Monday, October 14, 2013

Fish in Fermented Black Bean Sauce


My mom and grandma hardly cook anything with fermented black beans so I am not familiar with this ingredient at all. We only used bean paste/tau cheong in our cooking. I only start using it after seeing some of my friend here cooking with it. They will use it to cook pork, fish or vegetable. As for me I like to cook fish with it. I just love how the fish soak up all the wonderful flavor of the fermented black beans. I will steam the fish if I can get them real fresh but since this tilapia came frozen I decided to pan fried it first before cooking it in the sauce.




Ingredients:

1 whole fish – tilapia or red snapper
1 1/2 tbsp fermented black bean – soaked to remove access salt and roughly chopped
2 tbsp chopped ginger
3 cloves garlic - chopped
1 red chili – finely diced
2 green onion head (white part) – finely chopped

Seasoning:

2 tbsp Chinese cooking wine
1 tsp sugar
2 tbsp soy sauce
1 cup water
Salt to taste
Some green onion for garnish


1. Clean fish; score both side and season with salt. Heat up oil in a wok and pan fried the fish until light brown on both side. Remove and set it aside.
2. Remove oil from the wok and leave about 2 tbsp in it. Sauté garlic, ginger, chilli and green until lightly brown and fragrant. Add in the fermented black beans and continue to stir fry for 15 seconds. 3. Add in the cooking wine, water, sugar and soy sauce. Bring it up to boil and add in the fish. Turn down the heat and simmer the fish, turning it gently until both sides are coated well with sauce.
4. Check seasoning to see if it needs additional sugar or salt. Once the sauce thickens and reduced remove the fish to serving plate.
5. Garnish with green onion and serve hot.

4 comments:

Medeja- CranberryJam said...

Fermented black beans sounds unfamiliar and really intriguing for me!

PH said...

Gertrude, your fish looks so delicious! I like fermented black beans very much. Lee Kum Kee used to have the black beans sauce but it has been some time since I see them. There is one dish that I like which is chicken and bittergourd braised in black bean sauce.

Shereen said...

Like you, I'm not familiar with fermented black bean too. What brand did you buy anyway? Love the look of the fish that you've cooked. I am so going to try to cook it:)

Melgie Campbell said...

Hi, The fish look really appetizing.:) thanks for sharing the recipe:)