And why settle for one when you have the hot plate to rule them all? This seafood platter comes with abalone, shrimp, steamer clams, scallops on the half-shell, and a whole lot of garlic. No special preparation, but good ingredients need very little.
Those sweet little scallops taste as pretty as they look. The garlic bites, but the meat stays delicately soft. What could possibly be better than this little scallop on the half-shell? A giant Scallop on the half-shell! This one also has ginger, scallion, and glass noodles in case you're extra-hungry.
Abalone is the Chinese acai, and sea cucumber has more hype than kale. There are several ways to prepare them, and ginger scallion is one of the best. Abalone is a soft, chewy, and minimally briny. It tastes milky and smooth, like the gustatory version of its mother-of-pearl shell.
Abalone actually tastes good, but Sea Cucumber is valued for its nutrition alone. It's best red-roasted, and when smushed to a little nothing under high pressure, It has the texture of really soft rubber, like if you were to boil a leather shoe, but it's better than non-pressurized, which crunches like a slimy cartilage.
Live Uni isn't a superfood, which is probably why it actually tastes good. The briny roe melts on the tongue after it meshes with a touch of soy sauce and wasabi...if you don't mind spooning around the spikes.
The luxury seafood is great, but sometimes it's nice to keep it simple. Paper-thin slices of Conch stir-fried with strings of scallion is still my classic fave.
Good seafood at a good price is pretty scarce in the states, but you can find it everywhere in Dalian. Even random street vendors sell live shellfish by the pound, and the clams come pretty cheap. We would make some rice and boil or steam them until the shells gape. Plucking the soft meat out of the shells is a dinner that preps itself faster than you can microwave.You can't go to Dalian and not try to seafood.
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