TeoChew Steamed Garoupa

Often I overheard that most people giving up preparing their own home-cooked steamed fish because its either turns out fishy or the meat is tough. For me, steamed fish is kind of our staple dish in every meal. This dish is not only easy to prepare, but also a very nutritious high in protein dish especially for growing kids.

Get your fingers crossed, even in some acclaimed seafood restaurant, after you have paid for a hefty meal of a fish dish,much to your agony, the steamed fish served turns out to be overcooked.

Thus, fret not. This time I am going to show you the easy way to prepare a successful teochew steamed garoupa. Steamed fish calls for a very fresh fish bought from wet markets. Personally I do not advise on buying fish from supermarket or hypermarket. I do not know why, maybe because after a few bad experiences of not getting the tip-top fish that I want.

In this recipe, I use mouse garoupa, weighing around 1kg. You might want to use pomfret, seabass, snapper, rock fish, tilapia, or threadfin.

Other ingredients are: pork belly sliced; thumb size of ginger, julienned; a block of soft beancurd, cubed; a tomato, wedged; 3 salted preserved plums; 1 tablespoon of hua tiau wine; 1 tablespoon of superior light soya sauce; and a handful of scallion, parsley and red chilli for garnishing.

I add in rinsed salted vegetable, julienned, to the dish before steaming

First, add a tablespoon of cooking oil, brown sliced pork belly. Retain the oil for the last step.

Arrange the browned pork on top of the fish. Arrange the rest of the ingredients (salted veg, tomato, beancurd, ginger) on the dish as shown in the picture. I mashed the salted plums, and stuffed in the fish cavity. Lastly add the hua tiaw wine and light soya sauce. The fish is ready for steaming. Pour about 2 bowl of water into a wok. Let the water boil before putting in the fish to steam on a rack for 15 minutes, covering the wok, steam on big fire. This step is very crucial, because you do not want to overcook your fish.

Remove the fish, which is done, from the wok, and garnish the dish with scallion, parsley and chilli. Reheat the oil obtained from pork belly which we set aside earlier. Pour the hot sizzling oil onto the garnishing ingredients. The TeoChew steamed fish is ready for serving. Just thinking of a bowl of hot plain porridge, savour with my favourite steamed fish...I start feeling famished already....going to tag along hubby for a porridge supper tonight. Bye....and best trying....

BON APPETIT