XO sauce

Sauce XO

What it is

Hong Kong hotel kitchens built it in the 1980s and borrowed the name from XO cognac purely as a signal of expense; there is no brandy in the jar. Several restaurants claim the invention and none can prove it.

In the kitchen

The flavour sits in the oil as much as in the solids, so stir the jar from the bottom and spoon up both. Add it at the end: past a minute in a hot wok the dried scallop goes bitter and the shallot turns to grit.

Goes with

Scallop Egg Choy sum Rice Silken tofu (kinugoshi) Green bean

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