All Entries Tagged With: "Fish"
Cheesy Fish and Spinach Casserole
Minoo shared a Cheesy Fish and Spinach Casserole recipe in the Gilmore Park Church Community Kitchen. She also made mash potatoes as the side dish to go with the casserole. This recipe serves 6.
This Cheesy Fish and Spinach Casserole is very simple and quick to make. It is a great recipe for a quick meal when you have a long day and do not want to labour in the kitchen. Kids will love this cheesy dish complete with vegetables and protein. All you need is a side dish of carbohydrate like mash potatoes, home made potato wedges, a simple noodle or rice dish.
Ingredients
- 1 bag fresh spinach (you may use pre-wash baby spinach)
- 1 cup cheddar or parmesan cheese
- 1/3 cup breadcrumbs
- 1 egg beaten
- 1 lb Basa or any while fish fillets like Cod, Sole, etc
- salt and pepper to taste
Red Cooked Tilapia
June Duo shared a fish recipe in the South Arm Community Kitchen. She called it Red Cooked Tilapia. Jane bought two fresh Tilapia from some Chinese groceries stores, not frozen ones. You can find live fish in some Chinese groceries stores where the fish monger will catch the one you pick and kill it for you there and then. This is very common in the Asia as freshness is the key to a delicious meal.
The Red Cooked Tilapia is sweet and sour and the spices used were able to overcome the fishy odour. This dish goes well with steamed rice.
Ingredients
- 1 Tilapia
- 2 green onions, chopped
- 3 cloves garlic, peeled and smashed
- 1 inch ginger, peeled and sliced
- 2 to 3 tablespoons ketchup
- 2 tablespoons rice vinegar
- 2 tablespoons cooking wine
- 1/4 teaspoon 13 spices powder (can be substituted with 5 spice powder)
- 3 star anise
- 1/2 teaspoon wild pepper corn
- 1 teaspoon sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 package of chicken seasoning
- 1/2 cup frozen mixed vegetables
- 2 to 3 tablespoons oil for frying
Fried Salmon Fillet
Once again, Julie shared in the South Arm Community Kitchen. Julie told us that when Vanessa called her on Monday for her help, she could’nt sleep that night as she was worrying of what to demonstrate in the cooking club. She is such a good friend to Vanessa that she would not say no to her.
As she was doing her rounds for the ingredients for her demonstration, she met a friend who works in a fish processing factory. This friend of her offered her some salmon fillets from her work place. That’s when Julie got her inspiration of her dish, which is Fried Salmon Fillet.
The Salmon Fillet is crisp and goes great with the home made salad dressing. The salad dressing is made with egg yolk, sugar, vinegar and olive oil.
Julie marinated the salmon fillet with salt, pepper, sugar, sesame seeds, garlic, ginger and rice wine for three hours. The last three ingredients help to get rid of the fishy smell from the fish.
Before frying, Julie coated the marinated salmon fillet with bread crumbs.
Julie used the Asian style bread crumbs which is more coarser than the Canadian bread crumbs. They are more like coconut flakes.
The salmon fillet is deep fried until golden brown in medium heat.
Julie served served her Fried Salmon Fillet with some slice tomatoes which has been sprinkled with plum powder. The plum powder adds some sweetness and a hint of sourness to the tomatoes, very tasty indeed. I seldom eat tomatoes just as it is but I ate a lot that day.
Chinese New Year Series: Yee Sang
Check out our other Yee Sang post and video here.
Eating Yee Sang in Malaysia and Singapore is a tradition every Chinese New Year. Yee Sang is basically a Chinese raw fish salad. Unlike Japanese, Chinese do not eat raw fish, preferring it cooked. However, this is the only Chinese dish which we know contains raw fish. However, I must add that this is a dish invented in Singapore and is popular only in Malaysia and Singapore. So, if you ask Chinese outside of Malaysia and Singapore, they will very likely not know what Yee Sang is.
Half the fun in eating Yee Sang is by a communal tossing of the salad with chopsticks. The action of tossing is known as Lo Hei which symbolizes increasing prosperity, abundance and vigor. That is why this dish is very popular among businessmen.
We gathered around the table with the kids to toss the Yee Sang. We had to make sure we briefed the kids how to toss or else, heaven forbid, they will throw the salad all over the place! They were excited over this alright. However, most of the kids does not like Yee Sang but the adults do.
The Yee Sang is characterized by it’s colorfulness. It is served in a large flat platter with vegetables arranged around a small serving of raw fish in the middle. It had been many, many years since Suanne and I have last eaten Yee Sang. So, we were glad when Jess told us she knows how to make it. It looked really good and it smells great too … just like the Yee Sangs I used to know.
It is a lot of work preparing this dish. Jess told us that she worked until midnight doing all the preparation and shredding of vegetables. Suanne did not get the exact amount of ingredients from Jess but Jess did provide a lot of details of how she made this. She is an expert cook and have done a lot of exotic dishes which Suanne had not even dare to try … dishes like Hokkien Mee. Jess is so expert she does not use measurements!
