Sawaddee ka welcome to hot thai kitchen today I'm actually in Coquitlam which is about an
hour outside of Vancouver listening with my friend Rodney what we have now Rodney is a fishing expert
and he recently caught this beautiful halibut so I'm here to give that halibut a little tight
reitman t' today we're making flat plate so black means fish that means to pour sauce over something
and plate means chili so it's basically a fish dish with a chewy base sauce that's sweet and sour
and super delicious now since Rodney's here when you take advantage of your knowledge and let you
educate us all a little bit about halibut so this is a wild Pacific halibut right now where is
their natural habitat right basically right along the coast of British Columbia you can find halibut
they usually hang around let's say 100 feet of water sometimes a little closer in early in the
season like spring tours as the season goes along they move into deeper waters will yeah so you can
find that along the coast of Vancouver Island all the way up the Queen shall ride cool and how big
was this fish that you can't well this Finch was around 20 pound so that's the typical size uh you
want to get when you go out and catch it they can grow up to a hundred pound that those fish are not
as good when it comes to eating so anywhere between ten and twenty pounds is what you're
looking for oh that's good to know now um you were talking about how what season halibut is available
in the store frozen year-round but when is a good season when is the season for fresh ones right you
can find halibut in Tennessee's all year round but the fishing season generally opens around early
April and you can last until the end of summer they changes every year so you have to check
the regulations before you go out okay and now how but you don't know this because you never buy fish
but I do and how it is a pretty expect the fish I've seen them as far as 34 dollars a pound now
for those of us who want something a little more affordable what would be an alternative that's
similar in characteristic as a halibut right for for white-fleshed fish like these the alternates
will be in BC with the rod fish and lingcod and occasionally you can also find Pacific cod as
well when it's in season and those three are definitely the cheaper alternatives in BC yeah
all right thanks Rodney hey welcome you ready to cook definitely congri let's go okay mm-hmm
so first I'm going to make the sauce I'm going to make the spice base for the sauce so I've got
here but four to five cloves of garlic into the mortar here and then I'm going to get a quarter
of a teaspoon of white peppercorns now in Asian cuisine when we say pepper it automatically is
assumed white peppercorn as close to here or you say salt and pepper that's leaning black and white
pepper and black pepper even though they're the same plant the white pepper is a little bit hotter
and has a different aroma so which actually makes a difference in this dish and then I've got about
two to three cilantro roots that I've chopped up here so that's pretty interesting people don't
usually use the roots no it's uh unfortunately really underappreciated of here in North America
it's just the root of the cilantro plant like this it's very aromatic now this can actually
withstand cooking as close to the leaves you can't cook the leaves right they turn black and they're
the fragrance is all gone this you can add to marinades and things like that so if you know
someone with a cilantro plant go ask them for the roots don't tell them why you're giving it to you
now this mixture here I'm just gonna pound into a rough paste it's actually a very basic spice paste
we use often in Thai cooking this is called a pataga campi type which means cilantro root garlic
and pepper and it's almost like a tinier pod comes out very often in Thai cooking so we'll just do a
rough piece so how long do you have to lose just until you get to a wrap paste and that's gonna
differ depending on how heavy-duty of Morris you can also do this in a blender but be very careful
not to overdo it just pulse it and you don't want it pure a so now that it's kind of halfway there
I'm going to add the remaining ingredients I'm going to add about two to three pretty fat or
spiritual ease and that's this big guy here which is very mild it's barely spicy if at all you could
substitute other kinds of mild red chillies bell peppers will work but bell peppers a little bit
watery but you know you gotta do what you've got to do and then I'm also going to add a little bit
extra spice some Thai chilies this is the green kind you can use red Thai chilies you don't have
to add this if you don't want it too spicy this dish is generally a pretty moderately spiced tick
but you can adjust that to however you want and now we're just going to grind this up to kind of
a rough paste as well so this is pretty much what you're going for you wanted a paste but you want
it kind of a rough pace otherwise the sauce won't have any texture you don't want it to be like
you know soup or anything so we're gonna set that aside and then look at the rest of our ingredients
which is our seasonings so if this dish is also called blossom broth which means three flavored
fish now those three flavors are sweet which is brought to you by three tablespoons of chopped
finely chopped palm sugar and which is about 30 grams I've also got a tablespoon and a half of
fish sauce which is our salty component and then for a sour component of god there's going to be
two and a half tablespoons of tamarind juice now the measurement when I give for tamarind
juice this applies all across recipes it's just an estimate the acidity of tamarind varies from
brand to brand from bottle to bottle particularly if you make it yourself from pulp so you just have
to taste and gauge it and then I've also got got a quarter cup of roughly chopped cilantro
I'm going to add at the end oh and another thing before I cut up all my spiritual eyes I saved a
couple of slices to have as garnish at the end so before you cut them all up don't forget to do that
all right let's go cook the sauce so I've got a pan here with couple tablespoons of canola oil in
here and we're going to saute our for a pace go in with that and we're doing this to basically open
up the to cook the garlic and the chilies and to also open up the flavors of the spices very
important part we're just going to cook this down for about a minute or so so what you're looking
for is for the mixture to start to dry up a little bit there's going to be a lot of juices that come
out on the chili and the Jews the liquid will prevent the mixture from getting hot so when it
