Savoury and funky douchi plus sweet fresh clams make for a quick and simple seafood recipe that punches well above its weight class.

Time: 2/5
Clams cook super quickly, and the sauce comes together in a flash.

Effort: 2/5
Not counting the effort that goes into procuring live seafood – your mileage may vary.

Happy as a Clam

Seafood is firmly entrenched in Cantonese culinary culture. Maybe it’s the thousands of years living along the southern Chinese coast. My grandmother, like many of her generation, can sound downright fanatic when it comes to critiquing the quality of seafood when we eat out – which she is absolutely qualified to do, given how good of a home cook she is.

The pinnacle of Cantonese seafood is to steam a whole fish until it just barely flakes, seasoned with nothing more than some ginger, scallions and soy sauce. As much as I would love to master that and show it on this blog, I am miles away from that level of competence.

Fortunately, clams are a much more approachable ingredient. I’ve steamed clams in a white wine broth before, but I really want to showcase a Chinese recipe as well. Which brings me to this clam and douchi stir fry.

Douchi (豆鼓; dau si / dou chi) are fermented and dried black soybeans that have a distinctly savoury, cheesy flavour. You may have seen them in dishes like Mapo Tofu, where they lend the dish a funky umami punch. They keep for a long time, and all you need to do is give them a quick soak in water to rehydrate them before using them in cooking.

Clams add to this base of flavour. For a dish where clams play a big role, it’s important to get the freshest ones you can get. The market that I go to sells them still alive, and I soak them in salted water (to simulate seawater) for a couple hours so they’ll spit out whatever sand they have inside of them. We call this 吐沙 (tou sa, which literally means spit-sand).

However, seasoned readers will know that whenever there’s a flavourful liquid to soak up, it’s the glass noodles that take stage center. That’s true whether it’s the buttery liquor of steamed shrimp or scallops, the elegant umami of a hairy cucumber and dried shrimp stir fry, or the intense savouriness of grouper in soy sauce.

Here, the sweet clam juice runs into the garlicky and savoury douchi sauce, which all gets soaked up by chewy glass noodles. All of this goes onto fluffy white jasmine rice, all while you suck sweet clam meat out of their shells. Now that’s a Cantonese dinner!

Posts since the last recipe that was actually served with rice: 0

Dramatis Personae

Served 2, as a side dish. I had this with a side of shrimp and egg stir fry, but you can double the ingredients if this is the only protein you are serving.

• 600g live clams
• 50g glass noodles, rehydrated 
• 15g douchi, rehydrated and minced
• 3 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1 shallot, minced
• Fresh or dried chilis to taste, minced
• 2 tbsp light soy sauce
• 2 tsp sugar
• Water as needed

Executive summary

1. Rinse the douchi well, and soak in fresh water overnight. Soak the glass noodles separately.
2. Let the clams sit in well salted water for several hours. They will spit their sand out Lift them out, leaving the sand behind.
3. Drain the douchi, but save the liquid. Mince douchi together with the garlic.
4. Stir fry the douchi and garlic in a bit of oil until aromatic. Add clams, and stir to combine.
5. Add the douchi liquid, soy sauce, sugar, and extra water if needed. Taste and adjust for seasoning.
6. Cut the glass noodles into a manageable length and stir them in.
7. Cover to steam the clams for several minutes, until the shells open up.
8. Serve immediately, with rice.

Play by Play

This is what to prep ahead of time. Get the glass noodles, douchi and clams soaking.

Always, always remember to give your rehydrated glass noodles a couple snips. They’re unmanageably long otherwise. You also want to soak the douchi for long enough that they plump up, like in the picture.

Mis en place. The stir frying is going to be quick and hectic, so I make sure to have everything on hand. You see in the top right corner how I reserved the douchi water to form the basis of the sauce. I added my sugar and soy sauce to it, and now it’s ready to go.

Showtime. The pan is on medium heat. Aromatics go in followed by clams and glass noodles, then the sauce. Although if I were to do it again, I would save the glass noodles for after the sauce – some of it stuck against the hot, dry side walls of the skillet.

I rinsed out the sauce bowl with some water and added that as well, before covering the pan and letting everything steam. It only takes a few minutes from here on.

I’m trying to show you the grit that the clams spat out during the brining. Most of the bottom of the bowl is undissolved salt, but you can see bits of sand and dirt here and there.

We’re done! The clams have opened, and I can tell the glass noodles have sucked up all the flavour from their dark colour.

A tightly fought battle for which is my favourite bite: is it the sweet, tender clams? Or the deeply savoury and slightly funky glass noodles? I’ll have to give the win to the glass noodles.

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