Excerpt:
Ingredients:
1 fresh fish, preferably grouper, seabass, not more than 1kg, mine was 600g.
¼ cup of very fine fresh ginger strips
¼ cup of spring onion strips
A few sprigs of fresh coriander
4 tbsp oil
Seasoning sauce:
3 to 3.5 tbsp light soy sauce (good brand), 2/3 cube of chicken stock + 1/3 cup hot water, 2 pieces of rock sugar
Method:
Method:
- Prepare a wok with water, boil it.
- If the fish is thick, make sure you cut a few strips on the meat or butterfly it. Put it into a plate, scatter ginger strips, spring onions and coriander.
- When the water is boiling, put in the fish, start the timer (max 10 mins for 600g fish, add 2 mins for every 200g)
- While steaming, prepare the seasoning sauce: mix the hot water with rock sugar, chicken cube and light soy sauce. Heat in the microwave for 1 min.
- Using a fork or chopstick, dig into the thickest part of the fish (usually the middle of the body) to check its doneness. It is suppose to be cooked 99% with a speck of red remaining in the flesh. If not, cook another 1 min and then check again.
- When it is cooked, take out the fish into a new plate. Pour away ALL the fishy juices & herbs. Don’t worry; you won’t regret pouring it away!
- Pour the seasoning sauce all over the fish.
- Garnish with ginger strips, lots of spring onions and coriander
- Quickly heat up the oil until smoking (until you see smoke), Pour this cooking oil over fish. You will hear a very satisfying sizzling sound!
- Enjoy!
Mistakes:
As a matter of fact, the best way to learn is to learn from our past mistakes. We found out that we did not:
- cook at medium high heat
- put in the fish only after the water start boiling
- season & steam the fish together with Chinese wine (Shao Xing or Hua Diao), spring onions, ginger and coriander
- discard ALL the cooking juices and herbs after steaming
- mix the seasoning sauce separately and add them just before serving
- add in rock sugar to enhance its sweetness
- pour smoking hot oil all over the fish in the end
To have just-like-the-restaurant steamed fish, with some guidance from other websites such as hunger hunger, I managed to find my own style – not far different from the restaurant standard