Here are some of the ingredients. For the raw fish, she uses salmon. For the vegetables, which provides the crunch to the salad, she uses the following:
- Green Papaya
- Daikon
- Carrots
- Turnip
- Jicama
- Yam
- Ginger
- Other vegetables suitable for this dish are cucumber and red cabbage. Any fruits or vegetables that can be thinly julienne and dont turn brown will be great for this dish.
The sauce (or salad dressing, is you may), consists of
- Plum Sauce
- Sesame Paste (1/3 volume of the Plum Sauce), and
- Honey (also 1/3 volume of the Plum Sauce)
The hardest work is to shred the vegetables into long thin strips. Mark found a way to use a serrated vegetable peeler to help the process. It sure cuts down the time taken but the strips are not fine. Good enough. Anyone knows another way to do this better?
Another important ingredient is the pomelo which is a fruit native to South East Asia. It is like a green orange the size of a basketball.
The ones below are shredded yam and coloured and fried in hot oil. This gives the dish a vibrant green and red. Other ingredients not shown here are some crispy fried dough or you can use fried wonton skin.
For the sauce, Jess cooked all the three sauces in low heat until one can smell the fragrance of the sesame paste.
The next important thing is presenting this on the platter. First off, arrange all the vegetables on a ring around the platter. Arrange it so that the colour balances. Next, the raw fish is places in the middle and topped with some sliced ginger. Squeeze some lime juice over the raw fish. Sprinkle the crispy dough (or fried wonton skins) around the dish, not covering the raw fish. Next, season the platter with five spice powder and pepper. Finally, drizzle the sauce with equal amount of vegetable oil around the entire dish. This gives a gloss to the dish.
Thanks Jess (and Mark for taking pictures!) for sharing this recipe. We all enjoyed this Yee Sang very much. I know where to go for a good Yee Sang the next Chinese New Year!
Salmon Motoyaki
We had a few oyster shells left over, twelve in fact. I know that the all-you-can-eact sushi places reuses the shells from the oyster motoyaki to serve what they call the Seafood Motoyaki which is basically motoyaki with salmon. This is Suanne’s version of the Salmon Motoyaki.
The salmon are first diced into small enough chunks.
The basic ingredients are the same with what was used for the oyster motoyaki — Japanese Moyannaise, diced onions and some fresh ground pepper.
Suanne sauteed the diced onions for a change. This will bring up the sweetness of the onions and give the same consistent texture with the salmon.
She also sauteed the salmon to lightly cook them. This is because the grilling will not really cook the salmon enough.
The end result — a balanced mix of onions and salmon.
Place the salmon-onion mix into the oyster shell and season it with freshly ground pepper …
… squeeze mayo on it … pop it into a pre-heated oven and just broil for 2-3 minutes until the moya is browned.
I tried the one below with a slight twist by adding some parmesan cheese. It gives a better crisp on the top and a slight cheesy flavour. This one surely tastes much better than the “Seafood Motoyaki” that we had in restaurants.
You know, I think Suanne had good fun cooking this but I sure enjoyed eating the motoyaki’s. It’s a very easy thing to try at home if you can set your mind off the mound of mayonnaise used.
Fry Fish Fillet with Guava and Fermented Soy Beans
This is a very Chinese homey dish. My kids will certainly love the fish fillet with the fermented soy bean. The guava gives this dish a unique flavour. You may substitute the guava with other vegetables like zucchini, cucumber, etc.
Ingredients
- 1 teaspoon chopped ginger
- 1 teaspoon chopped garlic
- 1 tablespoon fermented soy beans
- 1 medium sized guava, thinly sliced
- 1 lb Basa fillet
- salt and pepper to taste
- corn flour to coat the fish fillet
- 1/4 cup water
Click on the link below for the instructions.
Pacific Salmon Loaf
For this fall session, I’ll try to attend another community kitchen so that I can learn more variety of recipes from a different group. I’ll be going to Minoo’s group at Caring Place on Thursday morning every other week.
Minoo shared two recipes this week. The recipes are Pacific Salmon Loaf and Blueberry Muffins. The Pacific Salmon Loaf in this recipe uses can salmon but you may use any left over baked salmon or even can tuna. The Salmon Loaf is served with a cucumber sause.
Ingredients
- 2 (220g) cans salmon, drained and flaked
- 1/2 cup (125ml) dry bread crumbs
- 1/2 cup (125ml) chopped onion
- 1/3 cup (75ml) chopped green peppers (or any other color peppers)
- 1/3 cup (75ml) chopped celery
- 1/2 cup (125ml) mayonnaise
- 1 large egg
Ingredients for the cucumber sauce
- 1/2 cup mayonnaise
- 1/2 cup dairy sour cream or yogurt
- 1/2 cup finely chopped cucumber
- 2 tablespoons chopped onion
- 3/4 teaspoon dried dill
Click on the link for the instructions.
