Skinny Chinese Pan-Fried Fish

This is an unknown dish for most readers outside China. I have not heard of it until I met my husband and his family. In Chinese, we name it as 糍粑鱼, with the English translation glutinous rice cake fish. Surely we will fail to find any glutinous rice cake in the dish. We use this term to describe that similar pan-frying process.

Pan-Fried Fish

I am using a grass carp, which is the most popular and inexpensive edible fish in China. This dish is originated from Chinese Hubei province. I get the recipe from my mother in law. You can replace it with other fishes, just choose fat ones.

Hubei province is known as Chinese fish and rice fields. Fat grass carps are harvested every year. It is a custom for people to dry some grass carps naturally to enjoy in cold winter days. Traditionally, this recipes calls for dried fish. I find out a easy version by using it, you can make yummy, skinny pan-fried fish with marinated fresh fish chunks.

Cook Time: 10 minutes

Ingredients

One grass carp around 1000g, remove head and tail (you can ask your batcher to help)
4 dried chili pepper
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 stalk scallion, minced
1/4 teaspoon white sesame seeds
1 tablespoon cooking oil
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1/4 teaspoon sesame oil
1/8 teaspoon sugar
Marinating sauce
2 tablespoons cooking wine
1/4 teaspoon whole Sichuan peppercorn seeds (optional)
1 and 1/2 teaspoon salt
2 stalks scallion, minced
1 thumb ginger, minced

Instructions

Cut the fish into large chunks around 3-4 cm thick. And then add all the marinating sauce. Mix well and then transfer to an airtight bag, refrigerate for around 2 days.

Transfer the fish out. Remove the ginger and scallion attached; drain the fish chunks with kitchen paper.

Heat up cooking oil in a pan, place the fish chunks in. Do not turn them over at the beginning, turn over to fry the next side one side becomes slightly golden brown.
Add garlic, dried pepper, scallion and garlic. Fry for another half minute until fragrance. Add soy sauce, sesame oil, sugar and white sesame seeds. Mix well and enjoy, possibly with a cup of beer.

Nigel Slater’s sausages with avocado and feta recipe

Feta accompli: Nigel Slater’s sausages with avocado and feta recipe. Photograph: Jonathan Lovekin for the Observer

The recipe

Warm a couple of tablespoons of olive oil in a nonstick frying pan then add four plump, lightly spicy sausages (about 300g), such as the fennel-seed freckled Italian salsiccia, and let them cook for 20 minutes over a low to moderate heat. Keep an eye on their progress and turn the sausages regularly so that they colour evenly.

Peel, halve and stone two perfectly ripe avocados. Put the flesh in a mixing bowl, then, using a spoon or fork, roughly crush to a coarse and lumpy texture. Chop a small handful each of coriander and parsley leaves (you need about 2 tbsp of each) and add to the avocado. Halve and finely chop a jalapeño or other moderately hot chilli then add to the herbs and avocado.

Coarsely crumble 200g of feta into the bowl, then gently fold the cheese, chillies, herbs and avocado together. Pour 3 tbsp of olive oil over it and divide between two plates. When the sausages are cooked, cut them into thick slices and add to the avocado and feta cream. Enough for 2.

The trick

Cook your sausages slowly. This way they will brown evenly and their skins won’t split. If you want, use a spoonful of the hot sausage fat from the pan as a further dressing for the avocado cream. This is a dish to eat as soon as it is made, but if you need to keep the avocado cream for more than a few minutes, add a dash of lemon juice to stop it discolouring.

The twist

The choice of sausage is up to you, but a fairly spicy one is good with the cooling avocado. Chorizo is particularly good if you yearn for something more spicy. You could add tomatoes, cored and diced.

