Pan Grilled Mackerel in Banana Leaf

Recently I had the chance to get acquainted with Chef Muluk during an event. Over dinner we made small little chat and needless to say, our topic was about food and cooking. When I asked him for little tips to whip up fast meals, he generously shared some valuable tips with me without reservation. One such recipe is to bake or pan grill mackerel (or any fish). Ideally, I would have marinated the fish with a little salt and a packet of instant tomyam paste. Unfortunately, I was forced to discard my one and only tomyam paste simply because it has expired. What a shame. Anyway, all's good coz I got to follow the marinates given by Chef.

It was just :

• salt,
• a teeny weeny bit of tumeric powder, 
• a little chilli powder (my own idea),
• pieces of sliced tamarind (I had those wet type and so I mixed a little water with it and rub on the fish)
• slice onions

I didn't marinate it for long before I wrapped it nicely with a big piece of banana leaf and then with the aluminium foil. I removed the foil after I pan grilled for approximately 8 mins because it seems like I was taking forever to get the fish cook. You see, I was running a little late for dinner. Frankly speaking, I prefer my fish to be fried because I love fried stuffs. A little unhealthy but yeah, I still prefer that way. Perhaps the fish would be properly infused with the aroma of banana leaf had I not removed the foil. But then again, hubby and I had a feast of banana leaf rice with pan grilled fish in banana leaf and of course, with 2 other dishes. Hubby was happy that he has 2 less plates to wash. He was more than happy. He was elated.

Cucur Udang (Prawn Fritters)

Since mom arrived,  I've taken a back seat and I'm doing this with utmost willingness. She really has this unwavering passion in cooking, trying out new dishes but deep down, I know she just wanna whip up some great food for us to enjoy. This is her very 1st attempt on cucur udang, a recipe she found in my bilingual recipe book. We bought a lot of prawns during our last trip to Kuala Selangor and she casually asked me whether I'll be interested to eat cucur udang. Though it was her 1st trial, the cucur udang came out marvellous. She was generous with the prawns, onions and chili. It was full of real stuff rather than just flour. To eat this, I had to deliberately ride my bike out to the nearest shop to get a bottle of Thai chili. The recipe is adapted from Agnes Chang. After going through the entire recipe, mom said she feels some modification is needed (aisheeh man!)

Ingredients A:
300g plain flour, sifted with 21/2 tsp baking powder
3 eggs
250ml water (1 cup)

Ingredients B:
3 tbsp dried prawns, soaked and pounded
120g prawn meat, diced
3 red chillies, chopped
3 green chillies, chopped
2 stalks spring onion, chopped
2 big onions, chopped
1 tsp salt or to taste

Method:

1. Mix A in one direction until a smooth batter is formed.
2. Add B and mix until well combined. Taste it.
3. Heat up oil, spoon mixture into hot oil and deep dry with medium heat until golden brown and cooked. Dish and drain.
4. Serve hot as a snack with Thai Chilli sauce.

Cereal Prawn II

This is yet again another signature dish of hubby's. I am not a seafood lover but I love eating the cereal : scooping lots of them in a bowl and then stuffing mouthfuls of them into mouth. Each time, I have to implore hubby to be generous with the sugar. The cereal will not be tasty if it doesn't have a certain amount of sweetness in it. With a few cut chilis and 3 stalks of curry leaves, the crunchy cereal is simply irresistable. I gave him 2 thumbs up :)


I've just got the recipe from hubby. Here you go....


Marinades:
1 tbsp shao xing wine
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp salt


Ingredients:
20 large prawns
salt to taste
2 tbsp corn flour
2 tbsp butter
1 tbsp sugar
2 cloves garlic, chopped
3 stalks of curry leaves
2 bird-eye chillies, slice
1egg s, lighten beaten
1 - 2 cup Nestum cereal


Directions:
1. Clean prawn and pat dry with paper towel. Marinate the prawn with the sauces with at least 30 minutes.


2. Coat prawns with beaten eggs before coating it with corn flour for deep-frying. Drain and set aside for later use.


3. In slow fire, melt butter in a pan, add in garlic and fry till slight brown before adding in the curry leaves and cut chilllies. 
4. Add in cereal and stir-fry for 1 to 2 minutes or until the cereal became crispy.


5. Add in prawn and stir to coat. Serve warm
 
My cooking tips : Ensure that the fire is slow when you add in the cereal to avoid getting burnt. I personally prefer the cereal to be sweeter, hence you may add/reduce the sugar according to your preference.

Panfry Salmon

I thought we have a pomfret to steam for dinner on the eve but I was wrong. I was preparing heaps of chinese corriander and spring onion with slices of ginger for the fish steaming but in the end, these ingredients went into my chicken soup. The fish we had for dinner was salmon. Now....salmon is really a strange fish to me because personally, I think it is best eaten raw and any other cooking method such as steaming or even frying, makes the fish kinda distasteful. The strong 'fishy' smell tends to linger in the flesh. Knowing this, hubby cleverly fried some ginger slices for garnishing and for reducing the 'fishy' smell if you eat it together.

