Baked seafood rice in white sauce

Ingredientsserves 4

Equipment

• A shallow baking dish, about 25 × 18 cm, one dish for four

Method

1. Dry the seafood well. Pan-fry it in a tablespoon of oil over high heat, one minute a side, until barely opaque and half done; it finishes in the sauce and the oven. Set aside.
2. The fried-rice base: beat the eggs, fry them in two tablespoons of oil until barely set, add the cold rice and toss until dry and loose, salt lightly, and spread it in the greased dish. The rice must be dry before it goes in.
3. The white sauce: melt the butter, soften the onion and garlic, add the mushrooms and fry until their water has cooked off. Take the pan off the heat and stir in the flour in two additions to a smooth paste. Butter and flour one to one, off the heat, in batches: that is the rule for a sauce without lumps.
4. Back on low heat, add the cold milk a ladle at a time, stirring each in fully before the next, then the stock. Simmer three to four minutes until it coats the spoon. Never let it get too hot, or it catches and lumps. Season with salt and white pepper, and finish with the evaporated milk or cream.
5. Fold the seafood and peas into the sauce, pour it over the rice, scatter the cheese.
6. Bake at 200 °C for twelve to fifteen minutes, until the cheese is golden in patches and the sauce bubbles at the edge. Do not over-bake, or the seafood goes rubbery. The café's white sauce is a bucket of roux-thickened milk with evaporated milk and chicken powder held warm all day, the seafood a frozen mix blanched to order, the top done under a salamander in three minutes; at home use the grill for the last two minutes. Rest five minutes.
7. The two home mistakes: an oven too cool, so the seafood stews before the top colours, and rice that was wet when it went in. The seafood is done when the prawns are pink and curled and the squid is opaque.

Take care

• Contains crustaceans (prawns) and molluscs (squid, scallops, mussels), milk (butter, milk, evaporated milk, cheese), wheat (flour) and egg (the rice base). Seafood cooked through: prawns pink and curled, squid opaque; mussels that do not open are discarded. Marinara mix from the freezer is cooked from thawed and never refrozen.

The story

The white sauce is the café's béchamel and the base of a whole family of baked dishes, broccoli in white sauce, fish fillet under cheese, the fast-food chain's chicken à la king rice, all from the same 1960s moment when Hong Kong shops bought ovens and learned a French mother sauce from a tin. The seafood version is the dish a family orders for the child who will not eat tomato.

Same counter

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Lo Fo Tong is cultural food-heritage reference, not medical advice. If you are pregnant, unwell or on medication, talk to your doctor or registered practitioner before changing what is in the pot.