Hello my friends, what's your menu for today? Let's explore with me a popular dish in central Vietnam- "steamed carp with cabbage pickles" through my story today.
My story and the reason why I cook this dish today.
The story begins like this: This morning my aunt came to my house and gave my father a pregnant carp for him to release in the pond. When it arrived it was still alive, I put it in a basin of water and let it swim there, then I talked to my aunt, after a while I went in to see the fish was on the floor and steaming repent. I looked out and I saw my cat standing there "meow meow", my cat was like seeing fish as if I saw money, it bravely pounced on my fish. I froze for 5 seconds thinking about what happened and what should I do with this fish. I was afraid that my father would scold me for being careless so I was confused for a few minutes. Then I decided to have fish on the menu today.
Actually, I really like to eat fish, I like fish more than meat because my mother said that eating fish will make me keep fit, so since I was a child, I have loved to eat fish. What do you do with a big fish of about 3 kg? Or how do you usually cook fish? I usually steam or bake, but today I was taught a new way of cooking which is steamed, steamed fish with Cabbage pickles. Have you ever eaten that dish? Let's also learn how to cook this dish.
prepare materials
First, let's prepare the necessary ingredients to cook this dish. To have a delicious steamed fish dish, one needs to have a perfect fish, carp is the first candidate for this dish. Please choose a carp about 1.5 kg to 2 kg. My baby is 3 kg today so I can't cook it all at once but I will divide it into 2 meals.
The ingredients for my dish.
One carp: 15-2 kilograms
Lemongrass: 500g
Chili: 200g
pepper: 2 tablespoons
onion: 3
Tomatoes: 5
pineapple:1
ginger. 1
Salt: 3 tablespoons
molasses: 3 tablespoons
Cooking oil: 2 tablespoons
This is the portion I prepared for 5 people, you can increase or decrease the amount depending on your family.
How to buy delicious fish
You should choose strong fish swimmers, have transparent eyes, pink gills, iridescent scales, and no strange color skin. In addition, if you see fish with abnormal signs such as swelling, weak swimming, or pale color. You should not choose to buy because they will have a smell when we cook and if the fish got disease they will be unhealthy.
How to make the " steamed fish with cabbage pickles"
As with this name, it is just putting fish and cabbage pickles together. It is quite simple, right?
Step 1: Prepare ingredientsWhen buying fish, we clean the scales and then cut open the abdomen, remove the intestines and eggs (if any) separately. My fish today has a lot of eggs in its belly so I will use these eggs to make another soup.
With cabbage pickles, when we buy them at the market, we should wash them with water to ensure hygiene.
Tomatoes: we cut 1 fruit vertically into 4 parts.
Ginger, lemongrass, onion: chopped.
Pineapple: peel off the skin, and cut away the thorns to make the pineapple sweeter. Pineapple is also cut vertically into 4 parts and then slice into small pieces with a thickness of 1 inch so that the pineapple can ripen evenly and not be too soft when steamed.
Add some cooking oil, then add the onions and fry, then add tomatoes and pineapple stir all the ingredients until it’s completely blended, then add the fish and add spices including ginger, lemongrass, molasses, salt, seasoning, pepper. and add 1 bowl of water, wait until the fish is boiling, we add cabbage pickles and steam for another 20 minutes. That's it, the steamed carp with cabbage pickles is complete and delicious.
While waiting for the fish to cook, I turned to cook soup with fish eggs, ambarella leaves, and bitter leaves.
this soup is simple to cook too.
IngredientsAmbarella leaves and bitter leaves, fish eggs, onions, salt, seasoning, pepper, chili.
Ambarella leaves
bitter leavesAmbarella leaves and bitter leaves I chopped into small pieces.
We put fish eggs first, then put the spices including salt, onions, seasoning and pepper and 2 bowls of water, Bring to a boil and add the leaves.
In order to have a delicious soup, we should add vegetables when we are close to eating so that the soup is fragrant and hot.
last stepPut herbs on the fish and arrange them on a plate.
Add the Ambarella leaves and bitter leaves to the soup boil for another 5 minutes to complete.
Here is my result! It is really worth the effort and time that I have spent preparing the dish for my family. The steamed carp with cabbage pickles with hot rice is really great.😍
So I have finished sharing how to make my "steamed carp with cabbage pickles " and the lunch, if you have any new and interesting ways to cook, you can share them with me and everyone else in the community! I would be happy to read your story and know the new way to cook.