Soft-shelled turtles have been long regarded as a tonic. Its shell can also be used as medicine. It is customary for people in Soochow to keep fit with stewed soft-shelled turtle soup. Dishes like Stewed Soft-shelled Turtle and Soft-shelled Turtle cooked together with its shell were also recorded in a book called Sui Yuan’s Recipe by Yuan Mei in Qing dynasty. It takes several steps to cook such a dish: first, you pick a living soft-shelled turtle weighing about 750 grams and butcher it. Then you remove its internal organs (eggs, if any, should be preserved for other purposes), cut away its legs, mouth, tail as well as the bottom parts of its four legs, and put it into the water of 60 centigrade degrees to clear away its black film before soaking it in the water of 90 centigrade degrees and removing its shell. Then it’s time to chop it into six chunks, wash them clean and put them into the clean water until the water becomes boiling. Afterwards, you scrub chunks in the clean water again take them out and dehydrate them. Then you put in the pot bamboo chopsticks underpinning the well-arranged chunks and add some sliced pork. Meanwhile, you need to pan-fry the onion knots and sliced gingers in the rape oil until the fragrance can be smelled, then put them on the pork and the rape oil in around the pot, and add some Shaoxing rice wine, waiting for its boiling. After that, you should add some pork soup until it boils and continue to stew it. About 30 minutes later, with some refined salt and shredded onions and gingers added, you continue to boil it with high heat until the soup becomes sticky. And now it’s time to put it onto the plate. Meanwhile, you need to steam the eggs of the soft-shelled turtle together with onion knots, sliced gingers, Shaoxing rice wine and refined salt until it is well-done. Then you take them out and stir-fry them with cooked oil, sliced bamboo shoots, Chinese yam and agaric for a short while. After that, you add Shaoxing rice wine, refined salt and soft white sugar, waiting for its boiling. At the same time, you pour the turtle as well as the filling in the bowl into the periphery of the pot with the pork soup added. If it boils, you smolder the dish with low heat until the marinade becomes sticky. Finally, you add some wet starch to drain it, pour the cooked oil and sesame oil onto it before you put it on the plate. The marinade, bright and sticky, should be slightly sweet.
To cook this dish well, you’d better choose the turtles in Spring and Autumn (especially the Caihua turtle or osmanthus turtle ) instead of those in Summer which have less meat. And it is not a groundless fact that it is a big taboo for people in Soochow to eat the soft-shelled turtles bit by mosquitos due to their potential virus.
