cooking the sea cucumbers





although i did not end up buying any fresh fish from the fishery at pontian kechil, i did return with some sea product - bought a kilogram of sea cucumbers from shin huat's parents. they were the the fresh type, not the dried variety. of course, they have already been processed.

to further remove any trace of the fishy smell, we boiled old ginger and spring onion in water and soaked the sea cucumbers in it. we had also used a metal spoon to scrap whatever innards that were still left in the sea cucumbers.

shin huat had warned me that the sea cucumbers are actually gelatin and so it cannot be cooked for a prolonged period otherwise it will 'melt' into a jelly form. we had come to know about this the hard way. we had stewed some sea cucumbers overnight during the chinese new year. the next day, we could not find the sea cucumbers.

this time around, we stewed the chinese mushrooms and scallops in oyster sauce and added the sea cucumbers much later. even then, they shrunk to about one quarter the original size.