Cooking For Family & Friends

Surf clam and vermicelli is a Cantonese dish I recently discovered from eating at one of the many local Cantonese restaurants where my mother in law lives. Surf clams are essentially large littlenecks (size of your palm) that are inexpensive but can be difficult to open. You can find them at your local Chinese grocer in the seafood section. Per my MIL you can ask the folks to open them but they won’t gut and clean them. You will have to remove the insides and clean the sand out yourself when you get home.

Happily, surf clam is quite inexpensive – for this dish, you get 1 big fistful of surf clam meat (3 clams worth) for only $7.

Traditionally, this dish is steamed but in this variation, I made it a stir-fry for ease of cleanup and keeping everything in one pot.

Ingredients:

-3 surf clams, gutted, cleaned and chopped into bite sized pieces

-8 cloves of garlic, minced

-4 tablespoons vegetable/canola oil

-1 tablespoon oyster sauce

-1 pinch of sugar

-2 individual packets of vermicelli

-1 tablespoon chopped cilantro for garnish

Directions:

1. Soak and submerge vermicelli noodles in warm water while you prep ingredients
2. Pour 2 tablespoons of oil in your pan on low heat and gently lightly brown 5 cloves of the minced garlic. When light brown, add the remaining garlic and stir and cook on low heat for another couple minutes. You want a mix of the browned garlic and white, slightly cooked garlic for a juxtaposition of flavor. Turn off heat and pour into small bowl. Add the oyster sauce and pinch of sugar and stir.
3. In a wok or a bigger saucepan, heat remaining oil and add vermicelli noodles after draining and sauté for a couple minutes. Add the chopped clams and sauce and stir. Cover and let cook for 5-7 minutes on medium heat or until clams are just cooked. Clams will turn from translucent to a more solid color.
4. Plate and garnish with chopped cilantro. I also added some dabs of chili oil for spice but that’s totally optional!