starts to dry out that's when the the mixture is really going to start heating up and opening out
all the flavors to this I'm going to add our palm sugar I'm adding the palm sugar first so that it
gets first dibs at the intense heat but it can start melting and once you see that the palm
sugar is starting to melt doesn't take very long especially if you chop it finely then you're going
to go in with the water and the water this is a quarter cup of water about Trevor mentioned that
but it's basically going to loosen up the sauce and mellow out the flame little bit and then the
fish sauce and then our tamarind juice and then we're just going to let just simmer for a minute
until it reaches a syrupy consistency and also this allows the herbs and spices and seasoning
to really mingle and marry and create a cohesive dish so that's the sauce the sauce it's fast and
now we gotta fry the fish and put the sauce on the fish stem is done so that's done what you want is
kind of like a thick syrupy consistency like this and then we're going to select the sit while we go
and fry up our fish so as you can see this fish has very uneven thickness and that's probably
going to be the case for a lot of fish I'm going to cut this so that we get a little bit more even
cooking into two pieces and so this piece is going to take a lot longer to cook than this one and I'm
also not going to season this and normally when you cook fish western-style with like a beurre
blanc or fruit salsa you want to season the fish well with salt but our sauce actually very strong
it's sweet and sour and salty MiFi that that's sufficient to flavor the fist the fish once
everything is tossed together I'm also going to oil the fish a little bit because halibut is a
lean fish and the layer of oil will slow down the moisture loss from the fish as it's cooking
in the pan oh I'm also going to pan fry this now I have to tell you that traditionally this fish
this dish is done with whole deep-fried fish but I know that a lot of people are not going to be able
to deep-fry a whole fish conveniently at home so I figured I want to show you a way you can
still enjoy this dish without it being a big messy production I've got a big nonstick sautee pan here
with some canola oil or vegetable oil heating at the same time now if you're using a nonstick
pan you never want to heat the pan up by itself without anything in it and the reason is because
the nonstick coating is sensitive to overheating and if the pan is heating by itself it's easy for
you to accidentally overheat it because you can't tell how hot the pan is if there's nothing in the
pan so that's why heating it together then you have something to watch and what we're
watching for is for the oil to start to shimmer and once it shimmers for a while that's when you
know that the oil is starting to get hot enough so we're going to go in with our fish now now always
presentation side down which side is presentation side whatever side is prettier so see this is nice
and clean this one has a lot of grey spots you want to go down with the presentation side because
when the pan is trash that's when that's when the Browning is nicer and more even so we're going to
let this go and don't touch it don't move it until you're ready to flip it this one's not ready yet
I'm left with this one and how you know is you basically watch the opacity line when it comes
up the thickest part about halfway through that's when you know you want to flip it this one has
a little bit longer to go that's what you want that's what you're looking for that is a chance
by not touching it I know it's hard sometimes but nice now this side is always going to take less
time than it did the other side because when you start it out the fish is cold so for the cold fish
to cook halfway through that is going to take longer than for our fish that's been somewhat
warm through so cook a little bit a little bit the other half through so if the first half took
you say six minutes this half should only take maybe three to four minutes so this little piece
here has a thick edge I'm just going to almost done through I'm just going to quickly clear this
part and that prevents this part from overcooking because that's done and it gives a nice color to
that cut surface and it also cooked the other side exclusively the thicker side so every fish
is different which is why I always have to look in and make a good judgment and what you need to do
remove it now how do I know this is done there's a few ways to a few things you could do first you
can feel it like the way you would feel a stake and what you're looking for is firm firmness
and it springs back if it's still raw it would be kind of mushy and you can also look at the flaking
fish has flakes and the natural seams will start to split when it's done and if you're not sure
you can always go in with a little knife pry it open and to see if it flakes easily there's also
residual cooking carryover cooking so you want to keep that in mind especially for a thick piece
like this it'll stay hot and keep cooking a little bit after you remove it from the pan so you got to
take that into consideration so the fish is done and I'm just going to quickly reheat the sauce
and at this point because it's been sitting if you look at it and it looks like it needs a little bit
more water if it's dried out over while it was sitting now is the time to add water and adjust
consistency and then once it's boiling I'm going to turn it off and then add some chopped cilantro
this is optional you don't have to but thing is just a nice color nice freshness and let's go
plate okay so is it ready yeah it's pretty much ready and you want to have jasmine rice ready for
this as well so for nicer presentation rather than just drenching the whole thing in sauce you want
to spoon a couple of tablespoons over and then the just pour it on the side that way the crispy bits
stay crispy and it's not you know just covered and sauce so this is a pretty typical I guess lunch
dish actually this would be a typical dinner dish yeah because as I said before it typically uses a
hole a hole deep right so it's a pretty elaborate thing so remember these two that we saved it's a
pretty elaborate thing to to have and that's it this is our pas de creme and thanks Rodney for
the fish this is definitely your prototype yeah you actually have a video of you catching this
hell yeah so I'll put that link in the description of my video and if you've got any more questions
about fishing you can visit fishing with rod calm and thanks for tuning in for this written
recipe visit hog-tied kitchen calm and I will see you next time for your next delicious time