Taiwanese Style Stir-Fried Scallops and Shrimp with Chives | Wok Wednesdays

This Taiwanese Style Stir-Fried Scallops and Shrimp with Chives dish is so succulent and rich tasting, yet the ingredient list is so simple!

As is typical for Wok Wednesdays, making this stir-fry required a trip to the Asian market for one ingredient I did not have, yellow chives. Neither did the market. Gah!

Yellow chives are grown in the dark, kind of like white asparagus, and are very mild. The resulting dish is really pretty.

Fortunately, I have this pot of neglected chives growing in my back patio, so I decided to go with them. They were very delicate, tender, and fresh, and I hoped they'd be fine. They were more than fine! The only issue for me was the amount of labor involved in lining up the smallish chives for slicing into two inch pieces after washing them and picking out the dried leaves.

I should have taken a photo of that resilient chive plant after the haircut. It kind of looks like a poodle.

Everything else in this recipe is pretty easy to find; about a half a pound each of shrimp and scallops, sake, ginger, salt, white pepper, garlic, and chili bean sauce (which gives it that reddish color). That's pretty much it.

First you marinate the shellfish in the sake, ginger, salt, and pepper. Next, you briefly sear the shellfish in garlic infused oil and then remove it from the wok. After infusing more oil with garlic, you add the shellfish back into the wok, along with the chili bean sauce, chives, and more sake.

Stir, stir, stir, cover, stir..... Boom! About 3 minutes later, you have an amazing dish!

The only problem I had (besides not being able to find the yellow chives) was that I kind of mangled the scallops while stirring them. I think I may have to be a little more gentle. Regardless, broken scallops taste just as good. We ate every bite between the two of us. It felt so healthy!

I got better at keeping scallops intact when I made stir-fried scallops with broccoli. 

"What is Wok Wednesdays?" you ask! It's a group of folks who are stir-frying their way through Grace Young's wonderful book, Stir-Frying to the Sky's Edge: The Ultimate Guide to Mastery, with Authentic Recipes and Stories.

To join the group, check out our Facebook page. You don't have to be a blogger. To find the recipe, check out page 178 of the book. To see the dish with yellow chives, check out my friend Cathy's post, on My Culinary Mission (and ask her where she got that gorgeous bowl and report back to me!).