47. Chinese seafood dumpling fillings

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I am seriously recommending this fresh seafood chinese dumpling filling --- if you like seafood! It was only just a try, but came out so tasty!
I know I have talked about the san xian filling already, which is normally made with prawns, eggs and garlic chives.

Chinese dumplings with seafood fillings

This time, however, I want to talk about the three fresh seafood filling, which is a very original combination (not very common in Chinese home cooking especially because of its rare ingredients).


The original ingredients for this particular filling are prawns, scallops, and sea cucumber. I guess you already wondered what is sea cucumber . I haven’t come across any in England, but in Chinese cuisine and medicine they are highly appreciated.

Sea cucumbers are normally considered as a medicine, and serve many purposes (for example, they are well-known for energy boosting).
Sea cucumber is normally very pricey, comes in dry in normal market, and needs to be taken with care -- in a way it is very similar to ginseng, it is good for boosting the energy, but too much of it can imbalance the body heat , and other side effects, for example, making you restless. So normally you can only have sea cucumbers once per day and can only be taken continuously over a certain period of time.


Anyway, since I don’t know where to get them here, and I don’t really need them for any medical purpose, I will be using normal white fish instead. So in the fillings I made, I mixed white fish, fresh prawns and scallops; the texture of white fish is of course different to sea cucumber.


To boost the taste of seafood, I mixed in some well chopped ginger and spring onion , but not much soy sauce or even seasoning powders, which is as the original recipe.
The pastry sheet is the same as in other types of dumplings . The main difference is the boiling time and the dip.


Since seafood is very easy to be cooked (boiled in this case), you only need to bring it to boiling once. And for the dip, I prefer to have a little bit minced garlic and sesame oil without soy sauce or vinegar to keep the seafood filling fresh.

The recipe

Ingredients

White fish, fresh prawns, scallops, ginger, spring onion, salt, oil, cooking wine, light soy sauce, five/thirteen spice powder .

Preparing the dumpling filling

1) Chop the raw white fish, scallops and prawns into mince.

2) Chop a ‘good’ piece of ginger and 2 - 3 spring onions into the smallest possible pieces.

3) Add chopped ginger and spring onion into the minced seafood, and add in around 3 tablespoons of oil, 2 tablespoons of sesame oil, 1 tablespoon of cooking wine, 1 teaspoon of salt, a few drops of light soy sauce (only), 1/2 five/thirteen spice powder.

4) Mix everything together.

-------------- The fresh seafood filling is done!!

The rest of the wrapping is the same as in other kinds of dumplings.
Hope you enjoy it!