Making Sense of Things

It's been an odd labor intensive past couple of weeks, both emotionally and physically (as if that makes any sense). Holidays approaching and all. In attempts to make and purchase gifts for people, I managed to shave off the top of my finger with a Japanese cleaver, so that's been fun. Lessons learned. Don't worked in cramped spaces, and don't pour strongly concentrated hydrogen peroxide on wounds excessively, because apparently it's cytotoxic towards healthy and recovering cells. Ouch. At least I've learned how to type quickly without my index finger, as well as do a variety of tasks one-handed. Bright side! Also, go figure, the gifts I chose to  make for my family members actually require a great deal of patience, skill and time. In hindsight, they were poorly planned ideas. Failure rate was potentially quite high. You'll see what I mean soon. Nonetheless, I think I made it out with an 80%, cumulative score, performance wise. Nothing stellar, but rather, as my parents have come to expect from me these days, passable.

Over the course of the next couple posts, you'll come to see three edible gifts. If I manage to get off my ass and pound out those bottle caps before I go home on Thursday, you might see those crafts as well. All three of these edible gifts aren't particularly difficult to make, but they do require a great deal of prep work. Execution is simple, preparation is time consuming, but if you succeed, the products look wonderful when packaged in jars, professional even. And, if you think there's a chance you might fail, just do what I did. Purchase gifts from Amazon as well, and if the homemade gifts didn't come through, you'll have a plethora of gifts to give. And trust me, they will probably come through. In that case, you'll have double the gifts you originally intended, which makes you seem a generous gifter, or, you'll have extra small gifts to give your acquaintances. Fancy that.

Number one in this short list is XO sauce. For those of you who don't know what XO sauce is, here's a quick definition, as seen through my eyes. XO sauce is a salty dried seafood-based condiment, usually consisting of dried scallops and chilies. It's usually pretty packed in oil, although drier versions are available, and can range crazily in price, depending on the quality of ingredients or where you get your dried goods from.

Final point being, it's extremely delicious and versatile, and goes really well on rice, noodles, dumplings, and more. In the case of XO sauce, I have been fortunate, in that the only XO sauces I have consciously consumed come straight out of Taiwan, delivered into my hands through my mother from my grandmother, and that lady knows where the good stuff is. I've also had a homemade version from a close family friend, who pretty much makes it all from scallops and nothing else. Where do these people get the money, I don't know. All I know is, unless I suddenly find my pockets so deep that there's nothing else to fill them with but handfuls of dried scallops, you probably won't find me in the medicinal section weighing out those $40+/lb dried suckers. Interesting fact though. Whole dried scallops are usually more expensive, not only because they are more aesthetically pleasing than the broken pieces, but also because all the whole scallops in that batch probably come from the same body of water.

So following is a version of a poor man's XO sauce. Okay, I'm exaggerating. Although it's missing the key ingredient of dried scallops, this recipe is still chock full of good quality dried squid, anchovies, and shrimps. In fact, this recipe is very umami and tasty, and smells fantastic, though a little on the fishy side. Next time, as there will always be a next time, I will make this with only squid and shrimp, to emulate that chewier texture of the scallops. I also had to use less oil this time because I have to bring this jar on a plane, but next time, I will definitely use more to get a more traditional style sauce.

All amounts are quite approximate. It really depends on what types of dried seafood you are using, and I generally just pull handfuls and estimate what seems right. In this case, I used equal parts of squid and anchovies, but you can vary your amounts depending on how fishy you want things. As I mentioned before, I'll be omitting the anchovies next time around, or using very little of them, and increasing the amount of dried squid and shrimps. I will also up the garlic and ginger next time, maybe even the bacon, because I found that dried goods suck up oil like there's no tomorrow. This recipe fills a little bit more than a pint jar, so make sure you have some rice on hand at the end of the process so you can snarf down whatever you don't fit into your clean, sterilized jar. It should keep in the fridge for at least a month.

Mixed Seafood XO Sauce
a little more than 1 pint
 
4 oz dried red squid
4 oz dried anchovies
1 handful of dried shrimp, unpeeled (opt)
1 package (4-5 oz) of peeled dried shrimp
4-5 oz. applewood smoked bacon, diced very fine
1/2 C fried shallots
1 head of garlic, peeled
1 large ginger root, peeled
3-4 dried chile de arbols
grapeseed oil
shaohsing wine, for rehydrating
1 TB hoisin sauce
Notes: Trader Joe's "Uncured Applewood-Smoked Ends-and-Pieces Bacon" is great for this purpose. Also, you can see images of the dried seafood and fried shallots above (buy fried shallots to save yourself some time).

Boil water and pour on your squid and anchovies, letting them steep and rehydrate overnight. Soak the shrimps (peeled, leave the unpeeled ones dry) in Shaohsing wine overnight as well. Lastly, soak the dried chile de arbols in hot water overnight as well. As a note, the unpeeled dried shrimp are optional. I only used them so I could get a stronger shrimp taste in my oil, though I am not sure this actually worked. I'll explain in a little bit. Right now (or the night before), rehydrate your dried seafood ingredients in water or Shaohsing wine. Next day, drain your squid, anchovies, and rehydrated shrimp.

Here comes the prep work. Chop the seafood into very fine pieces by hand. You shouldn't do this by food processor, because the anchovies will turn to mush (don't want that), and the squid strings will clog up your blades. Just chop it all really fine by hand with a sharp knife, and for god sakes, keep your index finger out of the way. Reserve the chopped up seafood in three separate bowls, one for each type. Next, chop up your bacon very fine, so that the pieces of fat are small enough that they will render/melt away when you are cooking them (don't want fatty chunks showing up in your XO sauce). In the food processor, dice up your garlic, and ginger into very fine pieces as well. Pretty much, chop everything up into tiny tiny tiny pieces, except the chile de arbols. Just cut those up normally into small pieces.

Now the cooking begins. First the optional step. In a large pan, pour a couple of tablespoons of grapeseed

unpeeled versus peeled

oil. Once hot, drop in your handful of unpeeled dried shrimp, and cook/fry until the oil picks up the shrimp flavor (I squished a couple to get out their juices). Be careful not to fry the shrimp until they are black, or you might get a burnt flavor.  Once the oil seems to have picked up the flavor of the shrimp and juices, strain out the shrimp and reserve the oil for later in a bowl.

In the same pan, add the finely diced bacon and fried shallots. Cook on low heat, rendering out as much of the fat as possible, stirring occasionally, for 10 minutes or so. Once it looks like most of the fat has been rendered, add in the garlic, ginger, and chopped chile de arbols (seeds included), and cook on low heat for another 10 minutes, being careful not to burn. The most wonderful aroma will permeate your kitchen. Remove from heat and reserve this mixture in bowl.

Return the pan to low heat, and pour in the shrimp oil you had prepared from before. Let heat up. Once slick, add the rehydrated seafood and stir on low heat until hot. Add the hoison sauce. Once all that is hot, add back in the bacon garlic mixture and stir pretty constantly, flipping the mixture around. Don't burn it, and feel free to add more grapeseed oil if it looks like  Over time, about 45 minutes or less, the XO sauce will turn a warm toasty color. It's done at that point. Remove from heat and let cool. It's ready to serve, or, you can store it in jars in the refrigerator for a couple of weeks.