Stir fry shellfish (la la)

Growing up in Penang, I got to savour this lovely dish very often. Since moving down South to Kuala Lumpur, my chances of cooking this has pretty much disappeared overnight. Food I used to enjoy while growing up has dearly been missed and forgotten.

This is not because I don’t eat it anymore but it is pretty difficult to get really fresh shellfish (la la) to cook this dish, most of them sold in the local markets here are half dead and very unappealing. I managed to whip up this mainly because I miss it so much and knowing it would not taste as good as the ones sold in the Penang markets, I didn’t want to compare, I just did it.

Ingredients

1 kg local shellfish (la la)
3 cloves garlic (minced)
1 thumb-size old ginger (skin removed, julienne)
3 red bird-eye chili (seeds removed)
olive oil
1 stalk spring onions (cut into 2 cm length)
2 Tbsp dried chili flakes
3 glasses Shao Hsing fragrant rice wine
sea salt

Method

1. My method here is very different from the TV cook shows. Mostly the shellfish I get locally contains a lot of mud and sand sediments. I place the shellfish into a large metal bowl, fill it up with tap water and put in a small paring knife. Let it soak for 1/2 hour. This is one way of making the shellfish open up, thus enabling some mud to be washed out.
2. Then, I manually open and rinse every shell under some trickling of tap water to remove the rest of the mud and sediments. Place them into a colander to let the water drip off.
3. Heat up a wok. In goes some olive oil and ginger, garlic, bird-eye chili followed by the drained shellfish. Close the wok with a lid for about 3 minutes and in goes the spring onions, chili flakes and the fragrant rice wine. Bring to a quick boil and season with sea salt.