Wednesday, September 17, 2014

Steamed Fish Asian Style


If I live in Oslo, one of my favorite food markets must be Maschmanns Matmarked. It's kinda tiny, but it's got most of the ingredients I'd need to cook the kind of food I like. One morning, we spotted only two whole sea breams at Maschmanns. Pounced on them. Small ones, about 400 grams each. It's dorade, or gilt-head bream, one of the loveliest around. It was NOK64.55 each. Bought both. One to be kept in the freezer, and the other to be steamed for dinner. Now, the boys have no interest in fish. So this nice fish is going to be eaten up by the girls. The fish had been nicely gutted, but it needed to be descaled. The girlfriend rolled her eyes and took on that task. I was set to chopping strips of ginger and scallion.

The girlfriend is determined to work the grill on the patio and get as much use out of it this year before it gets too cold to sit outdoors. Great weather today, so dinner was to be taken on the patio. Seafood night! Lots of things went on the skewers and trays. Potatoes, scallops, prawns and zucchini. That was easy. We cooked up pasta aglio e olio with anchovies. MY FAVORITE. I miss pasta SO MUCH. Doubt it's the carbs, because I certainly don't care about rice. It's just the idea and texture of pasta, especially the dry salty savory sort. I also miss Asian-style steamed fish quite a bit. Awesome to have it tonight. Once the dorade was prepped, oil and soy sauce were poured over. Then it went into the steamer for ten minutes and came out beautifully tender. YAYYY.

The grill was lit and humming happily. Trays of seafood went onto it to be lightly grilled. Dinner was at 7pm. We started first and the boys joined us slightly later after their sports training. The sun was still blazing bright although much of the day's heat had dissipated. By Oslo standards, it had been a hot day. I was walking around without a jacket and perspiring in tee and jeans. As the sun set, it dropped to 15°C. Refreshing to be dining outdoors in the summer evening sunshine, kicking back with a glass of rhubarb juice then a bottle of brown ale. 

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

That looks so good!

What did you guys put on the scallops?

imp said...

A mixture. Breadcrumbs! Can't seem to find panko here. Since the boys eat so much bread, we just leave half a loaf out for a day, it gets rock-hard and it's time to crumble it.

Then blend it with basil, parsley, garlic, onions, and olive oil. Add paprika if you like. Just an easy marinade so that it will brown on the grill and remain crunchy to bite.