Fresh Abalone

 

Ingredients:

Fresh Abalone of your choice (personally I like Japanese Black Abalones)

Ginger/ spring onion

For the Chicken Stock: old chicken, chinese ham, carrot and onion

Konbu

For the sauce: butter, minced onion, flour

How to Make:

1. First, make your chicken stock overnight. Blanch old chicken and ham. Place blanched chicken and ham to a big pot together with a carrot roughly cut and an onion roughly cut. After boil, turn to medium heat and cook for about 3 hours. Drain. After cool down, skim oil on top, then place at fridge overnight.

2. On the day of cooking. Take out chicken stock, further skim the fat on top. Reheat soup.

3. Clean abalone. Remove all seaweeds or dirt from shells. Then use toothbrush to clean all skirts of the abalone. Boil a pot of water, add ginger slices and spring onion, blanch the abalone in this pot of water for about 5-10min (abalone with the shell)

4. After blanching, some abalones maybe removed from the shell. Its ok. Rinse abalone with water. Further clean the abalone by removing the guts as shown in picture above. But do it gently in order not to tear or break the abalone.

5. Using a pressure cooker, put abalones together with a few shells (NOTE: the abalone shells can add to saltiness, so a few will do), together with a piece of konbu to the pressure cooker, then add the reheat chicken stock so that all abalones are slightly submerged under the stock. Bring to a boil, then close the cover of the pressure cooker, reduce to medium to medium low heat and cook for 1 hour. After cooking time is completed, turn off heat and let everything settled inside the pot. I think about 1 hour after cooking, the cover of the pressure cooker is ready to be released. Take out abalone gently, then sieve the soup inside. Use a skewer to test if the softness of the abalone is to your liking.

*** Pressure cooker uses 1/3 of your normal cooking time*** so if you normally need to use 3 hours to braise a kind of food, you need only 1 hour in the pressure cooker. But most important to note is right after cooking time at the pressure cooker is completed, dont try to release the cover or else accident will happen!

6. Use the soup sieved from the pressure cooker to make your abalone sauce. In a separate frying pan, heat up some butter in medium fire, then add some minced onion, then sprinkle some flour on top. Mix well, then add the soup, check taste and season accordingly. Cook until the sauce reaches the consistency you like.

you can plate your abalone with rice, pasta, risotto however you like.

Enjoy!