Steaming is a great way to cook delicate seafood like scallops, although the true star of this recipe is the flavour-packed glass noodles.

Time: 2/5
Scallops get worse the longer you steam them

Effort: 3/5
Forethought and knife work required

Umami Tsunami

Steaming is a criminally underrated cooking method outside of Asian cuisine. It really stands out for cooking delicate ingredient’s that you don’t want to risk breaking up by stirring or manipulating them. By using steam to transfer heat onto the food, you can arrange the ingredients all pretty-like and not have to worry about the contents shifting around during the process.

In fact, steaming is the method of choice for preparing fresh seafood in Cantonese cuisine. A large fish like a grouper, fresh from the market and with its last breath taken less than an hour ago, is often the centerpiece of a special occasion dinner at home – or at least it is in my grandmother’s household, that lady loves fish.

Besides fish, steaming also works well for chicken, beef or pork if you cut the pieces small enough. You could steam Chinese-style meatloaf in a wok. Or, you could even steam food right in your rice cooker like I described in my Tower of Doom miniseries with chicken and tilapia.

What I made this time is a specialty of my SO’s mother, and one of her favourite foods of all time. It’s scallops, topped with glass noodles with a butter and garlic sauce, then steamed until just barely done. The scallops are sweet and succulent, but don’t let that distract you from the glass noodles!

Like with my earlier recipe for Hairy Gourd with Glass Noodles and Dried Shrimp, the glass noodles are an excellent vehicle for flavour. The noodles soak up all that seafood flavour and become super buttery, garlicky and savoury. It’s like, the best thing to have with a steaming bowl of jasmine rice. If scallops aren’t your thing, don’t worry – this same technique also works very well with shrimp.

With such gustatory delights awaiting us, let’s get the rice cooker going and get started!

Dramatis Personae

Glass noodles – A handful per serving

These need to be rehydrated before you cook with them. They have a better texture if allowed to rehydrate gently in room temperature water for several hours, but if you are in a hurry you can shorten that time to just one hour if you use hot water.

Pro tip: give them a snip with a pair of kitchen shears before you use them! I always forget, and the noodles always end up being unmanageably long. Do as I say, not as I do.

Scallops – A couple per person

Get scallops with the shells still on if you can. That shell captures all the delicious juices that comes out of the scallops as they cook and holds it there in close proximity for the glass noodles to absorb. Kind of like how the shell of a shucked oyster holds a bit of that briny oyster liquor.

Whether you get fresh or frozen is a matter of budget. I live in a costal city, and can tell you without any doubt that fresh is so much better than frozen. But, being the cheapskate I am, I’m working with frozen scallops here.

Butter and garlic – More than you think you need

I always regret not using more butter and more garlic. You could say that there is a dose-dependent relationship between amount of butter and garlic, and the degree of deliciousness. Or to put it more simply: more butter, more garlic, more yummy.

Therefore, I admonish you not to deceive yourself into thinking this is necessarily a healthy recipe, even though scallops are low calorie and high protein. Double the butter, quadruple the garlic and think about the consequences later. Your waistline is a Tomorrow You’s problem.

Extras

I like to use soy sauce as the source of saltiness in this recipe. It gives the glass noodles a bit of colour, and I like the flavour. Aim for about a tablespoon per serving.

Scallion greens and a red chilli pepper are nice as a garnish, both for visual contrast and for taste. Some people like some cilantro too, but I think they overpower the delicate sweetness of the scallops so I don’t add them.

Vegetables

Always eat your veggies! I got Indian lettuce (油麥菜; yau mak choi / you mai cai). It’s similar to romaine lettuce, but it has a slightly more bitter note to it. Incidentally, it happens to be my SO’s favourite. I’m going to recycle the butter and garlic left in the pan by using it to stir fry the Indian lettuce, together with some XO sauce my aunt made me to really up the umami.

Executive summary

1. Rehydrate glass noodles in fresh water for a couple of hours, or with hot water for an hour
2. Finely slice scallion greens and a chilli pepper and reserve for garnish. Bring a pan of water to boil, for steaming the scallops later.
3. Peel and finely mince garlic cloves. Using a second pan, gently sweat minced garlic in butter until fragrant. Make sure it looks like you have more garlic and butter than you need.
4. Give the rehydrated glass noodles a few snips with kitchen shears, and mix into the garlic and butter. Season with soy sauce, stir to combine.
5. Arrange scallops on a heat-resistant plate. Top scallops with glass noodle and garlic butter mixture.
6. Steam scallops in the pain over vigorously boiling water for a few minutes. In the meantime, stir fry vegetables in residual butter and garlic in the second pan.
7. Garnish with scallion greens and chilli pepper. Serve immediately, with rice.

Play by Play

Last things first. Chopping up the garnish. Whether or not you leave the chilli seeds in is your personal choice. The glass noodles have been sitting in water since this morning. Snip. Your. Noodles.

Time to finely mince a whole lotta garlic. Are you ready to build some character, kids?

I am not ready to build character after a workday. I have a food processor, and I’m going to use it.

Sweating the garlic over medium low heat. I want to infuse the butter with garlic flavour – in fact, I’m actively trying to avoid any browning. Maillard browning is a wonderful thing, but it’s not the flavour profile I’m looking for. Once the garlic is fragrant, add rehydrated glass noodles and toss to combine. This is the stage that I recommend you add soy sauce. I forgot, but it’s no big deal.

Arrange scallops in a dish that can withstand heat. Ideally you want a dish wide enough that you could top the scallops with a small nest of glass noodles individually. Alas, I do not have a large enough wok or a big enough dish, so it all goes in one big pile.

Place scallops over vigorously boiling water and cover. Steam for only a few minutes – it would be a shame if they overcook and become rubbery.

There’s still some residual butter and garlic in the first pan, which we’ll put to good use. I’m stir frying some vegetables in it, which makes the vegetables taste great and makes the pan easier to clean.

Dinner is served. Make sure you have some rice to enjoy with the buttery, garlicky, seafoody glass noodles!

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