Susan Jung’s recipe for XO sauce

The recipe appears in my cookbook, A Celebration of Food (published in 2012), and last year, I made a video, demonstrating the technique. Since then I've adjusted the method: rather than steaming the dried scallops to soften them (a necessity, because they won't get softer once you start cooking them with the oil), I now simmer them in water, which makes it easier to shred them into small pieces. I was reluctant to try this at first, worrying that the flavour of the scallops would get diluted, but it doesn't. So ignore the steaming step in the video and cookbook, and follow this technique, instead. Another new technique - use the chopper attachment of a food processor or immersion blender to shred the scallops, but don't overprocess them.