Braised Rainbow Trout in Chilli Bean Sauce (豆瓣鱼)

[khiemtran]

So, after an action packed day on Saturday, I decided to have a go at this classic Sichuanese dish. The recipe comes from Fuchsia Dunlop's excellent Every Grain of Rice, although, as usual, I haven't managed to follow it exactly. As you can see, the core ingredients are Chilli Bean Sauce; chopped garlic and ginger (roughly twice as much garlic as ginger); chicken stock; and one Rainbow trout.



First, here's the Rainbow trout, who doesn't look entirely happy about proceedings. This is a fish I rarely cook, but it looks very appealing.



A detail of one of the fins.



And the tail...



First up, some incisions are made on each side and the fish is rubbed with salt inside and out. Then the belly is rubbed with a splash of Chinese wine and the whole thing is left to marinate for ten minutes.



After discarding the juices and patting dry, the next step is to fry the fish in peanut oil. It doesn't have to be cooked through; the aim is just to make the skin golden.



Aiyeee! I've messed up, and the skin is coming off. Ah well, at least there'll be plenty of sauce to hide the results.



Next, pour off most of the oil and start frying some Sichuanese Chilli Bean paste until aromatic (I'm using the Lee Kum Kee paste here).



Add the garlic and ginger and fry until the aroma blooms.



Then add the fish and the stock. Return to boil and cook through, splashing the sauce all over the fish.



Finally, remove the fish; thicken the sauce with cornflour (Fuchsia uses potato sauce); add a splash of sesame oil; pour back over the fish and decorate with invisible chopped shallots (invisible because I didn't have any).



The final result:



Serve with rice and mixed vegetables.





Or, if you're Liem, with fish fingers...

Comments

[mnfaure.livejournal.com]

Or, if you're Liem, with fish fingers...

Bwahaha. I am definitely not Liem. :P

Ah, rainbow trout...reminds me of living by the Loire and the little watercourse, La Vauvise, that meandered along beside it, and the days we would go fishing...

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

Sounds great! Liem was actually quite keen to try fishing over Easter, but we ended up swimming at the beach instead.

[aliettedb.livejournal.com]

Oooh, that looks delicious (and simple to do, though I suspect I'd be breaking the trout as well in the frying stage :) ) Thanks!

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

Yes, I'll have to be a lot more careful next time. Unless there's some trick to keeping the skin on that I don't know about. I guess more oil would have meant moving the fish less, but it was already quite big for the wok and I didn't want to have too much oil sloshing around.

[carl-allery.livejournal.com]

Excellent pictures. Looks very nice. I alternate between salmon fillets and smoked mackerel currently. It's nice to see some alternatives.

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

Yes, I think I'll try the trout more often now. If I'm buying a whole fish, I'll usually get a small snapper or barramundi, mainly because I know and understand the bones. I think I have also since smoked trout at the fishmonger, but I've never tried it.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Boy that fish is so beautiful. So many things in this world are SO BEAUTIFUL.

And yeah, not much to be happy about from his perspective!

But mouthwatering from mine!

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

The fish fingers, on the other hand, are very hard to read.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I sense a deep resignation in the fish fingers.

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

I'm impressed! Finger-reading is far less popular than palmistry these days, but I guess it is very useful in some situations.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

They try to hide their secrets in behind a veil of breading, but we finger readers, we see all.

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

"No prints to work with, I'm afraid. The intruder wore gloves the whole time..."
"Yes, cheap ones. From Target. And they were very unhappy about the purpose to which they had been put."