Sunday Treats: Steamed Fish

This is going to be a little more work than what my usual recipes entail but I promise you it's totally worth it. Thanks to my sister Sarah for taking such brilliant pictures

Before Starting you will need the following Ingredients:

1 fillet of Surmai

For the Marinade you will need:
1/4 cup light Soy Sauce
1 half inch pieces of ginger chopped fine
1 tbsp white vinegar
2 tbsp sesame oil
Juice of 1/2 a lemon
Zest of half a lemon
1/2 tsp white pepper powder

You will also need:
1 spring onion (only the green part - you can use the white part instead of onion for your other cooking)
1/2 inch piece of ginger cut into thin sticks
2 tbsp sugar
1 red chili chopped (you can use green chili if you don't have red)
lemon juice of half a lemon

And finally:
Some Green Spring onion for Garnish
Some Coriander for garnish

Now comes the hard part: The equipment. 




You will need to steam this fish, which means you will need a steamer (duh!). If you don't have a traditional bamboo steamer like in the picture, you can use your rice strainer.









Just make sure that your rice strainer only has holes on the bottom, like this one here and that you have a lid that can cover the whole rice strainer

You will also have to have a chat with your fish provider to give you the Surmai in fillets. You will get 2 fillets from the Surmai. Make sure that you take a tweezer and take out the bones from the centre of the fillet and that you clean and wash the fillet after so you can land up with some truly beautiful looking fish

My personal suggestion would be to deep freeze the other fillet and keep for another day because 1 fillet is enough for 4 people. Plus only half the fillet fits into the steamer in a bowl at one time (I was lucky to have a two tiered Steamer so I could do 1 fillet at a time) but otherwise if you're doing half a fillet at a time at 15 minutes for each steaming... you're going to be pretty exhausted by the end of this whole culinary escapade. 

You also need a wok or a kadhai to steam the fish. Like you see in this picture I have put water below in the kadhai, then put the steamer on top. You should put around 1 - 2 cups of water depending on how big your wok is. The wok has to be rounded so that the water does not touch the food and only the steam touches the food. 

OK I promise you it is VERY simple once you have got the equipment

Method:

Marinade the fish in the above mentioned marinade for 15 minutes in ceramic or heat proof bowls that can go directly in the steamer. 

Whilst waiting, put the rest of the ingredients (except for the garnish) in a separate bowl and keep aside

Steam the fish for around 15 minutes or till cooked. You should put it on a medium heat and you'll know that the fish is cooked when it turns from transparent to white and a fork goes in really easily

Take the fish out of the gravy and place on your presentation plate

Mix the marinated gravy with your bowl of Ginger, spring onions, lemon juice and chilies.

Stir it together briefly and pour onto the fish. 

Garnish with Spring onions and Coriander

Woo Hoo .... I've taken a long time to explain it, but if you have all the equipment, this shouldn't take you more than 20 minutes to make, max