Chinese Steamed Fish – Food Photography Challenge [June 2012]

This month’s challenge was fish! It’s not something I typically cook (“things I typically cook” largely being limited to pasta, tacos or eggs) but this is why the food challenge is good for me – to learn how to cook and have fun photographing it :) I got this Chinese Steamed Fish recipe from Poh’s kitchen, a slightly fancier version of the steamed fish that my mum makes. I love that Poh’s recipe has a video – I love watching something being done at least once before I need to do it, I suspect I’m a visual learner.

Unfortunately, in my excitement about buying fish I forgot to note down the name of it, some sort of Emporer! This Coles has a pretty cool display of fish :)

I thought the ginger would be overpowering but along with the other things for the fish marinade, it didn’t seem out of place. Along with the ginger, the recipe called for soy sauce, chinese rice wine and sesame oil. I used rice wine that my grandma made from scratch by fermenting glutinous rice for one month, which we periodically get from her in repurposed Jack Daniels bottles. I don’t know who it is that drinks the Jack Daniels, but it’s not her!

I sliced the fish so that the marinade would infuse into the meat better and it would cook more evenly during steaming. Discovered that there wasn’t that much meat to cut through on this fish anyway!

Here’s a shot of some barramundi fillets that I bought for my second attempt after I finally got my hands on a chinese steamer! I thought these shots fit into the narrative here. I actually preferred the fillet as it was easier to eat, but thought a whole fish would photograph better. My mum and brother enjoyed both incarnations of this recipe :D Back to images of the first attempt…

After the fish came out of the steamer, it looked at me accusingly with its opaque white, vacant stare. It was then dressed with additional shredded ginger, spring onion and coriander (may have gone slightly overboard with this) and then poured over some hot peanut / vegetable oil.

It tasted suspiciously like my favourite chicken rice from Broadway, we may have found the recipe or something very similar to it! My mum loved Poh’s chinese steamed fish recipe so much she asked me to use the same sauce to cook chicken and it did have a similar sort of taste.

Please follow our blog circle around to check out Valeria Howell of ZenMind Photography to see her fishy delights!