2013 Cooking Club Week 16: Chinese Steamed White Fish with Garlic, Ginger and Leek

This is a super simple dish. Made for sharing as a sign of good luck, it's light, clean tasting and fairly healthy. Delicate white fish is ideal, such as sea bass or sole, but you can also use cod, snapper, whiting, turbot, barramundi, monkfish, etc.


Chinese Steamed White Fish with Garlic, Ginger and Leek.
Serves 2-4

Ingredients
2 fillet of white fish, or a whole cleaned and gutted fish.
1 tsp salt
a thumb size ginger, finely shredded
1 carrot, finely shredded
1 leek, finely shredded
3 spring onions, sliced
1 fresh red chilli sliced
2 cloves garlic, finely sliced
1 tbsp light soy
2 tbsp dark soy 
1 tbsp groundnut oil, or flavorless oil such as sunflower, rapeseed, but never olive!
2 tsp sesame oil
Optional: Tender broccoli stems
a handful of mushrooms


**Dark soy missing from photo


Pat the fish dry with kitchen paper. Put a serving/dinner plate into a steaming basket, and place the fish on it. Rub salt on both sides of the fish and leave for half hour.
By the way, I was making two separate plates per fillet as the other one needed to be mushroom-free



Meanwhile, prep all the veg and aromatics.



Scatter the top of the fish with first ginger, then carrots, and then leek. If using broccoli and mushroom, or any veg of your choice, place these on the sides of the fish. The reason I put these down as optional as some might prefer to serve them as a side dish and stir-fry them instead. I just took the easy route and throw them together with the fish. Less cleaning is always good. Besides they add colour to the plate!





Fill a wok or deep pan with 3-4 cups of water. Cover tightly with lid and bring the water to the boil over a high heat. Remove the lid to place the steamer on the wok. Gently steam the fish until it is just cooked. Timing depends on thickness of fish:
Super-flat fish: 5 minutes
Fillet just under an inch: 7 minutes
Fillet over an inch: 10 minutes, plus 2 min for every 1/2" extra
A whole fish: 12-14 minutes.
Also, it's important to check that the wok/pan doesn't dry out, so if need be add more boiling water into it while steaming.



A couple of minutes before the fish is cooked, heat the groundnut and sesame oils together in a small pan. When they are hot, add the garlic slices and brown them.



When the fish is cooked, sprinkle on the spring onions and chillies, and drizzle light and dark soy sauces on top. Pour the garlic-oil mixture over the top of the fish. Hear the sizzling leeks crisp up!



Serve immediately with steamed rice.