to consume shark's fin; many young Chinese couples now refuse to serve shark's fin at their wedding dinners. This of course displeases traditional parents & in-laws who view shark's fin as a symbol to display the family's material wealth, due to its high price. Dried shark's fin needs soaking for several days, not overnight as mentioned by other replies, and is best left to restaurants due to the skill & effort required. It is commonly prepared as shark's fin soup (often with crabmeat added for cheaper soups), as one of the ingredients in complex soups like Buddha Jumps Over the Wall (Fo Tiao Qiang), and in Shark's Fin and Crabmeat Scrambled Eggs (Fu Yong Hai).
Sea cucumber in Cantonese sounds like luck or joy and since it expands in water it represents swelling of joy. Enthusiasts like its gelatinous & chewy texture and extoll its health benefits & no cholesterol, others gag at the very same soft texture & handling slippery wet sea cucumber. The Chinese have been eating it for centuries. Dried ones go through a daily process of soaking & heating to almost boiling temperature for about a week (especially for high grade ones) to expand several times its dried size. It's commonly used in stews, braised dishes, stuffed with ingredients like a sausage skin, in soups (like Fo Tiao Qiang), stir-fries and some varieties are even used in desserts! Like tofu, sea cucumber is tasteless by itself but absorbs the flavors of the dish it's cooked in.
Dried squid is the only one of the 3 most likely to be found in homes frequently. You can reconstitute it for use in stir-fries with veggies or in the popular Singaporean hawker dish called Satay Beehoon. It's commonly used to enhance the taste in soups, together with other dried seafood like oysters & anchovies. Personally I find that dried squid has a really concentrated squidy taste & fragrance, so I prefer to use other stuff for soups.
Hope this helps shed some light on ingredients common to the Chinese but which seem very exotic to Westerners, there are hundreds of other Asian ingredients to be exposed to. Suggest to keep an open mind and take the opportunity to try sea cucumber in a Chinese restaurant just for the experience, often it's soft enough to melt in the mouth like jelly :)
They are Asian foods....pretty friggin sick if you ask me...the shark fins i suggest you not to use considering they cut the fin off the shark as its alive and let it drown>>> Their vultures. but if you decide to your just as worse as them...no offence.
If you're not native, don't try cooking one by your self. Go try them in the restaurant and see if you like the dishes or not. They require skills and techniques for certain things.
I am Asian, but in my opinion, seafood is much better to have them freshly cooked. Besides, if you go for something like shark fins soup, there are a lot of msg in there and I can't eat. I am allergic to msg.. :(
If you like seafood.. I recommend steamed perch or seabass in lime sauce.
these 3items normally will be soak overnight before being cooked.
shark fins and sea cucumber mostly are made into soup. for squid normally they will be added into stir-fry dish or they can be cooked like how fresh seafood are cooked.
the sea cucumber and squid are not that common though..
dried shark fins
dried sea cucumber
dried squid
The first two are common Asian entrees for special events e.g. special dinners, Chinese New Year festivals, celebrations & etc.
While dried squid - usually it's used as an "enhancer" of taste for soup dishes or for stew.
The first 2, usually soak over night. To obtain it's soft texture. Else Shark fin's "steamed" over high heat then cook in the soup.
Sea cucumber usually will become much bigger after it's soaked over night. Cut to pieces & it's usually cooked in stir fried, stew and even soup.
You can google around for Asian dishes consisting of those items. Although the shark fin would require a certain "chef level skill" to cook at times.
ASIAN;
Malaysia,India,Indonesia,Vietnam,Thail...
Malaysians i.e,are mostly muslims they don't eat animals that eat other animals.And no pork.No dogs or such things.
Indian cuisine is rather different,more spicies and less seafood.
Prepared and eaten?they won't tell you how.,hehe...
Very popular with Chinese everywhere; Sharksfin and seafood restaurants are common in Asian countries with a large Chinese community. They also serve dried and fresh abalone which is a costly item like sharksfin. They are mostly eaten in restaurants because it is Chinese gourmet cuisine hence difficult to prepare at home (with the exception of the less expensive dried squid which is also used to 'sweeten' soup).
SEA CUCUMBER as food and medicine.
Sea cucumbers has been revered by Chinese cooks since ancient times. In particular, sea cucumber meals have been offered on special occasions, especially New Year celebrations. An ancient Confucian recipe, translated roughly as "The Eight Immortals Crossing the Sea" and made with sea cucumber, shark's fin, and 5 kinds of fish and shellfish, is one of the classic banquet dishes.
The sea cucumber is valued - along with several other delicacies, such as shark's fin, ginseng, cordyceps, and tremella - as a disease preventive and longevity tonic.
To prepare the sea cucumber, the internal organs are removed, and dirt and sand are washed out of the cavity. It is then boiled in salty water and dried in the air to preserve it. When readied for use in making food, the hard, dried sea cucumber is softened. The process is quite lengthy, which is why this food tends to appear at special dinners and banquets more so than in day-to-day cuisine.
To soften the dried sea cucumbers: place the sea cucumbers in a pot and add cold water to cover; soak for at least 12 hours; then cook over low heat for 1 to 2 hours; add more water, as necessary, to make sure that the water always covers the cucumbers; remove from heat and let cool to room temperature, then drain.
I do enjoy all this Chinese seafood whenever I am in the Far East; believe me they are delicious.