How To Butterfly Your Fish

How To Butterfly Your Fish

Have you ever wish that you could present your fried fish toped with a sauce in a butterflied manner, just like in the restaurant? Actually most good fish mongers should be able to do this for you but sometimes you might overlooked the matter and had to do it on your own at home. Here are photographs to show you how. If you need to deep fry the fish before topping it with a sauce (eg a sweet and sour sauce), dust the fish all over while it is still wet with some rice flour just before deepfrying.

The Perfect Sweet & Sour Sauce

The ever famous sweet and sour pork/chicken/fish is a must-have in every chinese restaurant and take-away food outlet. The balancing of the yin yang is typically and well presented in this dish, blending well the two contrasting flavours. Although this dish appears far too often in Cantonese cuisine, the sweetness varies depending on the region. The ingredients vary and any type of sweetening and souring agent can be used.
Here is the perfect sauce for you to try at home, bearing in mind a few tips for success:

• Plum sauce is used as it gives a shiny glazing for the end result.
• Tapioca starch is used instead of corn flour for thickening as the latter gives a murky looking sauce and the former a transparent looking sauce, thus not giving your meat a 'covering' but instead a see-through coating.
  
• Rice flour is used for the meat (pork or chicken) coating as it give a crispier or crunchier bite as compared to other flour like cornflour or wheat flour.
• Sauce should be just enough to coat the meat and not drown in it.
• Be sure that the oil is hot enough for deep frying otherwise they will be soggy and oily.
  
• Seafood such as prawns and fish are delicate and so the sauce should be complementary and not over-powering. Some fine tuning with lime juice and pineapple pieces or even chillies can be added to give it a tropical flavour.
• When cooking seafood for this sweet and sour dish, they not necessary to be marinated. Just coat the seafood with the dampness from the washing of the seafood with riceflour and deep fry.

If possible, get your local fish monger to 'butterfly' the fish for you. To 'butterfly' the fish is to split by cutting the fish with a sharp knife starting from the tail right up to the base of the head. You will get one side of the fish with the bones intact and othet side without bones.

SWEET & SOUR PORK
(KOO LOO YOKE)
Serves 4

400g shoulder or loin pork, cubed

1/2 tbsp rice wine or Shaoxing wine

1 tbsp light soy sauce

1/2 tsp sugar

2 egg white, beaten

4 oz rice flour

oil for deep frying

Sauce ingredients:

1 clove garlic, sliced

1 medium onion, diced

2 tbsp plum sauce

1 tbsp rice vinegar

2 tbsp tomato sauce

1 tsp sugar

1 tbsp tapioca flour

1/3 cup water

1/2 red or yellow pepper, diced

1/3 length cucumber, seeded and cubed

Method:

1. Marinade pork cubes with, rice wine, light soy sauce and sugar for about 1 hour.

2. Mix all sauce ingredients together expect the oil and the vegetables.

3. Stir in beaten egg white into marinated pork cubes and toss the pork in the rice flour. Do this in a bowl. Shake off any excess flour.

4. Heat up cooking oil in a wok until hot and deep fry pork cubes in medium heat until brown.

5. Remove and keep aside on a serving platter.

6. Leave about 2 tablespoonful of oil in the wok. Reheat oil and fry garlic until light brown. Add in onions and cook lightly.

7. Pour in sauce ingredients and bring to boil.

8. Toss in bell peppers and cucumber. Boil for a further 10 seconds.

9. Pour sauce onto fried pork cubes and serve.

Chinese Preserved Mustard Greens (Hum Choy)

PRESERVED MUSTARD GREENS

or those who have been living away from home and can't buy them or you may just want to make your own...here is how:

1.5 kg mustard greens (kai choy)*

6-8 tbsp coarse sea salt

2 litre old coconut water or rice water**

2 tbsp sugar

1. Wash the vegetables and put them out to dry in the clothes line, upside-down for about 4-5 hrs or until just withered.

2. Divide vegetables into 3 portions. Place one portion on a dry cutting board and sprinkle salt on them. Rub salt onto vegetables against the board so as to bruise the vegetables and let them water and turn a dark green colour. Fold into a neat bundle and place them into a glass jar (washed and dried) with cover.Repeat with the other 2 portions.

3. To prepare the rice water: Wash rice (for about 4 people) with water and collect this ( white murky looking) water and place it in the saucepan. Do this twice to make up about 2 litre. Bring this rice water to boil with the sugar. Remove from fire and let it cool slightly before using.

4. When rice water has cool slightly (for about 10 minutes) but still hot, pour it into the glass jar with the salted vegetables and weight them down with a stone or heavy pestle. Cover.

5. Leave to pickle for about 3-4 days before they are ready for eating.

6. The vegetables will turn a golden brown colour when they are ready. Remove from the salted solution and place them in the fridge. They should keep for about 2 weeks.

Tip: Bruising the vegetables will make the pickling solution easier to penetrate into the fiber. Sugar in the rice water helps to speed up fermentation which cause it to have a slight acidic taste. Boiling the pickling solution, of course, is to sterilise the liquid before using.
* You can also use radish leaves.
** Water from old coconuts can also be used. Coconut water will give a more sour taste than rice water.

Here's a simple fish receipe to cook with your preserved mustard greens:

STEWED FISH WITH PRESERVED MUSTARD GREENS

1 medium-sized flathead or red snapper, washed and pat dry

500g preserved mustard greens, sliced
1 tbsp preserved bean paste

2 pips garlic, chopped

1 red chilli (optional), seeded and sliced

1 cup water

1 tspn cornflour mixed with 1/3 cup water

soya sauce and sugar to taste

Oil for frying

1. Heat up oil in a wok and fry fish until just cooked and browned slightly. Remove and keep aside.

2. Leave about 3 tbsp oil in the wok and fry garlic and bean paste until brown. Add in preserved mustard greens and chilli and stir-fry for another 2 minutes in medium fire.

3. Add in fish and cover it with the preserved vegetables. Add in water and seasoning and let it boil, covered, in medium-low heat.

4. When liquid has been reduced by half, add in seasoning (sugar and soya sauce) to taste. Lastly, stir in cornflour solution to thicken sauce.

5. Remove from fire and serve hot with rice.

Tip: Just in case your preserved vegetables is not sour enough, you may add in about 1 to 2 tablespoons of white vinegar when cooking them. Balance the sourness with the sugar and salt/soya sauce.