Last week, a very good friend of mine brought me down to Moi Lum Restaurant for dinner. My favourite dish was the black pepper beef. Frankly, I don’t think I can do beef so well, but the fish maw soup seemed quite manageable. And since I had a packet of fish maw sitting on my kitchen shelf for ages, I decided to get rid of it.

Fish maw usually comes in this form – deep fried and crispy. My son once mistook it for crackers.

Here’s the fish maw, cut, soaked and rinsed several times to get rid of excess oil.

I’ve microwaved ginger slices with oil. With the gingered oil, I fried some crab meat with pepper and soya sauce.

Add some chicken stock and stir things up a bit.

Then, it’s the fish maw and the pot should look like it’s full of substance.

Finally, stir in half a bowl of corn starch to thicken up the soup, a bit of hua diao wine and we’re ready to serve.

A few drops of vinegar and you’d have made yourself something that tastes like shark fin soup without the shark fin.

© Chan Joon Yee

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