Sawaddee ka welcome to hot Thai kitchen I am making a super easy and healthy steamed fish dish today
called pla neung see ew now pla means fish neung means to steam and see ew means soy sauce now
in Thailand there are two types of steamed fish that is very very popular one is with lime and
garlic which I have a recipe for and the other one is this one so let's get started so first
let's make the sauce so the sauce is very simple I've got half a cup of pork stock in here but you
can use chicken stock as long as it's unsalted I'm gonna season this simply with soy sauce and oyster
sauce I did oil the bowl so that the oyster sauce would slide out a little bit easier to cut all
that salt a little bit of sugar next ingredient is something new that I've not used before of any
other recipe and that is Chinese cooking wine cooking wine comes in a bottle like this and
it's basically rice wine it's got a little bit of salt in it so it's a bit salty a little bit sweet
it's got a really interesting flavor the smell because it's rice wine is reminiscent of sake
when I smell it if you can't find it or you don't have it it's widely available in Chinese grocery
store but you can use dry sherry if you've got that on hand or if you want to leave it out you
can do that as well just need a tablespoon of that a dash of sesame oil now sesame oil just
be careful with it I find that you put too much of it like a little goes a long way so much of
it makes food smell kind of like skunks to me yeah so this is all my liquid ingredients next is the
non liquid ingredients shiitake mushrooms I love shitake mushrooms in this dish particularly the
Dryad variety they are widely available in Asia Asian grocery stores and I like using dried for
this dish because when shaggy mushrooms get dried they develop this sort of a hmm an earthy savory
smell that really stands out in this dish that the fresh ones don't have and all you have to
do is soak this I like to use hot water and I usually like to soak it for an hour so it
becomes completely completely soft then squeeze out all the excess liquid and then thinly slice
them I take out the stems of stems are usually bit tough and then they're gonna add the sort of chewy
savoriness to this dish so the sauce is very fast very easy which means make sure you've got all
your ingredients ready to go so I'm gonna start simply by sauteing our garlic and blender lots and
lots of ginger the ginger I didn't peel because I discovered that you don't have to cube ginger it
makes no difference whatsoever and I probably get more nutrients from the ginger this way the ginger
works really well with fish and in Thailand we say what it doesn't is duck how the fish and duck
cow means it takes away any sort of fish penis or gay meanness if you're doing sort of bread
meat I'm also gonna add the shiitake mushrooms gonna add a little more oil what I'm trying to
do is I'm trying to get the aroma the flavor from the garlic and the ginger and the mushrooms into
the oil so that the in the end the oil will help flavor everything else will help distribute all
that good stuff and I just want some of the garlic and ginger to start browning and then go in with
all my liquid ingredients and this is why and I can mix everything ahead of time then I'm not you
know standing here figuring out what I have to do and then one last important ingredients is white
pepper and love white pepper knowing this recipe is not spicy no chilies nothing at all and so I do
still though want subtle heat which is what white pepper is perfect for and you know normally I'd
grind my own but sometimes it's just convenient to have something already browned normally I
would make the sauce while the fish is steaming okay so just to be I'm efficient but because I
only have one stove that you can see anyway so I can only do this one thing at a time I'm just
gonna bring this to a boil and let it simmer for about 30 seconds just to marry and mingle all the
flavors and then give it a taste and the sauce is pretty much done so fish time the steamer is
going on full blast now fish I am using black cod for this but you can use absolutely any type of
white fish for this in my Facebook post last week I posted one where I use halibut tilapia is good
barramundi is really really common in Thailand I'm just using black cod cos when I was at the start
was kind of talking to me the thing about black cod is if you get fillet like this you will see
pin bones that run through the middle and I can feel it with my fingers here and unlike salmon pin
bones return the stuff enough unlike salmon pin bones black cod pin bones don't come out easily
when the fish is not cooked so what you can do is cook the fish and when it's cooked before
you put on the sauce pull them out and those slide out easily in Thailand we eat fish with
bones in all the time so we normally just leave it in and people just navigate through it but
if you're serving this in a setting where people are not used to eating bone and fish you have to
have to remove it or at least warn them and tell them that hey there's pin bones running down the
center so very simple I'm gonna steam this fish until it's done just all by itself it doesn't need
anything because everything all the flavor and the good stuff is in the sauce I'm gonna go in
so the timer just went off and this is looking good see all these pin bones that are now visible
if you want at this point you just go in and pull them out and they'll come out easily so you can do
that but I'm gonna leave it in because it's just me and I know to navigate okay so couple things we
need to do before we move on first of all you see all that liquid that's collected in here for this
actually I'm going to get rid of it because it will kind of mess up the sauce so I'm just gonna
pour it in right into the steamer as I'm done with the water anyway and then just pour it right over
and this is what I love about black caught too is all these flakes it makes for little sauce pockets
almost that one last final touch some green oh it's right here some green onions lots and lots
of green onions and it's gonna add that final enemy flavor and also some nice color I'm gonna
just go crazy with this dose this is two green onions now before i surf close this he is off and
just using residual steam for about now 15 seconds just to wilt the green onions and it'll just help
soften that flavor and distribute it a little bit better so now we wait that looks good a dish to
impress and it was so easy and if something if you've got a whole fish really really good way
to cook a whole fish and you can feed a lot of people without a lot of work so depends each
the fish black cod is so tender it's really annoying so I'm just kind of melts in my mouth
please use the mushrooms it's just it's got that chewy salty savoriness this just when I complete
the dish all I need is some hot rice and just go ahead and dose all that sauce all over the
rice it'll be perfect so I hope I hope you give this a try this is fast easy looks impressive
there's no weird ingredients the Chinese cooking wine is actually really easy to find if you've
got an Asian grocery nearby so there really should be no reason why you don't want to do
this so when you do send me a photo Facebook Twitter or Instagram and the recipe is on
my website hotthaikitchen.com and I will see you next time for your next delicious time you