Name: Steamed Ocean-Fresh Winter Melon Soup
Cuisine: China
Ingredients: ¼ pound fresh shrimp (6 shrimp), shelled, deveined, washed, dried, and cut into ½-inch pieces; ¼ cup fresh lotus seeds (if unavailable, use ⅛ cup, dried, soaked 1 hour in hot water, then boiled in 3 cups water for 1 hour until tender); 2 tablespoons diced bamboo shoots; 3 Chinese mushrooms, soaked in hot water for 30 minutes, with stems discarded, and cut into ¼-inch pieces; 2 cups Fish Broth, mixed with 1 cup cold water; ¼ pound bay scallops; 1 teaspoon sesame oil; Pinch of white pepper; 2 tablespoons silk squash, peeled, green portion only, cut into ¼-inch pieces; ¼ cup crab meat, picked over; ½ teaspoon salt; 1 winter melon (about 10 pounds); 2 tablespoons dried shrimp, soaked 30 minutes in hot water, drained, and cut in half; 2 fresh water chestnuts, peeled, dried, cut into ¼-inch dice; 1 tablespoon Scallion Oil

Preparation info

Difficulty
Medium

Appears in

Eileen Yin-fei Lo's New Cantonese Cooking

By Eileen Yin-Fei Lo

Published 1988

About

Steamed winter melon is one of the hallmarks of the Cantonese kitchen. Winter melon is a unique vegetable. It resembles a watermelon on the outside but has white flesh that has virtually no taste of its own. It has the quality of being able to absorb the tastes of what it is cooked with. Thus all sorts of winter melon preparations exist, limited only by the creativity of the chef who uses the melon. Its pith can be cooked with almost every other food; however, winter melon soup is a grand d