Steamed Pompano Fish With Soy Sauce

Pla Nueng See-Ew

Recently I only cook one time a day, which is normally dinner, and then the leftover will be reheated for lunch the next day. So, most of my foods haven't met the natural light for me to have fun  photographing them anymore.

This delicious steamed Pompano with soy sauce, fresh ginger and shredded scallion was also our dinner, and was taken in a kitchen light, it might not produce a salivated pictures, but it's a great fish dish I so want to share, so let's go along with the fake light for a while.

It is such a light and good dish for dinner with easy preparation and takes about 20 minute steaming - depends on size of the fish, but, most of the time 20 minutes will do just fine.

Preparation

- one good size fresh Pompano fish, cleaned.
- 8 spring onion, cut off the green part and save them for other cooking use, use a knife or folk to shred the white part spring onion
- 1 cup, julienne fresh ginger.
- 1/4 julienne red chilli for some colors (I didn't have them this time, so I left out.)

Sauce ingredients

- 1 cup stock
- 2 tbsp. soy sauce
- 1 tbsp. oyster sauce
- 1 tsp. sesame oil
- 1 tsp. sugar
- 1 tsp. Mirin wine
- 1 tbsp. white pepper powder

Preheat a steamer, have it ready to steam the fish.
1. Mix all the sauce ingredients together, set aside.
2. Put half of the ginger and scallion on the plate as the base then put the fish on top.
3. Pour all the mixing sauce on to the fish, topped with the rest of the ginger and scallion, and send them to a steamer.
4. Steam for 20 minutes, use a fork to check if the fish cooked through. Turn off the heat. Serve.

Stir-fried Shrimps with Broccoli

Another quick and easy dish to make. Nothing much for the prep. - cut broccoli, cleaned shrimps, crushed garlic, and it takes only five minutes on the heat.

It's a light dish that I love to make to accompany with some heavy dishes like spicy curry or some meaty dishes, and eat with steamed rice.


Fresh and Fresh
- One small head of fresh broccoli, cut.
- Fresh shrimps, cleaned and deveined.
- 3 cloves garlic, crushed.
- Ground black pepper.

- 2 tbsp.olive oil
- 1 tbsp. fish sauce
- 1 tsp. sugar
- 1 tsp. white vinegar

1. A wok on high heat, add olive oil and crushed garlic, saute until fragrant.
2. Add shrimps, give a quick stir just for the shrimps about to turn opaque, add broccoli. Stir.
3. Start seasoning with fish sauce, sugar, white vinegar. If it's too dry, add 1 tbsp. water.
4. Give a quick stir until the shrimps cook through, 1-2 minutes, sprinkle with black pepper.
5. Taste, and adjust the taste. Turn off the heat. Serve.


I got orangey sauce because of all heads of shrimp that I keep them intact. They always make tasty sauce.

Shrimp Pad Thai

Pad Thai Goong Sod (Goong=shrimps, Sod=fresh)

For those who are already big fans of Pad Thai, and wanted to try making this delicious stir-fried noodle, following my post here, you'll get the taste of Pad Thai that we normally eat in Thailand - with all ingredients that Pad Thai should have and should taste like, only one thing missing here is beansprout....


In Thailand there are only Pad Thai and Pad Thai Goong Sod (shrimp Pad Thai) or, in some places, seafood available - there are no chicken, beef or vegetable Pad Thai like you see in most Thai restaurants here in the US.

The original Pad Thai has small dried shrimps instead of big fresh shrimps, which later added to the menu as a new choice.


Working with dried noodle is a bit tricky. They need a lot of liquid and proper times to soften them up.

Serving two hungry people.
- Hand full of dried rice noodle, soaking in warm water for 15 minutes. Save the water for later use.
- Fresh shrimps, clean and deveined
- Hand full of garlic chive leaves, cut 1" long and leave some to eat fresh with the noodle.
- Hand full of beansprout (I don't have it this time)
- 5 small heads shallot, chopped
- 3 cloves of garlic, minced
- 1/4 cup preserved reddish
- 2 pieces hard tofu, diced
- 2 eggs
- ground peanut
- wedge of lime
- chili powder (optional)

- 2 tbsp. tamarind water
- 2 tbsp. fish sauce
- 1 1/2 tbsp. sugar
- 1 cup water
- 6 tbsp. olive oil



1. In small bowl, mix tamarind water, fish sauce and sugar together.
2. Add 2 tbsp. olive oil in a hot pan, in goes shallot and garlic, saute until fragrant.
3. Add soaked soft noodle, stir-fry to incorporate with shallot and garlic, add water (used for soaking noodle), start with mall amount. Keep stirring, don't let the noodle stick together.
4. Add in mixing sauce (in no. 1). Keep stirring until the noodle get soft. If you feel that the pan get too dry and the noodle start to stick to the pan, add more water. Pick up some noodle to taste if they are soft then transfer the noodle to a resting plate.



