Conpoy ◆

Conpoy (Saint-Jacques séchées)

What it is

Conpoy is graded like coinage, by the diameter of the disc, and the broad flat ones cost several times the broken grade — which most kitchens buy anyway, since the muscle is shredded before it is used. XO sauce, invented at the Peninsula hotel in Hong Kong in the 1980s, is in essence a way of eating conpoy by the spoonful.

In the kitchen

Steam them over water with a splash of Shaoxing for twenty to thirty minutes instead of soaking cold — they pull apart into threads. Keep the liquid underneath: it is a finished stock, not waste.

Goes with

Shaoxing wine Ginger Spring onion Chicken Rice Dried shiitake (donko) Jinhua ham Egg

Same species

Hotate scallop

Also used with

Bamboo fungus Sea cucumber Fish maw Winter melon

Something wrong here, or missing? Tell us