Last weekend, a friend couple invited ET and I over to their house for dinner. Cantonese hotpot was the theme of the night and when we arrived, my friends already had everything ready. A full dining table of hotpot items were beautifully laid – sliced fatty beef (lots of it!), different kinds of meatballs, shrimp, geoduck (so expensive!), different kinds of mushrooms…it will take up a whole paragraph if I were to name everything. As I scanned across the table greedily, my eyes brightened up when I saw the big pile of beef slices and other kinds of meat. “How did you know what I like for hotpot?”, I happily asked my friend B. “Well, your blog doesn’t have many recipes on seafood, so we figure to go with more meat than seafood”. What a good friend B is – she always knows what I want .

B’s comment made me think of the few seafood recipes that I have. After giving myself a good 10 minutes of recollection, I remembered a basic, common and traditional Cantonese steamed fish recipe in which the whole fish is steamed with julienned ginger. After the fish is cooked, a big pile of julienned green onion and cilantro are placed on top of the fish on which hot oil was spooned. To finish, a generous amount of good quality soy sauce is drizzled on the fish. Together, ginger, green onion and cilantro makes the classic for white fish.

My fish recipe is a spin-off of the traditional Cantonese steamed fish recipe. Instead of using whole fishes which could be difficult to find, my recipe works on any type of white fish fillets. I like boiling the fillets instead of steaming them, since boiling removes the fishy smell. When you try this recipe, you will be amazed by how convenient it is – it takes almost no time to prepare.

To serve this dish to two people you will need:

- 2 cod/sole/halibut fillets
- 5 green onions
- 1 small bunch of cilantro
- good soy sauce
- Maggi sauce
- Red pepper flakes (optional)

1. In a quart pan, bring water to a boil. Put the fillets into the water and let it simmer for 3 minutes.
2. Gently take the fillets out of the water and let it drain.

3. Finely slice the green onion and remove the stalk part of the cilantro. Place the green onion and cilantro on the fillets.
4. In a quart pan, put in 4 tbsp of vegetable oil. Heat the oil until it is very hot, about 1 or 1 and 1/2 minute.
5. Pour the hot oil over the fish (be careful with this as the oil might splatter).
6. Drizzle a good amount of soy sauce over the fillets. Drizzle a few drops of Maggi sauce on the fish. Finally, finish off by sprinkling a few red pepper flakes over the fish.

The best way for me to enjoy this dish is with rice.