Email Nigel at nigel.slater@observer.co.uk

Nigel Slater’s open sandwich recipe

In the open: Nigel Slater’s open sandwich recipe. Photograph: Jonathan Lovekin for the Observer

The recipe

Cut a ciabatta loaf in half horizontally. Toast the bread on the cut side. Put four heaped tablespoons of good mayonnaise in a mixing bowl, season it with black pepper and with the finely grated zest of a small lemon. Reserve the lemon. Finely slice four large radishes and put them in a mixing bowl. Trim three spring onions, discarding the tough, darker stalks, then cut the rest into small pieces and add to the radishes. Drain 100g of crayfish tails or prawns and roughly chop them. Wash a handful of watercress, discard any tough stalks, then add to the radishes together with a trickle of olive oil and a little sea salt and toss the mixture gently. Cut each half of the ciabatta into two. Spread the lemon mayonnaise over it, then divide the crayfish salad between them. Serves 2.

The trick

There is no second slice of bread under which to hide your filling. An open sandwich needs to be made at the last minute if it is to tempt. Keep the flavours light and fresh, and pick out only the most perfect of young salad leaves and herbs.

The twist

What you need on the toasted bread is a mixture of fresh seasonal salad and shellfish, and something to hold them in place. Use a classic mayonnaise or one seasoned with crushed, roasted garlic; or maybe a herb mayonnaise scented with tarragon or basil. Keep some crunch in the salad with radishes and spring onions, but also include cubed cucumber, coarsely grated celeriac or kohlrabi. Use cooked mussels from their shells, boiled brown shrimps or crab in place of the prawns.

New York deli-style lunch ideas

If there’s one country that knows how to make a sandwich, it’s the US of A. New York is the sandwich capital of the world, and while many New Yorkers may not take much of a lunch break, they do know a thing or two about a lunchtime takeaway. With this in mind, here are a few NYC deli-inspired lunches.
• Make yourself some speedy, healthier, pizza slices. Try chickpea-flour bases: gradually whisk an equal volume of water into gram flour. Add a pinch of salt and any herbs you wish, then leave to stand. Then fry in butter on both sides in a nonstick pan until golden. Finish with any toppings you wish – pesto, roasted or raw veg, ham and creme fraiche... and grill.

• Nothing beats a good bagel and nowadays, brands like the New York Bakery Co are ubiquitous. Prepare and toast a bagel at work, ideally. Otherwise, pack it ready-to-eat tightly in Tupperware rather than foil or clingfilm. Cream cheese is a classic starting point, but needs some robust flavours to counter all that creamy sweetness: try topping with capers, thinly sliced red onion, tomato and lots of freshly ground black pepper. Or try our friend Olivia’s delicious and simple mackerel paté: mash cream cheese with smoked mackerel, a squeeze of lemon juice and zest, chopped parsley and lots of pepper. Pack into a small Tupperware, and refrigerate when you get to work, unless you want to incur your colleagues’ wrath. Spread on your – preferably warm – bagel at lunch. A couple of slices of dill pickle would not go amiss.
• You may not have access to a store like Satriale’s, but you can still make an Italian sub (or “hoagie”) that Tony Soprano wouldn’t sniff at. Whisk together 1 tsp olive oil, 1 tsp red wine vinegar, ½ tsp dijon mustard and a pinch of dried oregano. Split a submarine roll, discard any excess crumbs (keep for breadcrumbs) and sprinkle the dressing over both halves. Lay a couple of slices of gouda or emmental on the bottom, then top with a selection of sliced cured meat (mortadella and salami are our faves, but go wild with whatever you can find in the sliced meat aisle). Whatever you choose, be generous. Top with shredded iceberg, thinly sliced red onion, and sliced jarred sweet peppers or olives. Close and wrap in a tight bodybag of greaseproof paper secured with a couple of elastic bands.
• If you work carefully and finish the assembly at work, a luxury hotdog will make you the envy of your colleagues. Cook a baguette in a hot oven alongside your sausages. Meanwhile mix plenty of mustard and paprika into the contents of half a tin of beans, then pack in a small microwaveable container. When the baguette is cooked, take out some of the middle, spread with a layer of mayonnaise and pop in your sausages for safekeeping until lunch (wrap the whole thing in foil). Thinly slice some spring onion and red chilli. Pack in a container. Come lunchtime, place your hotdog baguette folded open on a plate, and heat the beans in a microwave until piping hot. Pour over your sandwich and finish with the spring onion and chilli.

