Braised Abalone & Fish Belly Casserole 鲍魚鮮菇魚肚鍋 low fat & carbo made easy by Chef mol on golden hill

Ingredients: Fish Belly - 2 pieces (large), Abalone (previously frozen) - 5 (medium), Chicken Feet - 8, shiitake Mushroom - 4 (pre-soaked if using dry ones), *Turkey Bacon - 3 stripes, Plant Based Low Fat Cooking Spray - a little to grease the pressure cooker.
* This is used for its low fat content and strong flavor replacing the fatty Jinhua ham 金華火腿.
Seasoning for the sauce: Oyster Sauce - 1.5 tsp, Soy Sauce - ½ tsp, Water - 1/3-1/2 cup (can be more per personal preference).
Chef mol on golden hill said, "Joy from food as well as health in life can be achieved with easy ingredient, simple equipment and small portion."
1. Slow cook fish belly fully covered with water in slow cooker at low for 3-4 hours until softened. Then cut to smaller pieces. Set aside in fridge for use later.
2. Remove nails of chicken feet. Then boil in water for about 10 min and rinse under tap. Set aside.
3. Defrost frozen abalone in tap water for 2-3 hr. Rinse and clean abalone under tap with a toothbrush. Then remove the shell & organs. Rinse under tap again. Cleaned abalone is close to white in color.
4. Grease the insert of pressure cooker with low fat plant based cooking spray. Then put abalone in, then top with chicken feet and turkey bacon (tear to smaller pieces).
5. Add tap water next until all ingredients are almost covered with water. Add the shiitake mushroom last. Cook at high pressure (eg. using the broth/soup function of Instant Pot) for 1 hr. 26 min initially. After 1 hr 26 min, abalone is tender enough for serving, while even the liquid in the pressure cooker is pretty tasty. However, for those who prefer to have them very tender, cook at high pressure for another 28 min.
6. Once the cooking in pressure cooker is done, pour about ½ cup (can be more depending on how much sauce one desires to have serving the dish) of the liquid from the pressure cooker into a saucepan. Add in oyster sauce - 1.5 tsp, soy sauce - ½ tsp and tap water - 1/3-1/2 cup next. If one desires to have a lot of sauce, add more water and increase the seasoning a little. Make sure to taste test to avoid over-saltiness. Mix well and boil over heat. Since turkey bacon is salty, no salt is needed. Save the rest of liquid from the pressure cooker in another container to serve as soup separately from the dish.
7. Add in the cooked abalone, shiitake mushroom and turkey bacon into the saucepan next. Simmer over heat and keep flipping in the sauce. Then let everything sit in the sauce including the cooked fish belly set aside earlier for a few hours or over-night in the fridge. Soaking is the easiest effort-less way to intensify the flavor. There is to need to add corn starch to thicken the sauce, since the fish belly acts as the natural thickener. In fact, this is good news for those who are very conscious with their carbo intake (as corn starch contains quite some carbo).
Note: The chicken feet can be turned into dim sum style chicken feet - check out the link to my recipe at the end of this video.
8. On the day of serving, simmer the abalone, fish belly and shiitake mushroom along with the sauce in a clay pot briefly over stove. Prepare the soup, if desired, in a separate pot. If the dish coming out of the fridge gets too thick to pour into the pot, microwave briefly for 1 min. This dish is great to serve warm by itself, whereas the sauce with rice.
9. When serving the liquid from the pressure cooker as a soup, one needs to dilute it with water at the minimum ratio of 1:0.5. Perform taste test to achieve the perfect ratio, while re-heating over stove. Otherwise, the soup is too salty.