TeowChew Style Steamed Pomfret (潮州式清蒸鲳鱼)

I'm not a TeowChew obviously. But I do steam my fish in this way when I saw a nice Pomfret at the market. I just simply love the sour and salty taste that is so appetizing. A week ago, my bestie Ginnie asking me for TeowChew Style Steamed Fish recipe. I didn't give her all the details. Since I'm steaming my pomfret. Might as well I just blog about it.

Living in Singapore, I believe everybody had this before. It's one of the common style of steaming fish here.  That is why, I don't think I need to introduce more about it, and I shall cut the crap here and start cooking...

Ingredients

• A medium sized Pomfret. Scaled, cleaned. I used Silvery Pomfret (银鲳鱼) here, about 500g. People usually use White Pomfret (白鲳鱼). But there's no rules here. You could use Seabass (石甲/金目鲈) or Grouper (石斑鱼) too. It's individual.
• 20g of salted Vegetable
• 1 red chilli, julienned
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• a big thumb sized ginger (1 portion minced, 1 portion julienned, 1 portion sliced)
• 2 stalks of spring onion (1 stalk cut into 1.5 inch length, 1 stalk cut into 5 inch length)
• a piece of soft bean curd
• 20g pork belly. But I forgotten to add them in. Darn!
• 2 pieces of canned water plum
• 1 tomato - cut into wedges
• 1tsp light soy sauce
• 1 tsp salt
• half tsp sugar
• 2tsp fish sauce (optional)
• about half cups of water or more. Gauge it yourself.

Long list of ingredient eh? But it taste yummy. I assure you.

Method

1. Prepare all the necessary vegetables, and do all the cutting work. Refer to above picture, and you should know what to do.

2. Clean the fish, place a spring onion on a plate, line with 3 slices of ginger. Place the fish on top. Refer to this picture, this is the estimated length of your spring onion to be lined beneath the fish, and also 3 slices of ginger.

3. Place all the big chunk ingredients on the plate, combine all the seasoning, minced ginger, minced garlic & etc etc. Pour it over the fish. Add some water to cover 1/3 of the ingredients. If you want your steamed fish to be more soupy, add more water. Just eyeball it yourself.

4. Steam the fish over high heat for 8 minutes (based on 500g fish). Remove from heat, sprinkle with shredded spring onions and serve hot.


The picture of this steamed fish is really !@#$%^&$#@!!! I really hate the dim light in my house!!! If you were to prepare this dish at home, you have to make sure that you cook a pot of good quality steamed white rice. This dish goes very very well with a bowl of hot steamed white rice. It's so comforting.


Give it a try! I'm sure your family will love this :)