Easy Clam Lala Soup With Ginger & Cili Padi

I love to cook and eat delicious food. But I don’t like spending too much effort or time on it. So my motto has always been ‘easy, healthy, tasty’. This clam soup with ginger and cili padi is one dish that satisfies all criteria.

Clam Soup with Ginger is absolute favourite dish. Whenever I visit a Chinese seafood restaurant, I must order lala soup and make sure that they use enough ginger and wine.

I’m glad that this dish is something that is easily replicated at home. The most important thing is to get fresh clams (preferably those that are still moving). The other important ingredients that you need are ginger, garlic, cili padi (bird’s eye chili), and Shaoxing wine.

If you really want to make this dish superb – use ikan bilis (dried anchovies) stock. Water and ikan bilis stock, in my opinion, cannot compare.

TOOLS

• Wok/pan/pot with lid + spatula
• Knife + chopping board
• Stove

RECIPE CARD

SHORT RECIPE

Soak 600 g clams in 1 L water + 2 tbsp salt, soak for a few hours and rinse. Fry 20 g julienned ginger and 3 cili padi. Add clams + 1.5 cups of ikan bilis stock (OR water with 1/2 tsp anchovies seasoning powder). Cover and bring to a boil. Season with white pepper + sea salt + 1 – 2 tbsp Shaoxing wine.

STEP-BY-STEP

1. CLEAN CLAMS: Place clams in a large mixing bowl. Pour in 4 cups (1 L) of water and 2 tbsp of salt. Place in the refrigerator and soak for a few hours. During this time, clams will spit out sand. Pour out sandy water, rinse clams in a fresh pot of water, and drain. Repeat a few times until the water is clear.

2. PREP: Peel and slice ginger into long, thin strips. Deseed cili padi and slice.

3. FRY AROMATICS: Heat oil on medium fire. Stir-fry ginger and chili until aromatic (1 minute).

4. COOK CLAMS: Add clams and two cups of water. Cover with a lid and bring to a boil. Once water boils, turn off the heat.

5. SEASON: Season with white pepper, fine sea salt, and Chinese Shaoxing rice wine. Serve hot.

COOKING TIPS

1. Choose fresh clams. To cook seafood, the most important thing is to get them fresh. Find out how to choose clams
2. Make anchovies stock If you can, use anchovies stock instead of water. Boil 50 g of ikan bilis in 1 L of water. If you use water, you will need to add ikan bilis powder to make it taste as good as those in restaurants. If you can, make your own using this recipe DIY ikan bilis stock powder.  If you are really not willing to make the extra effort, you can add a handful or about 3 tbsp of ikan bilis to fry with ginger and cili padi at step 3.
3. Do not overcook clams Once the water boils, the clams should be just cooked. If you keep simmering the soup, the clams will overcook and tastes too rubbery.
4. Omit Shaoxing wine to make it halal. For those who would like to keep this dish halal, you need not use Shaoxing wine. However, the taste is significantly different without it. I like mine with a lot of it

Note that this recipe is the easy/’lazy’ way.  When we want to make a GREAT clam soup, we will cook the clams first (saved the stock), then put into the soup at the very end. We would also make our own achovies stock and boil the soup for much longer to extra more flavour off the aromatics

If you think you can’t make restaurant-standard dishes at home (or better), try this one!