Teochew steamed fish

Ingredients
1 sea bass
50 g silken tofu
1 packet of preserved vegetables
8 cherry tomatoes

Sauce
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 1/2 tbsp chinese wine
4 tbsp water

Garnish
1 spring onion, finely chopped
1 tbsp of ginger finely chopped
1 chilli, finely chopped

Season the sea bass with salt and pepper and place in a bowl. Add the preserved vegetables, tofu, preserved vegetables and tomatoes.

Mix the sauce components and pour over the fish. Add the garnish on top.

Steam for 15 minutes in a steamer.

Cataplana seafood stew

From Traditional Portuguese Cookery
Serves 4

Ingredients
200g of monkfish
200g of white grouper
200g of snapper
150g of shrimp
150g of fresh clams, cleaned
100g of chorizo
2 onions
2 cloves of garlic
2 tomatoes
1 pepper
200ml of oil
200ml of white wine
1 bay leaf
1 sprig of parsley
salt and pepper to taste

Season all of the fish with salt. Peel the onions and garlic, chop up the garlic and cut the onions into half moons. Wash the tomatoes and slice it. Cut the peppers into strips without the white skin and seeds. Thinly slice the chorizo.

Place half of the onion, garlic, pepper, tomato and chorizo into the “Cataplana”. Add the bay leaf and season with a little salt and pepper. Sautee at medium heat until softened. Add the fish and cover with the rest of the onion, garlic, tomato, pepper and chorizo, adding the parley. Add the oil and white wine. Close the cataplana and cook the mixutre for 20 minutes at low heat.

After adding the clams and the shrimp. Let it cook gently for another 10 minutes, then the mixture and place the Cataplana on the table. Serve with boiled potatoes.

“A Cataplana is an item of cookware used to prepare Portuguese seafood dishes, popular on the country’s Algarve region. It is traditionally made of copper and shaped like two clamshells hinged at one end and able to be sealed using a clamp on either side of the assembly. The cataplana was invented by Armando Luz (1927-2002), better knowned by its nickname, “Pató”. “Pató” was an artist that work crafting the copper and the stainless steel, and was recognized with an award back were he lived in Portugal, with the key of the town and a silver medal that was offered to him due to his contribution to the Algarve. He was also the inventor of the machine to make cataplanas using stainless steel and was the only one who produced such a product.”

Obviously I don’t have a cataplana and so I used my cast iron pot instead. The stew is effectively a lighter version of a rich tomato based stew (i.e. with a can of tomatoes thrown in) and its the white wine that’s the star of this dish. You can use any combination of fish for this.

Sea bass with sizzled onions, ginger and chilli

From BBC Goodfood
Serves 6

Ingredients
6 x sea bass fillets, about 140g/5oz each, skin on and scaled
about 3 tbsp sunflower oil
large knob of ginger , peeled and shredded into matchsticks
3 garlic cloves , thinly sliced
3 fat, fresh red chillies deseeded and thinly shredded
bunch spring onion , shredded long-ways
1 tbsp soy sauce

Season the fish with salt and pepper, then slash the skin 3 times. Heat a heavy-based frying pan and add 1 tbsp oil. Once hot, fry the fish, skin-side down, for 5 mins or until the skin is very crisp and golden. The fish will be almost cooked through. Turn over, cook for another 30 secs-1 min, then transfer to a serving plate and keep warm. You’ll need to fry the fish in 2 batches.

Heat the remaining oil, then fry the ginger, garlic and chillies for about 2 mins until golden. Take off the heat and toss in the spring onions. Splash the fish with a little soy sauce and spoon over the contents of the pan.

My mom taught me how to cook this Chinese dish a long time ago. I have forgotten all about it until I chanced upon this recipe on the BBC website. Really simple dish to make, but full of flavour.

Baked sea bass with tomato confit and black olives

From I Know how to Cook – Ginette Mathiot
Serves 2
Ingredients

1 garlic clove
1 sea bass, about 800g, gutted and cleaned
100ml olive oil plus extra to serve
50g butter
12 sun-dried tomatoes
12 black olives, stoned
pepper
salt
12 basil leaves, chopped

Preheat the oven to 160 degrees. Rub an oven proof dish with the garlic clove, and place the sea bass in the fish. Pour in the olive oil, lemon juice and 100ml water over the fish, and dot with the butter. Bake for about 16 minutes, basting frequently. To check whether the fish is cooked, insert a wooden toothpick: it should pass easel through the thickest part of the fish. If it does not, cook for a further 5 minutes before checking again. Just before the fish is cooked, add the tomatoes and olives to the dish and return to the oven.

When the fish is cooked, drain the cooking juices into a small pan, place on a high heat and simmer until half the liquid has evaporated. Add a splash of olive oil and season with salt and pepper. To serve, return the reduced sauce to the oven proof dish with the sea bass and garnish with the basil.

This is a Franck Raymond recipe, the head chef at Mon Plaisir at Covent Garden, London. Have to admit I wasn’t a huge fan of that restaurant, I went there once and I thought it was alright, nothing really fantastic. But I suspect my impression of that dinner was marred by the fact that I was sat right next to the cheese board. I actually didn’t know what the smell was until someone unveiled the cheese board by removing the cloth that was covering it.

Anyway, this is a good simple recipe for sea bass. I used sea bass fillets rather than the whole fish. I am now tempted to go back to Mon Plaisir to get a second opinion on the food there!