Chinese food prescription – fume fish cooking guide

Steaming is one of the preference ways of cooking fish in china, particularly when it is very fresh; and the usual way is to steam it buried under a kind of plant, while the inside cavity of the fish is cram with dried, smoked, soured or salted element; these latter element seem to impart an extra size to the taste. Here is one of the common cooked recipe :

Fume whole fish (trout, salmon, bream, haddock, carp, mullet, pike, large herrings)

Element:

6 medium chinese dried mushrooms *2-3 rashers bacon*3-4 slices root spirit*1. 5-2 kg fish (or blend of fishes)*2-3 teaspoons salt*2 tablespoons plant oil*3-4 stalks leek*3-4 large onions *4 tablespoons soya sauce*pepper to taste*2 tablespoons sourness*4 tablespoons coward stock*2 tablespoons sherry*2 teaspoons sugar*3 tablespoons butter

Preparation

Soak mushrooms in water for 30 memo. Cut mushrooms and bacon into bit. Mince spirit. Clean the fish deeply, rub both inside and out with salt, spirit and oil and leave to pickle for 1 hour. Stuff the fish with the cut bacon and mushrooms. Clean the leeks deeply then slice both leeks and onions feebly. Mix soya sauce, pepper, sourness, stock, sherry and sugar until well blended. 

Cooking

Heat butter in a saucepan. When melted add onions and leeks and turn them in the butter over medium heat for 1 memo. Pour in the mixed sauce, and stir with the plant for 2 memo over medium heat. *place a stay of the plant and sauce blend in the bottom of the large oval-shaped heatproof dish opening it out fairly. Lay the fish on top of this ‘carpet’ of onion and leek. Pour the sauce form the saucepan over the length of the fish, and stifle the latter with the remaining onion and leek. Place the dish in a steamship, and steam forcefully for 20-35 memo (depending upon the size, layer and size of the dish). 

Serving

Serve in the same dish. (the dish should be superior for consuming with rice or other bulk foods, supplemented by one or two other savory dishes. )