Salmon Stir-Fry with XO sauce

I found an ingredient for Alphabakes beginning with X! XO sauce is a spicy seafood sauce that originates from Hong Kong; you cnn make your own, but apparently you need dried scallops, Jinhua ham, dried shrimp and canola oil, which I don't think would be very easy to source in the UK - or you can buy it ready-made in a jar from Tesco.

According to Wikipedia the name comes from cognac - extra old, which is known as XO. I know from my previous incarnation as a drinks writer that high end western spirits are very popular in Asia and Wikipedia says that XO came to denote high quality, luxury products. So I guess that XO sauce is supposed to be a luxury item - looking at the list of expensive ingredients I can understand why that is!

I had a look online for a recipe and they all seemed to be variations on a basic stir-fry. Most of the recipes I found suggested using chicken but I thought the seafood flavours in the XO sauce would work really well with salmon, and I was right. You can use any stir-fry vegetables and I have to admit cutting a few corners and buying a packet mix, which included beansprouts, cabbage and carrot. I used scissors to chop a piece of salmon into chunks.

Heat a little oil in a large frying pan or wok then add a teaspoonful of the XO sauce and stir around the pan. Pour in about 50ml fish stock or water. Then add the veg and stir-fry until softened. Add the salmon chunks and add another dash of water or fish stock if desired. Stir-fry until the veg and salmon is cooked through.

Serve, and enjoy! This was the first time I have tried XO sauce and I really liked it so will see what else I can do with the rest of the jar.

I'm sending this to Alphabakes, the blog challenge I host with Ros of The More Than Occasional Baker, as the letter I have chosen is X.