Fujian Cuisine [Minnan] Oyster Omelet (Haojian)

[JP] |Haojian
[CN] |háojiān
[Minnan] |ô-á-chian

An oyster omelet from the Minnan region of Fujian Province, it is a soul food for the Minnan people. It is made by mixing small oysters, egg batter, sweet potato starch, and green vegetables, then frying them. It is eaten dipped in sauces such as sweet and spicy |tianlajiang (sweet chili sauce) or |yulu (fish sauce). It features a double delight of the savory aroma of the cooked batter and the umami of the oysters. The sweet potato starch gives it a chewy, gelatinous texture.

It is widely eaten in the broader Minnan-speaking regions (including overseas areas like Chaozhou, Taiwan, Malaysia, and Singapore) and at Chaozhou-style restaurants in Hong Kong, and it goes by various names. In Minnan and Taiwanese, it is called |ô-á-chian. In Mandarin, it is known as |mǔlìjiān, |hǎilìjiān, |kézǎijiān, or |hàolào. In Singapore, it is called oyster omelet in English, or sometimes orh luak, which is derived from the Chaozhou dialect. The amount of egg, the amount of sweet potato starch, and the degree of cooking vary depending on the cook.

According to legend, when the Dutch army occupied Tainan, Taiwan, in 1661, Koxinga (a hero of the resistance against the Qing, the model for the play |Kokusenya Kassen, born in Hirado, Nagasaki, to a Japanese mother named Tagawa) led his troops to reclaim the lost territory. The Zheng army fell into a food shortage, but in their desperation, they used their ingenuity to mix local specialty oysters with sweet potato starch—which had been brought by Europeans and was growing wild—dissolved in water, and fried it flat to eat. This practice then spread throughout the Minnan-speaking regions.