Stir-Fried Shrimp with Dragon Well Tea (Long Jing Xia Ren)

When you find great-quality wild shrimp you’d like to spotlight, consider this dish, a seasonal delicacy in China’s Jiangnan province, of which Shanghai is capital. This recipe is adapted from Fuchsia Dunlop’s Land of Fish and Rice, which we reviewed in August 2020.

The recipe features Dragon Well (Long Jing) tea, one of the most prized green teas in China; we buy ours from Upton Tea Imports. Any Chinese green tea may be used in its place, though.

The recipe involves pre-frying the shrimp in hot but not sizzling oil, a technique used across Jiangnan, writes Dunlop in her headnote, “for keeping delicate seafood such as shrimp and sliced fish tender and slippery.” The oil temperature is critical, she reminds us, because the shrimp will become yellowish if it’s too hot, and if it’s too cold, they’ll lose their slippery starch coating. Or as veteran Suzhou chef Sun Fugen put it to Dunlop, “their clothes fall off.”

Ingredients

1 pound (450 g) raw peeled, deveined shrimp (about 1.25 pounds before peeling)

3/4 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons egg white

3 tablespoons potato starch

1 tablespoon Dragon Well tea leaves or other Chinese green tea

1 3/4 cups (400 ml) cooking oil

1 tablespoon Shaoxing wine

1/2 teaspoon potato starch mixed with 1 tablespoon cold water

Chinkiang or red rice vinegar, for serving

Instructions

1. Rinse and drain the shrimp and pat them dry with paper towels. Place them in a bowl with the salt and the egg white and stir vigorously with your hand, in one direction, until they have a slightly springy texture. Add the 3 tablespoons potato starch and mix well, until they are evenly clothed in starch and egg white. Cover and chill for at least 2 hours.

2. Put the tea leaves in a small bowl or tea cup and and cover with 4 tablespoons of water just below the boiling point (about 185 to 195 degrees F or 85 to 95 degrees C). Leave to infuse for 1 minute, then strain out the tea leaves, retaining both them and the infused liquid.

3. Stir 2 teaspoons of the cooking oil into the shrimp, so they’ll separate when they cook. Heat the remaining oil in a seasoned wok over a high flame to 250 - 260 degrees F (120 - 130 degrees C). Add the shrimp and separate them with chopsticks. Stir them gently until they have curled up, become opaque and are very nearly cooked through; remove them with a slotted spoon. Take great care not to let the oil overheat. The idea is to keep the shrimp very tender and succulent, not to sizzle them; if the oil reaches 275 degrees F (140 degrees C) you will begin to lose some of their succulence.

4. Drain all but 1 tablespoon oil from the wok. Return it to a high flame and add the shrimp, Shaoxing wine, tea leaves, and 2 tablespoons of the tea infusion, and stir rapidly to incorporate. Stir the starch mixture and pour it into the wok, stirring. As soon as the juices have thickened, remove the shrimp from the wok and serve with a dish of vinegar for dipping.