Steamed Sourish Slice Garoupa

I love this picture as much as I love eating this dish. It was the last miserable piece of garoupa in my freezer and I wanted to steam it with sour plum. I looked through every nook and corner of my fridge but just couldn't find the bottle of plum which I thought I saw it somewhere before. Anyway, I found a 2nd best substitute for the plum ; yes it's tomatoes. I only have this cherry round tomatoes bought mainly for my salad but then as it turned out, it kinda look great here in the pix with the added bright color. When you steam fish, you will not fall short of ginger and parsley for garnishing. But for this dish here, the sourish taste oozing out from the tomato makes it slightly different from other fish that I've steamed previously. This dish was just lovely for the 2 of us.

Pan Fried Garoupa with Dill and Lemon

In order to get rid of the dill which is fast withering in my fridge, I opt to do a pan fried fish. It would be a better option to do it a fillet style, using either halibut or rainbow trout. However the only fish I have in my fridge is slice garoupa and pomfret. A waste to pan fry my garoupa but well, I gotta do with what I have. If given a choice, I will always opt for pan fry than steam. So if I pan fry, I will usually season the fish and fry it straight away. Of course another option for western style of frying would be to coat it with breadcrumbs or flour. So if you wanna add on your calories, be my guest and coat it with flour. Hubby wasn't too eager with this style as he is a typical china man who prefers the fish to be steamed or do it the asian way with curry or assam or tomyam. Anyway, here's the recipe I used :

Ingredients :
Fish fillet (of course I used garoupa here)
Salt
Blackpepper coarse ground
Ground Chili powder (I forgot to add in)
Garlic powder
Lemon
Fresh dill

Method :
1. Season fish with salt , garlic powder and pepper. Pat dry
2. Heat oil, turn to low fire and pan fry fish till slight brown or for 3 - 4 mins. Then flip side.
3. Squeeze in a little lemon juice on top, sprinkle some dill and chili pepper.
4. After 3 - 4 mins, flip side again and repeat step 3.

Turn off fire and garnish fish with remaining fresh dill and squeeze a little lemon juice. You may want to steam some veggies to go together with the fish. That's what I did here.

Steamed White Snapper in Ginger Paste

I suppose the first thing you notice is how badly this picture was taken. Yes, you are right. It was taken by me, via my handphone and that's the best shot my mobile can produce. We bought this fresh fish from Kuala Selangor (yes, we practically drove all the way there to get the fish and then drove back to KL) on a Saturday and hubby took over the cooking of this fish on Sunday. He wanted to steam the fish with lots and lots of pounded ginger. The dish would have been a lot simpler if only I have a blender to blend the ginger into a fine paste. In view of this, I tried to persuade the chef to select another way of steaming the fish but apparently the chef is a very obstinate man and refused to budge. And so there I slouched, with sweat streaming down my face while my hands pounded furiously on the ginger. The fish was done pretty well and of course, the credit goes to the chef while me the assistant, received not even a mere nod of acknowledgement. I did the exaggerated garnishing but hey, isn't corriander a powerful herb which has many health benefits and medicinal properties?

Steamed Pomfret with Mushroom slice

This is the last dish I steamed using the pot. In case you can't view it properly because of the over garnishing of chinese parsley, it's actually a pomfret we bought in Kuala Selangor. The base was filled with lots of slice ginger and a few stalks of spring onion. There were none other additional ingredients which I could think of to throw in except slices of mushrom and that was exactly what I did. The seasoning is just some soy sauce and a wee bit of shallot oil. Fish was done in less than 15 mins. Perfect.

Sweet & Sour Garoupa

We were given a gigantic garoupa and were asked to cook it for our usual Sunday night dinner. When it comes to a fish, I am at my wits' end. The only fish I always cook is Tenggiri and preparation method is always frying after marinated it with chili powder and tumeric powder. By the way, that reminds me of a question niggling at the back of my mind. Does anyone know what Tenggiri is called in English? Ok, back to the garoupa. Hubby was entrusted with the task of thinking how to cook this expensive fish. He browsed the web for numerous recipes and finally decided on sweet & sour style, a recipe he got from kuali.com. He improvised the recipe and I'm posting his improvised recipe here. For the sauce part, I suggest you mix them all in and taste it first. Tweak the sauce ingredients to suit your taste. The dish was rated good by generally most of the gang but I reckon if it wasn't good, no one would dare to utter a word as well. But seriously, it tasted good and I'm not saying this because it was cooked by my hubby :D

Ingredients 600g to 700g garoupa fish, clean and make slanting slashes on both sides some cornstarch

1 egg beaten

1 green capsicum, cut into small square

1 red capsicum, cut into small square

1 small cucumber, cut into small square 1 onion, sliced thinly

2 tomatoes, quartered 1 tbsp ginger, sliced thinly 2 to 3 tbsp oil

Garnishing:

1 stalk Chinese coriander, cut into 3cm-4cm lengths 1 red chilli, sliced thinly

Sauce (combine): 1/2 cup tomato sauce 1 tbsp chilli sauce 1 tbsp oyster sauce 1 tbsp lemon juice 2 to 3 tbsp water

1 tbsp sugar some salt Dash of pepper 1 tsp light soy sauce 1 tsp sesame oil

Method:

Pat fish in beaten egg and dredge in the cornstarch. Deep fry in hot oil until crispy and golden brown. Put on a serving platter.Fry onion and ginger in heated oil until fragrant. And in all the cut vegetables. Stir in sauce ingredients and mix well. Bring to a boil. Pour sauce over fish and garnish before serving.