Sawaddee ka welcome to hot Thai kitchen if you're having a dinner party anytime soon
I've got a great recipe for you if you ever been to Thailand you probably noticed that
we like to eat our fish whole and so I recently got a request for a whole fish crusted in snowy
flaky salt and grilled and this is called pla pao gleua now pla means fish pao gleua literally means to
burn but in this context to grill and then Kahlua is salt now you can often see these being grilled
fresh on the streets of Thailand however I want to show you today away you can easily make this
at home just using your regular oven and by the time I'm done you can do this recipe either in
the oven or on the grill if you want so let's get started so whenever Thai people cook with
fish we love to bombard it with herbs because fresh herbs especially tie-ups help mitigate any
fishy nests from the fish so I've got here some garlic and some galangal which these are frozen
I'm using them directly from frozen kaffir lime leaves citrus aroma is the best at mitigating
fishiness some lemongrass which I've crushed also frozen and pandan leaves now I often use this
in desserts and sweets cuz this is sort of our vanilla but we sometimes use it in savory and in
this application it makes a fish have this floral aroma it's so so good so I'm gonna put all this in
my food processor here now some people just make just crush them in a mortar and pestle and that's
fine too but I find that if I blitz it a little more fine the aroma really comes out stronger
all of us smell that smells so good and that's it let's look at the fish so meets mr. fish I'm
using today ocean perch and I got perched today because actually it was on sale at the store but I
love using perch because it's got a mild flavored flesh that is very versatile and it's inexpensive
so it's a good sort of everyday cooking fish any white mild flavored fish will work ok so
what I've done is at the fishmonger they took out the guts they scaled it which is not traditional
a lot of times in Thailand they will leave the scale of the fish on it'll make peeling of the
skin easier at the end but I like to not have the scale because that will allow the salt to
penetrate and season the flesh a little bit that's an option for you so you can decide how you want
to do that so first I'm going to stuff the the belly with the herbs and now the herbs are not
actually going to flavor the flesh itself it's sort of confined in the cavity so the belly meat
will get the flavour of the herbs but not so much the back meat but what it will do is as
you eating it you can smell the herbs and it's sort of like a the aroma dimension of your meal
and now the salt so I am using fine kosher salt for this not the superfine table salt something
that looks snowy like kosher salt works great so something like this which is sort of nice
and fluffy works perfectly I'm going to just Pat this salt all over the fish and what the
salt does this is my theory anyway the salts are shrinks the skin and then it prevents the juice
from the meat to escape during the cooking because what you find is that when the fish is done it is
so juicy like so incredibly juicy and you won't see a lot of liquid coming out of the fish as
it cooks and the skin will be really tight so just you doesn't have to be thick so this is
not like the Spanish way of making this massive you know cave of salt for the fish it's just a
coating others and I always want to make sure I get under his armpits all right and that is it
how easy is that it's ready to go into the oven so I'm gonna transfer this guy over to my other
tray here with parchment paper so mr. fish here is gonna go into a 350 degree oven Fahrenheit for 25
minutes roughly depending on the size this guy is about two pounds and if you want to go old-school
and grill it you can go ahead and do that make sure your grill is quite low you want the fish
to cook slow and low and it should also take about 25 to 30 minutes on the grill and that's it all
right now the dipping sauce and as you can see the flavor of the fish is gonna be quite simple salts
are only seasoning this is where it gets a little interesting now you can make the ultimate seafood
dipping sauce which I have a video for I'll put the link right up here that works really well but
I want to show you a version that I love it's sort of like in Nam Tim Dao which is used for barbecued
things but I'm adding some roasted peanuts for a little extra crunchy richness so I'm gonna start
out with dry chili so these are dry chilies that I actually roasted in the oven just you know next to
the fish for literally three to four minutes until they start to become a little dark and smoky and
I'm gonna pound this into basically chili flakes and that's it and now some fresh garlic that raw
garlicky bite works so well with seafood just like that I'm gonna add my palm sugar so I've
got finely chopped palm sugar here you can use brown sugar or white sugar if you want but you
know me I love my butterscotch e palm sugar so now the palm sugar is dissolved it's sort of a
paste I'm adding some roasted peanuts and I always get my peanuts raw and then roast them fresh and
we're not doing peanut butter here I just want to get them ground up because I want that texture
there you go just like that and now tamarin is gonna give a little bit of thickness and richness
tartness and of course fresh lime juice we don't have seafood without fresh lime juice in Thailand
some fish sauce of course it's gonna be super fishy fish and now I'm gonna add some freshness
with chopped cilantro if you don't like cilantro you can add mint which I'm also gonna add but you
can just do almond or green onions and the mint I was talking about mmm oh that was super easy and
this is not just good on fish it's good on your grilled chicken breast is good on say it's good on
anything all right so the fish is done it smells amazing what I want to do before I put it on a
serving platter and this is optional is I like to get rid of the extra salt first because sometimes
I find that if the salt makes it to the actual serving plate people will accidentally get a big
chunk of salt when they eat it and then it's super salty right and just brush off the extra salt and
it'll sort of dried and flaked off pretty easily and on the other side too just go under and brush
it off mm-hmm tada and my plate is just big enough for this yay and then this little bundle of mint
can be where my sauce sits look how cool that is you want some nice hot jasmine rice with this and
the most important thing I'll say all day today is you don't eat the skin ok the skin is now really
really salty a lot of times when this gets served in Thailand the skin will be already peeled for
you okay so what I do is I just take a fork or a knife and just peel the skin off and if you leave
the scale on this is the part where it will become significantly easier for you okay because the
scale will just make it really easy for the skin to come off there we go but it'll still peel off
it's just a little stickier now Oh juicy that fish is ah that is the doing of the salts my friends a
little bit of sauce not too much because the fish will already be salty so oh and that's another
thing depending on the fish you use the saltiness will vary some fish has thicker skin so the fish
flesh itself won't be quite as salty some will have thinner skin more salty so that's something
you'll have to adjust okay the fish is so juicy now perch has of a medium firm flesh so when you
make sure it's super super juicy it prevents it from becoming dryer cap it's perfect for fish
like this and the saltiness sort of penetrates through the skin then season the flesh just right
the sloth despite the expression peanutty works really well and once you get to that belly I am
telling you if you've got lots of people around the table you want to go for that belly meat so
I hope you give this a try the recipe as always will be on hot Thai Kitchen calm when you make it
send me a photo on Facebook Twitter or Instagram and if you haven't subscribed to the show please
do so you never miss an episode and I will see you next time for your next delicious Thai meal that
and make sure keep the grill heat low and let the cooked fish slowly the fish cook slow hello