Chinese Style Steamed Cod with Lup Cheong Sausage and Oyster Sauce

Steamed Cod with Lup Cheong Sausage and Oyster Sauce

One of my favorite and easiest ways to prepare fish is to steam it Chinese style. The classic way I grew up eating it is to steam a fillet, top it with julienned ginger, green onions, Chinese parsley (or cilantro) and pour soy sauce and hot peanut oil over it. The hot oil carries the flavor of the toppings over the whole fish and creates a tasty gravy to eat with your accompanying rice.

This preparation works well with most kinds of fish. You can use any white fleshed fish like cod, orange roughy or snapper or even salmon.

In this version, since I didn't have any fresh ginger or cilantro on hand, I improvised and went with lup cheong, a slightly sweet, dry, Chinese pork sausage with the texture of a dry salami, and sliced green onion. If you have ever had char siu (Chinese roast pork), lup cheong tastes similar in flavor only in sausage form.

I steamed a cod fillet and lup cheong slices together for a few minutes, transferred everything to a plate, arranging the lup cheong and green onions on the fillet and drizzled some oyster sauce over it all. The flavors were brought together with a couple of tablespoons of hot oil.

Wonton of Fun

Wonton

I don't make homemade wonton often enough. I think only because it seems like a lot of effort. My Mom usually makes them on weekends when she has more time to cook and when I lived at home, we would have them with mein (noodles) and soup for lunch. Wonton mein.

I bought a twelve ounce stack of wrappers at Mitsuwa Japanese market and used only about a dozen or so for our Christmas Eve foodie fest. They are thin, delicate, and almost translucent. There must have been about a hundred wrappers in the stack when I started, all individually dusted with a thin layer of flour to prevent sticking. This was a good opportunity to finally make some homemade wonton and attempt to use up all the ingredients I had left over.

Making them is actually quite easy and not much of a chore once you gear up for it. The fold, for the most part, is very similar to, if not the same technique used to make Italian tortellini. Wonton are generally bigger and stuffed with more filling than tortellini, but don't let that stop you from stuffing these wrappers with ricotta and calling them jumbo tortellini if you're having an Italian night. I've also heard of a Taiwanese restaurant in Alhambra that makes wonton the size of your fist. *note to self: gotta try place in Alhambra*

For the filling I combine minced shrimp and pork, some minced green onion, minced water chestnuts (for a once in a bite crunch) and a little garlic puree. To this, I add some soy sauce, some fish sauce, a pinch each of white pepper and sugar, and a few drops of toasted sesame oil. Everything gets incorporated and the mixing bowl gets placed in the fridge to stay cool while I prepare my work surface for the wrappers.

Filling

First, lay out the wrappers assembly line style on a cornstarch dusted cutting board and plop a teaspoonful of filling in the center of each wrapper.

Fold 1

Next, bring two corners together and seal along the two edges with a little water.

Fold 2

This next part is easy once you get the hang of it and gives the wonton their characteristic shape. Bring the two lower corners together, overlap at a slight angle and "glue" together with a dab of water. While pinching the overlap together, use your thumb to nudge the filling to the other side. You'll see what I mean. There you have it. You're a "won" man or "won" woman wonton factory.

Wonton Waiting for the Hot tub

Keep a damp dish cloth over the finished wonton while you continue making more so they won't start to dry out. Like all fresh pasta, wonton taste their best when they're cooked right away. They also freeze pretty well if you happen to make more than you can use. Spread them out on a cookie sheet and freeze them individually so they won't all stick together before transferring them to portion sized freezer storage containers.

Wonton with Green Onion, Soy Sauce, Vinegar, Chili Oil and Togarashi Pepper

To cook, all you do is bring a large pot of water to a boil and drop them in. At first, they will all sink to the bottom, but after a few minutes, one by one, they'll each float to the surface and when they do, they're done cooking. Eat'em hot with or without noodles or soup, with your choice of condiments.

Grilled Hoisin Pork

Grilled Hoisin Pork

Once again, we were trying to decide what to have for dinner when T1 mentioned we haven't had anything with hoisin sauce for a while. I have to admit, my Chinese recipe repertoire isn't very extensive. I guess I never really had to learn, growing up with a Mom who cooks fantastic Chinese food. I can manage to throw together all the westernized Chinese dishes like beef broccoli, sweet sour pork , walnut shrimp, and fried rice, but when it comes to really authentic stuff, my Mom's kitchen is the only place I know where to get it.

So this is what I came up with, grilled hoisin pork served with jasmine rice and stir fried veggies. Hoisin, often referred to as Chinese barbecue sauce is a complex, smokey, savory, slightly sweet sauce and like most Chinese flavor bases, contains many umami flavor compounds.

Thin sliced pork was marinated in hoisin for no more than thirty minutes before being thrown on the hot grill for just a few minutes on each side. The sugars present in the hoisin allows the pork to char nicely and like barbecue sauce, forms a nice sticky glaze. The end result tastes as if a lot of effort went into it when really, nothing could be quicker and easier. For the veggies, anything you have on hand will do. We happened to have broccoli florets so they were combined with some onion, celery and a couple of quartered tomatoes and seasoned with mirin, soy sauce, garlic, and cracked black pepper.

I've got a lot to learn about Chinese cooking There's an endless amount of ingredients to work with so I guess I better get to work! As they say in Cantonese, "Sic Fan!" (translation: Eat Rice or Dig In!)