a chinese sous-vide

I have experimented with sous-vide recently. Doing so I realized that Chinese (and may be in many Asian countries too) have a version of this low temperature slow cooking.

I didn't plan this dish. It was a spur of the moment impulse that I decided to make this dish. All the ingredients are dried from my pantry with the exception of a small piece of pork butt, live clams, a bit of cuttlefish tentacles, and ginger.

here are most of the dried ingredients - black tree fungus, shiitake mushroom, Japanese dried scallop (believe they are from Hokkaido), sea cucumbers, and fish maw

the dried and re-hydrated sea cucumbers

re-hydrated Japanese scallop (right)

Traditionally Chinese sous-vide uses a special ceramic vessel with lid. The ingredients are placed inside with water. Typically the ingredients consists of delicacies and are quite expensive. The vessel is then place in a bigger vessel with water. The indirect heat of the water bath allow the ingredients to be cooked slowly below the boiling point of water.

traditional Chinese sous-vide cooking vessel - i actually forgotten I bought this recently at An Dong market but have never used it; for the life of me i cannot remember how to write the name of this vessel in Chinese

For this dish I didn't use the Chinese sous-vide above. I just use the same technique in my recent Sous-vide experiment by maintaining a very low flame. I didn't need to bother even with a vacuum bag. After about 8 hours of cooking the result is a very savory broth. I served some to my friend and his son who is very much of a foodie, and they were impressed.

shiitake mushroom (2 o'clock)

 sea cucumber (the black piece at 12 o'clock); cuttlefish tentacle (white piece below the sea cucumber); clams; black fungus (center); lean pork; fish maw (7 o'clock)

 in the spoon is the Japanese dried scallops

 here i served with a bit of rice noodles

The broth is very light and delicate, but yet packed with umami.