Jiangnan · Main
Longjing Xia Ren
- Intermediate
- 25 min
- roughly 3 of 4 for cost
A quiet dish that lets its main ingredient speak: season well and stand aside.
Ingredients
- 400 g freshwater river shrimp, shelled to about 250 g meat
- 3 g salt
- 1 egg white
- 12 g potato starch
- 4 g Longjing tea leaves, pre-Qingming if you have them
- 100 ml water at 80C (175F)
- 15 ml Shaoxing wine
- 500 ml neutral oil, for velveting
- 1 g white pepper
Equipment
Wok
The skills inside
Wok techniqueVelvetingSalted water & the float testKeeping the cooking liquidChilling to firm: the fridge as binder
The words inside
Allergen screen
Found: egg · shellfish · alcohol
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Rinse the shelled shrimp in salted water until it runs clear, then wring them in a cloth until the surface squeaks; a wet shrimp sheds its coating in the oil.
- Mix them with the salt until tacky, work in the egg white, then the starch, then a spoonful of the oil, and chill 30 minutes. 30 min
- Steep the tea in the 80C (175F) water for exactly 1 minute, keep the opened leaves and 60 ml of the pale liquor, and throw the rest away. 1 min
- Slip the shrimp into oil at 120C (250F), stirring them apart, and lift them the second they go opaque and curl into a loose C, around 30 seconds.
- Wipe the wok, splash in the wine, return the shrimp with the leaves and the liquor and toss 15 seconds until everything is glossy and barely wet. No soy, no colour, nothing else.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Wok technique 28 recipes
- Everything went in dry and went in in order. Wet protein or wet vegetables drop the wok below the heat that browns, and what follows is a stew in a round pan however hard the burner is working.
- The wok stays loud from the first moment to the last. A wok that falls quiet has been overloaded, and the food in it is now boiling in its own liquid.
- Every piece is coated and glossy with no pooled sauce in the bottom of the dish: the sauce should cling by reduction and starch, not sit under the food.
- Vegetables keep their colour and a bite at the centre. Grey-green greens or a limp stem mean too long in the pan, and nothing later in the dish recovers them.
- It carries the faint scorched note that only comes from food touching metal above about 200C, distinct from bitterness, which means the aromatics were burnt and is a different failure entirely.
Where it goes wrong Too much went in at once, or it went in wet. The wok loses its heat, the food releases water and simmers, the sauce thins instead of clinging, and the dish arrives pale and slack with liquid pooling under it.
Chilling to firm: the fridge as binder 48 recipes
- It went cold before it was handled any further, and it went in spread flat and covered rather than as a warm mass that insulates its own centre.
- It is cold through rather than cold at the edge: tested at the middle it is as firm as it is at the rim.
- It holds its shape unsupported; it can be cut, portioned, rolled or lifted without slumping, tearing, or sticking to the hands.
- The fat in it has gone solid: it feels firm and waxy to the fingers rather than greasy and yielding.
- It survives the step it was chilled for, going into heat or a coating or a mould still holding its form rather than collapsing the moment it is touched.
Where it goes wrong It was given twenty minutes instead of the hours it needed, so it is firm at the rim and soft at the core: it slumps out of shape as it is portioned, and everything made from it spreads or breaks apart in the pan.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Albariño
- Also Right
- Champagne
- From the Taps
- Pilsner or witbier
- Zero-Proof
- White grape & tonic
Shellfish sweetness meets acid, salinity, and bubbles, precision instruments for delicate meat.
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