XO-Sauce

One spoonful over plain rice is dinner. That was the entire design brief.

Dried scallop on fresh scallop: the same animal, concentrated and alive.

The oil clings and the shreds catch in the folds. Cheung fun wants nothing else.

Scrambled soft and folded through. The fat is present, the umami was not.

Blanched greens carry water and bitterness. This brings salt, fat and crunch.

Blank curd is the best canvas there is for something this loud and expensive.

Fresh shellfish plus dried shellfish. The dried half explains the fresh one.

Charred leaf sugar under salted marine fat, which is the missing sweetness.

A luxury seafood condiment on the plainest possible green, which is exactly the point of the contrast.

Dried scallop in the sauce, fake scallop on the plate. Deliberate.

Two concentrations of the same sea. Grill the oyster, spoon this over it.

Free glutamate on free glutamate, Cantonese and Emilian. Same molecule.

Dried scallop is sweet. Cocoa butter lactones meet it exactly halfway.