Ottawa Foodies

Ha ha Mark, This shows that you are an adventurous type person.

I prefer to buy the bag of uncut jellfish. You just follow the instructions on the back and cut them into strips later. Uncut ones taste better.

Before serving, I leave them in the fridge and let it drain.

When it is ready to eat, I mix them well with sesame oil, soy sauce, a little bit black vinegar (optional hot chilli oil). You can also mix the jelly fish with shredded carrot and shredded cucumber. This serves as a good cold appetizer. If you go to Chinese wedding banquet, the first dish is the BBQ meat platter which includes crunchy BBQ pork skin (yum yum) + BBQ pork/chicken. Jelly fish is normally on the side. Something for you to chew before the next dish comes to your table.

I've had jellyfish a few times before, but I picked up a package today just for fun. It's an inexpensive venture -- about a buck for a package of "Instant Jellyfish" containing a pouch of wet, thinly sliced jellyfish, a pouch of seasoning (inc. dehydrated scallions), a pouch of sesame oil, and a pouch of chili oil. (I chose the "sesame and chili" flavour -- they do have others.)

As you might have guessed by the presence of all these flavour packets, jellyfish is mostly about texture. It has a wet crunchiness to it much like pickled gherkins, but there's also a certain chewiness that is more like meat.

There are many non-Asians who have never even considered eating jellyfish, so why not bring a bowl of it to your next potluck? ;-)