5. In the same pan, add 2 tbsp. olive oil, hard tofu, preserved reddish and shrimps. Stir-fry until the shrimp get almost opaque.
6. Put shrimps to the side of the pan, making room for two eggs.
7. Add 2 more tbsp. of olive oil, crack in the eggs and scramble them.
8. Incorporate the shrimps and scrambled eggs.

9. In goes, the preparing noodle, stir to incorporate everything together.
10. Add chive leaves, beansprout. Stir.
11. Taste the noodle, make sure they are soft, turn off the heat. You can also adjust the taste later in your plate.
12. Serve with ground peanut, fresh beansprout, fresh chive, a wedge of lime, chili powder (if you like spicy)


Enjoy your Pad Thai with lots of shrimps as you like.

Roger's Shrimps

This simply delicious shrimp dish is not from my family though, I got it from my friend, Roger, so I named it after him.

Roger made this dish when he and Wan-Yi came to NYC for their business trip. We invited them to live with us, and we all had fun cooking together. Roger loves to cook and he always cooks fresh food. His foods are light, and tasty, healthy, and good looking at the same time.

Made this dish when you are planing to have a fun and friendly party where people are ready to eat with their fingers, and don't care about the messiness of the yummy sauce running through their hands. Peeling the shell and eating is a part of the dish....So, have fun with it.


As I've said, Roger's foods are light and simple, like this dish, the only seasoning he put on was a tiny bit of salt, and that amazed me because when I tasted it, I thought that it'd got to be a lot of seasoning in there.

Fresh shrimps with shell is a trick here.
Shell will lock in the natural sweetness and freshness of shrimps. The head part of shrimp helps create a tasty yummy sauce. So, let's be friend with all things with heads ;)


- 1 lb. fresh shrimp with head and shell on.
- 10 or more green onion, chopped.
- 10 small heads shallots, chopped.
- 1 tsp. salt
- black pepper
- 1/4 cup tbsp. water or stock.
- 2 tbsp. olive oil


Prepare fresh shrimp: rinse them under cold water then use kitchen shears cut off only small part of the eyes, rostrum (a sharp pointy looking thing) and long antennae, leave the whole head intact along with shell.

1. A pan on high heat, add in olive oil, shallot, green onion. Saute 1 minute.
2. In goes shrimps, stir to incorporate. Add water or stock. Stir.
3. Cover a pan with a lid for 2 minutes - until shrimps start to look opaque then season it with salt, sprinkle with black pepper.
4. Saute until all shrimps turn opaque about 2 minutes more. Taste it and adjust the taste, and if you love lots of sauce - like my husband- add more stock. Turn off the heat.
5. Serve.


This dish's become my favorite right away. I made it three times in a week. YUM!

Fried Whole Fish with Spicy Thai Chili Sauce

Pla Rard Prik


We've been eating a lot of fish dishes lately. It's just one of those moments when I feel enough of red meat and heavy food, so I stuff my fridge with all kind of fishes, vegetable, soy beans and tofu.

These dish is full of flavors - spicy, tang, sweet rounded it up with a touch of salty with a complement scent of kaffir lime leaves, shallots and garlic. Yum!



Get it fresh from the fish market

- Chose one good size of fish you like. This time the red snapper was smiling at me at the fish stall in Chinatown, so I had her cleaned and brought her home with me.
- Clean it one more time, once it's home, blot it dry with paper-towel, score it on both sides, ready to fry in hot oil

Spicy Thai Chili sauce

- Fresh Thai chili ( as much as you can handle the spicy taste)
- 2 heads of fresh shalot
- 3 cloves of fresh garlic
- 10 leaves of fresh kaffir lime leaf, super fine julienne

Chop up all of these ingredients together except the julienne kaffir lime leaves



- 2 tbsp palm sugar
- 2 tbsp concentrated tamarind water
- 1 tbsp fish sauce
- 2 tbsp water

1. Fry the whole fish in hot oil until perfectly cook - a bit crispy in both side.
2. In a small sauce pan with low heat, melt palm sugar, tamarind, fish sauce and water together until it reaches full bubbles.
3. Add it chopped garlic, shallot, chili and kaffir lime leave.
4. Taste and adjust the taste that suit you. Turn off the heat.



9. Ladle the chili sauce and top it on the fried crispy fish. Serve.

We eat it with plain rice, steamed Chinese broccoli tossed with a little bit of oyster sauce and garlic oil.

Rice Soup with Cod Fish

Kaw Tom Pla


My husband and I are not breakfast kind of people. The only time we become breakfast persons is when we are at home in Thailand where breakfast is always ready on the table every morning.....Thanks mom.

Here in New York, we usually have only coffee in the morning and go on our lives. We know that's not a good way to live a good life, so we are trying to get rid of our bad habits and aiming for the right directions.


Now, we're making an effort to have breakfast every day and cutting down a big dinner into small amount of fruits and vegetable and soy milk before bed....sounds good huh?

Still, I am struggling to come up with what we're going to have in the morning...It has to be something that is not too complicate and doesn't take too much times to make. So, I try to think of what kind of breakfast mom would make for us every morning back home, and the one that we usually see on the table is Rice soup and Congee.



