Doesn't TaZte Like Chicken

Location: My tiny kitchen

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.

Location:
McKim Wonton Mein Saga   
1180-8788 McKim Way , Richmond , BC V6X 4E2
604-270-6632

There are two Chinese restaurants that I like and I would visit again and again in the lower mainland. One of them is Kirin, a chain of outstanding restaurants offering fine dining on southern and northern Chinese cuisine. Although I love Kirin’s peking duck, braised abalones and the lobster served in rich cream sauce, for everyday Chinese food, I always visit McKim’s. Famous for their wonton noodles, McKim’s is a causal, almost diner-like restaurant. Right next to the entrance stands the open kitchen where big pots of soup are boiling away and many woks are swung in the air cooking different types of stir-fry.

The selection of stir-fry at Mckim’s is incredible. Besides the usual beef and broccoli, chicken stir-fry in black bean sauce and chop suey, Mckim’s has many stir-fry dishes which I consider traditional homemade comfort food. I always tell ET that the food at McKim’s tastes exactly like my mom’s cooking.

The scrambled egg with shrimps and chives is always one of the classic Chinese home-cook dishes. Like the way eggs are prepared by the French, the eggs must not be overcooked for this dish; they should be slightly runny. As I’m never shy to admit, I’m a meatatarian by choice and rice isn’t the most essential item for me in a meal. However, I always ask for a hot bowl of rice to enjoy with this dish.

Lightly coated with syrup, the honey glazed spare ribs is crunchy and has just enough sweetness to satisfy my husband’s sweet tooth. When I order pork served in a sweet sauce like the honey glaze or the sweet and sour sauce, I’m always worry about getting a plateful of fatty pork pieces. The spare ribs served at McKim’s were lean and crunchy.

I always thought seafood are prepared quite well in Chinese cooking. The steamed fish is a good example. This is a steamed sole with cilantro, green onion with a slightly sweet soy sauce. The sweet soy sauce is the best thing in this dish. If you haven’t tried this already, next time when you have steamed fish, try mixing soy sauce into the rice. My dad used this trick to get me eat more rice when I was small. The rice tastes delicious after soaking up the delicious flavour of the fish from the soy sauce.

At the end of our meal, the waitress kindly asked us if we would like to have desserts, which will be on the house. I was really full with the eggs, the fish, the honey spare ribs, but my husband wouldn’t turn down dessert. The glutinous rice sweet soup was standard but it was a good way to end a comfort meal.