Tapioca: the hated school pudding makes a culinary comeback

Fish eyes, frogspawn or eyeball pudding – synonyms for Britain’s most hated school pudding, tapioca. Loathed by the older generation, and largely unknown by the younger, milky tapioca pudding’s bad rep, and the dish itself, has all but faded into obscurity. “Lots of people associate tapioca with boarding school or school dinners,” says Brett Graham, head chef at The Ledbury, “but that tends to be the older generation, so things are changing”.
Graham, who grew up in Australia, is just one of a growing cohort of celebrated chefs elevating tapioca beyond bowls of milky gloop. It turns up in sweet and savoury forms at his two-Michelin-starred restaurant in Notting Hill. He’s far from alone - chefs around the world love it. At The French Laundry in California, Thomas Keller serves it with oysters, the small pearls suspended in an oyster-infused sabayon; Michel Roux Jr cooks tapioca in squid ink and teams it with calamari and garlic butter at Le Gavroche. In his São Paulo restaurant, DOM, Brazilian chef Alex Atala serves tapioca pearls in a sharp manioc-root extract tucupi with giant river fish pirarucu. Heston Blumenthal used tapioca flour, masquerading as sand, in his seafood ensemble Sound of the Sea.
But it’s not just the preserve of michelin-starred chefs. Tapioca starch, extracted from manioc (cassava), is sold in a number of guises, from flour to flakes, pearls of varying sizes, and precooked “instant” tapioca. It’s cheap, too – around £1 for a 500g bag of pearl – and it’s a staple in many cuisines. In Brazil, it’s an everyday ingredient, savoured in bite-sized cheese breads (pão de queijo), as puffed biscoito globo crisps, boiled up with red wine, sugar, clove and cinnamon as sagu de tapioca, or melted into crepes (beiju) that are stuffed with everything from sun-dried beef, to coconut and condensed milk.
As Atala points out, tapioca is used a lot in Asia, “and so Europeans know it as an Asian ingredient,” having made its way east from Brazil with the Portuguese in the Age of Discovery. In India, sabudana (tapioca pearls) are boiled up with sweetened milk in a pudding that was perhaps the precursor to our milk pudding. Or mixed with potatoes, peanuts and spices in sabudana vada (fried dumplings) or sabudana ni khichdi – a popular sautéed dish on fast days in Gujarat and other Northern Indian states. Tapioca flour is also used to make crispy papad and coconut rolls (puttu) in Malayali cuisine.
“In Thailand, tapioca is used for thickening sauces, and to make a few desserts,’” says Thai chef Yui Sriyabhaya, who describes a handful of desserts all made with coconut milk, palm-sugar syrup and tapioca in varying forms, such as the fat worms of boiled tapioca dough in krong kraeng, or the green (dyed with pandan leaves) tapioca jelly matchsticks in lod chong Singapore.
Marina Pipatpan, Thai chef-owner of São Paulo restaurant Tian, remembers growing up in Thailand with similar desserts that mix saku (tapoioca pearls), syrup and coconut milk with black beans (saku tua dtam) or crunchy corn kernels (saku kao pod). “My favourite is an ancient dish that’s still popular to this day – saku sai moo. We cook ground pork with sugar and add peanuts and make a ball that we then wrap in tapioca pearls and steam,” she enthuses. Similar dumplings and desserts can be found in other Southeast Asian cuisines, including Korea, Indonesia and China. Not to mention Taiwan, the country that started the craze for bubble tea in the 1980s, with western youth en masse slurping up shiny tapioca pearls through fat straws, and franchises making or breaking based on their ability to cook the pearls to perfection, between bouncy and chewy.
Tapioca is the perfect blank canvas; its capacity to hold colour, to absorb and release a burst of flavour (my favourite is tapioca pearls cooked in soy), and its versatile texture are exactly why chefs love it.
So how to get it right at home? “Cook it till you have just the tiniest pinprick of white left in the centre,” says chef Alyn Williams. “Tapioca pearls should be soft and silky.” For Brett Graham, the secret is in soaking the pearls in milk or stock first (the former for sweet and the latter for savoury), then rinsing them and cooking them in plenty of milk or stock, and rinsing again afterwards to remove any excess starch. Do you dare have a go? It’s time for tapioca’s domestic comeback.