One of my favorite rice soup is rice soup with white fish. Just like most rice soup, it is light and easy to make and doesn't take much of the morning time to come up with. So, I'm stocking up white fish meats in my freezer.

You will need

- white fish of your choice. I use cod fish here - cut into big chunks.
- long grain rice
- chicken stock or stock you like
- celery leaves
- garlic oil
- Galangal powder

Soy bean condiment (optional) but it tastes better to have it
- 1 tbsp. fermented soy bean
- a wedge of lime
- a pinch of sugar




1. Boil rice with stock until the grains break. Gradually add a bit of water if it is too thick, taste it, add a pinch of salt if you like.
2. In another small pot with water boiling, put in celery stalks or roots and fish meats. Boil the fish meats for three to five minutes. Scoop out the fish, save the fish water.
3. Making soy bean condiment by mixing all the condiment ingredients together.




Serving
Ladle the rice soup into a serving blow, top with fish meats, garlic oil, celery leaves and sprinkle with Galangal powder. Add the fish water if you feel that the soup is too thick. Seasoning as you eat with a bit of soy bean condiment....my morning is as bright as sunshine.

Stir-fired Fillet White Fish With Celery Leaves

This dish's called Pla-Pad-Kuen-Chai inThai (Pla = Fish, Pad = Stir fired, Kuen-Chai = Chinese Celery)

Next time if you don't know what to do with celery leaves left after using all of their stalks, try this dish and you will never throw away celery leaves again.

Chinese celery leaves

Tilapia fillet or any kind of white fish


I've heard many people ask if celery leaves are edible. Oh Yes, they are - celery leaves is commonly used in Asian cooking. They taste good and make you feel better with your food - low calorie, high fiber, help lower blood pressure, and some medicine benefit is mentioned.

Now, pair them up with low calorie kind of fish, what else I can say.

Any white fish you like.
This time I went to fish market too late, all they had in the stall was fillet Tilapia, so that's what I'm using.

- 2 pieces of fillet white fish, cut to a bit big bite size.
- a bunch of Chinese celery, roughly chopped.
- 3 cloves of garlic, crushed.
- 2 part tapioca flour, 1 part rice flour - mix together.
- oil for frying the fish.
- 1 tbsp. saute oil

Black fermented soy beans.

Seasoning Sauce (Mix all the following together in a small bowl)

- 1 tbsp. black fermented soy beans.
- 1 tbsp. soy sauce.
- 1 tsp. oyster sauce.
- 2 tbsp. sugar.
- 1 tsp. Asian white cooking wine
- 1 tbsp. lukewarm water

Note: the black fermented soy beans is strongly salty. Start with a little, taste it, then gradually add up because the salty taste is very hard to be fixed once it already is.

Seasoning mixture



1. Heat up the frying oil.
2. Put all cut white fish in the flours mixture.
3. Fry the floured fish until golden crisp, rest them on the rack.
4. In the same wok or pan, take out all the frying oil, put in saute oil.
5. Put in crushed garlic until fragrant.
6. In goes, the crispy fish, celery leaves and seasoning mixture. Give a quick stir (if you feel it's too dry, add a tbsp. of extra water.)
7. Taste the taste and adjust to your taste. Turn off the heat.
8. Serve with steamed rice.

Long Eggplant Salad, Yum Ma Keu Yoaw

If you are an eggplant lover, you'll love this beautiful purple long eggplant dish.

In Thailand we call it Ma Keu Yoaw or Long Eggplant, when here, in the state, is known as Japanese eggplant.



Like other Thai salads, it is light yet full of flavors and textures. Once you think you've got all the flavors, you'll be surprised with another, and the next thing you know - you want more of it.

The taste is well balance of sweetness, tang and salty. Fresh shallot and pickled garlic give a dish very distinctive taste and flavors. The textures of soft eggplant, cooked shrimps and ground dried shrimp are just perfect together. A kick of chilies will wake up your taste buds at the end.

pickled garlic




Let's give the kitchen some purple

- 1 beautiful long purple eggplant.
- 4 cooked shrimps.
- 1/4 cup, ground, dried shrimp. (I ground them with a coffee grinder that never be used to grind coffee beans)
- 1 head, pickled garlic, (available in Asian grocery) thinly sliced.
- 2 heads, shallots, finely sliced.
- 4 small Thai chilies, crushed.

- 1 tbsp. pickle garlic water
- 1 tbsp. fish sauce
- 1 tsp. sugar
- 1 tbsp. lime juice



1. Put eggplant on the grill until the skin gets dark and wilted.
2. Peel off the skin, let it cools down, put it on the serving plate then cut into one inch long.





Prepare the dressing.

- In a small bowl, mix together pickled water, fish sauce, sugar, lime juice, chilies and sliced pickled garlic.

Layering
- Put shallots on top of eggplant as a first layer, the second is cooked shrimps than pour the mixture dressing over the layers then top with the last layer of ground dried shrimp.
- Serve!!