Steaming the Fish

It is 9:20pm and I am still at work waiting for hubby to come and get me. So I thought I'd kill time by doing something fun. Thus the second post of the day!

One of the fancy dishes that I think gives quite a wow effect is a whole steamed fish. We usually dare to have it only at good Chinese restaurants. When the waiter brings in the steaming, delicious and succulent fish to the table, you can't help but be impressed.

Interestingly, this steamed fish is really really easy to make and requires very little time for anyone to be standing in front of the stove (that always works for me!). I tried this dish using a recipe from a lovely hardbound book called recipes from around the world. I got the book at a Border Books sale in Boston. It weighs a ton but has a fabulous collection of recipes from all over the world. I have tried a number of recipes from the book and they all turned out very edible. I will try to give the details of the book (name, publisher etc.) at a later post.

The trick to excellent result for steamed fish is to have a very fresh fish. Since there is very little seasoning and spice, if you have a not so great fish you will have not so great results. You don't have to buy the fish the very day you cook this, but just make sure the fish was fresh when you bought it and was frozen soon after it was brought home.

Any tender fish with few bones works for this dish. I have used Telapia but other fish like Garupa, Aire Maach, Bhetki will work well too. Just make sure that the fish is at least 1 kg or more in weight.

As this fish is steamed, it is excellent for people who want low cal low fat food.

Cantonese Style Steamed Fish
Serves 3

Whole fish - 1
Soy Sauce - 4 tablespoon
Sesame Oil - 2 Tablespoon
Spring Onion (sliced into matchstick size) - 4-5 tablespoons
Fresh Ginger (diced) 3 tablespoon
Oil - 2-3 tablespoons

Clean the whole fish. Make sure you take out everything from its tummy. Leave the fish whole, trim the fins and the ears. Clean throughly and check that there are no scales on the fish.

Mix the soy sauce, sesame oil and fresh ginger. Rub this mixture well on the fish and also add some of the mixture inside the cavity of the fish. Make shallow diagonal cut marks (3 per each side) on each side of the fish. Leave to marinate for about 20 minutes.

Put the fish along with the marination sauce in a heatproof dish and steam the fist for about 30 minutes. To check if the fish is cooked, use a fork to poke the top of the fish. If the fish flakes then the fish is cooked.

You really don't need any fancy cooking utensil to steam the fish. I use a bamboo strainer (basher chaalni) on top of a big pot of boiling water, place the dish on the chaalni and cover. Just make sure whatever you use to cover, covers not only the fish but the whole chaalni thus trapping the steam to allow the fish to cook.

Once the fish is cooked, remove the dish from the steamer. There will be a pretty thin sauce around the fish. Do not remove the sauce.

Sprinkle the sliced spring onion on top of the fish.

Heat the oil is a small pan till the oil is smoking. Remove from the heat and slowly pour the hot steaming oil on from the tail all the way to the head of the fish. The heated oil will cook the spring onion as well as some of the skin of the fish.

Serve this show stopper steaming hot with rice.

Enjoy!!!!