Sweet and Sour Fish is a common and popular dish amongst the Chinese. There are a few ways to cooking it and here, I will be sharing with you my method. I like a lot of vegetables in it and sometimes I cook extra to keep in the refrigerator and can be eaten cold the next day or a few days later. All I have to do is to grill or shallow fry a seasoned fish or prawns to go with them.
Black Pomfret is more commonly and often used and which I will be using here. Sometimes, I cook with salmon steaks too. I usually keep a supply of them in the freezer just in case I need an easy and quick fix that will suffice as a simple dinner but with good nutrients. Just the other day was an example. I had not done marketing for that week and did not have the usual vegetables to dress up this dish. Therefore, I had to make do with whatever I had remaining in the refrigerator and adjusted the seasoning and marinade. I grilled the salmon instead of frying and since I did not want any rice for that day, I made them with less sauce. Thankfully, the dish turned out great although unlike the typical style.
Sweet and Sour Fish
1 Black Pomfret (600g)
150g cucumber
200g tomatoes
20g carrot
50g green bell pepper
1 small fresh red chilli
80g half ripened pineapple (without skin and eyes)
80g onion
2 pips garlic
2 slices ginger
80ml water
1 1/2 tsp cornflour
Peanut oil or other
Marinade Ingredients
1/2 tbsp vinegar
1 1/2 tbsp chilli sauce
1 tsp brown sugar
1/2 tsp salt
Preparation
- Peel cucumber skin on alternate sides, quarter lengthwise and remove seeds with a spoon. Slice into narrow diagonals and then each diagonal piece into half.
- Mix the Marinade Ingredients together and pour over the cucumber. Set aside.
- Scale, trim, gut and clean the fish well. Make two incisions on each side and season with salt.
- Slice tomatoes into small wedges.
- Slice pineapple, carrot, bell pepper, chilli and onion into similar sizes as the cucumber.
- Mince garlic and ginger.
How to cook
- Heat enough oil to shallow fry the fish until cooked and nicely browned. Do not overcook. Remove to a serving dish.
- Discard some of the oil leaving behind about 1 tbsp of oil to saute the minced garlic and ginger.
- When lightly browned, add bell pepper and chilli and saute until aromatic. Scoop out into a plate and set aside.
- Add water, tomatoes, pineapple, carrot and bring to a boil. Then cover and simmer over low heat for 5 minutes or until slightly softened.
- Mix cornflour into the cucumber marinade and add in together with the sautéed pepper mixture and onion. Stir over high heat until cucumber is cooked but still crunchy. Sauce should be slightly thickened.
- Scoop out over fried fish and serve with rice.
** Fish be coated with flour first before frying although I prefer not to do that. Fish fillets can be used instead. If more sauce is preferred increase the amount of water and adjust the Marinade Ingredients and cornflour.
~Kim~
