January 7 and 8, 2014 Posole and Shrimp in Lobster Sauce.

January 7 and 8, 2014 Posole and Shrimp in Lobster Sauce.

Yesterday we were both sick and did not want to cook so we heated and ate bowls of posole for dinner and enjoyed a hot delicious meal without any effort.

On January 8, 2014 I was still getting over my infection and did not wish to cook lunch and wanted to eat some vegetables so I went to East Ocean Seafood Restaurant at 3601 Carlisle and ordered Moo Goo Gai Pan because it contains lovely lightly cooked chicken breast and lots of vegetables: bok choy, onion, corn, Snow peas, zucchini, water chestnuts and bamboo shoots served with fried rice ($5.50).

The waitress looked surprised when I did not order my usual, scallops in lobster sauce.  While I ate lunch I decided that I would try to make shrimp in lobster sauce with the thawed out shrimp at home.

After lunch I stopped at Seattle Fish to inquire about their retail seafood sales program and found out that it is just now being rolled out.  They will offer on line ordering of fresh fish but the decision of how to deliver it has not been made yet, other than at the Downtown Farmer’s Market on Saturdays in the summer.  The website appears to be either www.netfish.us or www.facebook.com/netfishseafood.

I spoke to one of the owners who told me that high quality fish that is raised and fished sustainably is getting harder to find and more expensive.  The price of shrimp has tripled in the last three years, he said; mainly due to the evidence that high volume farming occasionally causes large die offs and the increasing demand in China.

When I got home I looked in the Chinese cookbooks and found a recipe for Lobster Sauce on page 35 of the 1000 Recipe Chinese Cookbook by Gloria Bley Miller and a recipe for Stir Fried Shrimp with Lobster Sauce on page 506, so I had the two recipes I needed. 

Since I was going to meditate, I did some of the prep before leaving to meditate.  I made the sherry and cornstarch sauce to marinate the shrimp in and shelled the shrimp and laid them in the marinade and tossed them to cover them with the marinade.  I also chopped two cloves of garlic and started simmering one cup of rice.

When I returned I completed the dishes, but instead of the dark soy I should have used white soy because the dark soy darkened the lobster sauce to a muddy brown color.  East Ocean’s lobster sauce is beautifully transparent.  You clearly see flecks of pork and egg and slices of green onion in it.

On my way home from meditating at 8:30 p.m. I picked up one lb. of ground pork at Lowe’s to complete the ingredients.

When I got home I made the lobster Sauce using lobster broth instead of water and deleted the black beans, because we do not like them or eat them and do not have them in the house.

The dish turned out fine but can stand some improvement.  I learned that the sauce is thickened with cornstarch, which is the key to binding the disparate ingredients.  I need to work on the timing so that the ingredients have their desired delicacy in the final sauce.  I fried the shrimp in a skillet instead of stir frying in a wok, so next time I might reverse the order of things and stir fry the shrimp first and then make the sauce in the wok and then add back the shrimp, which seems to be a more fruitful approach.

Here are the recipes and pictures of how it turned out.

 Rice on left plus Shrimp in lobster sauce on right equals a delicious dinner plus few leftovers.

I admit that the dish looks like a terrible mess but you must remember that it is a delicious union of pork and shrimp with egg clouds at its best.  I think East Ocean uses their chicken stock egg drop soup which is a cornstarch thickened soup, as a shortcut, to which they simply add stir fried shrimp or raw scallops and chopped up pork, so the dish can be very easy and quick to make.

Bon Appétit