Steamed Siakap in Plum Sauce

Nurul , my eldest daughter is home this week. She is on duty at the CPRC (Crisis Preparedness and Response Centre), the Ministry of Health, Putrajaya for 3 days.

While she is here, I took out the siakap (sea perch) I have had in the fridge for about 2 weeks. You see, the fish is too big to cook for 2 so I had to wait for another person to join us before I cooked it.

My son Afif loves the plum sauce eaten with steam siakap. This time Nurul helped me made some changes to my normal steam siakap. The dish was prepared as follows:

Ingredients:

Fish:

1 siakap, gutted, scaled, washed and marinated with a few squirts of Thai fish sauce and a little oyster sauce.

2.5 cm ginger root, chopped

1 onion, sliced into rings

1 stalk lemon grass, sliced

1/2 carrot, cut into strips

6 button mushrooms, sliced

Sauce:

1 tablespoon cooking oil

1 onion, chopped

4 cloves garlic

3 tablespoon plum sauce

1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper

1/2 tabsp oyster sauce

2 sprigs kafir lime leaves (daun limau purut)

2 pieces salted Chinese plum (asam boi)

Some water

Method:

Fill the steamer with water and place on heat. Place a ceramic plate or a metal dish in the steamer and before the water boils, lay the fish in it. Scatter the the other fish ingredients on the fish and steam till the fish is cooked (about 15 minutes). Turn off the heat and remove the plate of fish and set aside.

Meanwhile you can prepare the plum sauce by frying the chopped onions and garlic in the cooking oil. Add the plum sauce, oyster sauce, pepper,lemon grass and kafir lime leaves, Chinese plums and about 2 cups of water.Cook till the liquid volume is halved. This would allow the Chinese plums to integrate into the sauce. If the sauce is too salty you can add more water and/or more plum sauce.

You see the plum sauce do not need additional salt as salt is already present in the ingredients.

The plum sauce is poured on the steamed fish and you can enjoy it with rice and vegetables.

Our dinner that night also consisted of ikan pekasam (fish fermented with fried rice) and squid curry. Ummph, delicious.