Seafood - secret of balancing and enhancing taste

How do you replicate delicious restaurant cooking at home? Cooking seafood may not be as difficult as it seems if you balance the right ingredients. Going by the yin-yang theory, one needs to balance the coolness of food from the water with heaty ingredients such as ginger and/or pepper. A dash of wine as marinade or added with seasoning sauces would do wonders to a simple seafood dish. This not only helps to harmonize the food as well as get rid of any hint of fishiness.


The harder green vegetables go better with frying meat and vegetables. Celery, brocoli, asparagus are good choices.


Superior soy, oyster, abalone and XO sauces are premium seasoning for seafood. However, when using fresh water seafood, try to avoid using sauces with too much salt as it will emphasize rathern than mask the muddy flavours.


For garnishing, spring onion, garlic crisps and shallot exude a strong aroma that brings out the tastes of seafood.



The fresh clean taste of stir fry fish fillet with blanched carrot, mushroom and brocoli, ginger, garlic, chives in white potato starch sauce.




Scallop on the shell without roe lightly steamed with spring onion, coriander leaves and ginger in sesame and soy sauce.

Mud crab is always the grand finale in any meal. Unlike blue swimmer and flower crabs, this dish must be prepared from live crabs. This version is ginger and shallot. Other favourite sauces are chilli sambal, thom yum, golden curry, XO or herbal. All the ingredients have to be fried separately and then combined for a quick stir in the wok before serving.

- Copyright Reserved