Recipe: Chinese pork ribs stew with fish maw, mushroom, and dried scallops

During Chinese New Year every year, we would stock up on fish maw 鱼鳔 as it is a little harder to find similar quality ones to the one we like the rest of the year. You can read more about the fish maw that we usually get here. The fish maw have already been deep fried, so all you need to do is to soak them in cold water for 1 hour before cooking.

Chinese pork ribs stew with fish mar, mushroom and dried scallops

Using this fish maw, we have developed a recipe that we have been cooking over and over again in the past months. Why do we like this recipe so much? It is nourishing, delicious and best of all, it is easy to cook - it is a one-pot stew that we love. Usually we will add pork ribs, mushrooms, dried scallops, peanut, ginger slices, fish maw and even lettuce (that's our vegetable quota for the meal sorted). The stew is quite "soupy" (the way we like it), and it gets a lot of its flavour from the pork ribs and dried scallops. Another ingredient that we sometimes add is radish, simply cut them into 1-inch thickness and place it inside the stew at the same time as the ribs.

One-pot stew

Boil a pot of rice, chop up some garlic/chillies to dip with soy sauce and dinner is ready. Easy peasy! What's not to love about this stew?

Nourishing and delicious

Used my last batch of fish maw for this... we'll have to stock up more during CNY period next yr!

Pork ribs stew with fish maw, mushroom and dried scallops
Recipe by Baby Sumo
Preparation time: 10-15 minutes
Cooking time: 2 - 2 1/4 hours
Serves 4

Ingredients
600g pork ribs (ask your butcher to cut it into 2 inch lengths)
30g peanut, soaked for 30 minutes
10pcs mushroom, rehydrated
80g fish maw, soaked for 1 hour in cold water, drained and cut into 2 inch lengths
20 pcs small dried scallops
6 slices old ginger
6 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1.2l water
1/2 tsp salt
2 tbsp cooking oil

To garnish

8 pieces lettuce

1 red chilli, thinly sliced


1. In a pot, heat the oil over a medium high heat. Add the garlic and ginger and cook for 2 minutes until the garlic is lightly browned.

2. Add the pork ribs and brown the meat slightly. Then, add the peanut and mushroom and cook for 1 minute. Then, add the water and bring to the boil. Once boiling, lower heat to low and simmer for 1 1/2 hours. Then, add the fish maw and dried scallops and cook for a further 30 minutes. The stew is intended to be quite "soupy". Season with some salt, to taste.

3. Arrange lettuce leaves in a claypot and ladle over the pork rib stew. Garnish with red chilli and serve immediately with rice. An excellent one-pot meal!

Note: If using radish, add in at the same time as the pork ribs.

Click here for an alternative recipe for fish maw with mushrooms stew.



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*I am submitting this to Little Thumb's Up "Ginger" event hosted by Alvin @ Chef and Sommelier.

Recipe: Grilled king prawn with olive oil, lemon juice and fresh parsley (Curtis Stone)

When seafood is fresh, it will only require simple preparation and minimal cooking - this will also allow the natural sweetness of the seafood to shine through. I decided to give this Curtis Stone recipe a go for lunch, since prep and cooking time only takes around 10 mins.

Grilled king prawn with olive oil, lemon juice and fresh parsley

For this recipe, the prawns can either be cooked with its shell on or peel it before cooking (leaving tails on) for ease of eating. The prawns will take about 1 minute to cook (on the BBQ or griddle pan), then simply drizzle over with lemon juice, chopped chillies and parsley and it is ready to be served.

One thing to note about this recipe is that the original recipe suggests 3 lemons for 20 prawns (since I was cooking 10 prawns that would be 1 1/2 lemons) but I have reduced it to 1/2 lemon and I still found it way too sour for my liking and overpowers the taste of the prawns. The taste is definitely appetizing, but I would reduce it to 1/4 lemon for 10 prawns the next time. The chillies give it a nice spicy kick.

A great simple recipe for the BBQ on a hot summers day.  

Grilled king prawn with olive oil, lemon juice and fresh parsley
Recipe adapted from Curtis Stone
Preparation time: 10 minutes
Cooking time: 1 - 2 minutes
Serves 2

Ingredients
10 jumbo shrimp (king prawns), peeled, deveined and with tails intact
1 1/2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 small fresh red chilli, finely chopped
Zest & juice of 1 lemon (I would reduce to 1/4 lemon next time)
1 tbsp flat leaf parsley, coarsely chopped
Sea salt


1. Preheat a BBQ or griddle (grill) pan to a high heat.

2. Drizzle the shrimp (prawns) with 1 tbsp olive oil and place them flesh-side down onto the BBQ or grill for 30-60 seconds (if the shell is on). If shells have been removed, then just place on any side (doesn't matter as you're flipping it over).

3. Turn the shrimp (prawns) over, add the chilli, lemon zest and parsley, and squeeze over the lemon juice.

4. As soon as the shrimp (prawns) are cooked to a solid white colour (about another 30-60 seconds), remove from the heat, drizzle a little extra olive oil over them and serve immediately. Season with some salt if necessary.

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I am submitting this to the "Cook Like Curtis Stone" bloghop which I am co-hosting with Zoe of Bake for Happy Kids and Grace of Life Can Be Simple. To join, simply cook or bake any recipe from any Curtis Stone websites or cookbooks and blog hop with us for the whole month of July 2013.

Your post must be a current post i.e. posted in July 2013 - please do not link older posts.Please mention Cook like a Star in your post and link back to Zoe of Bake for Happy Kids, Grace of Life Can Be Simple and Baby Sumo of Eat your heart out.

You can get the HTML code here: get the InLinkz code (Click on the link, copy and paste the HTML code into your blog post where you want the blog hop list to appear. Make sure you are in HTML mode when you paste in the code)

Happy cooking! Do check out the other bloggers recipe below: