Sunday, December 19, 2010

My cooking - 咸鮮青根魚, salty fresh fish

Passed by the market today and wanted to get the 鮫魚 for making my family's traditional fish ball, but then this nice fish caught my eyes! Now it's the season for this fish and as I checked on how clear deep blue of the eyes and the nice light pink color (most of this fish is quite aqua green and that's why it's called "青根", I got it right away. The best for making this fish is to use raw sea salt to marinate it (just cover it well inside out) for a few hours but need to put it in the fridge, or overnight (but if overnight, then use less salt). So rinse it well, esp. the blood vein in the tummy and inside the head. Dry it. Slice some ginger and put some oil (better more oil - about 2 to 2.5 soup spoons for this size (about 10 oz). I usually steam it in the rice cooker when the rice is being cooked since the rice steam will make it even aromatic. Or steam it in a wok for 8-10 minutes (depending on how cold the fish body) at medium high heat.

*the below photo is on Canon 70-200mm F4 at 131mm, 1/160, F6.3, ISO 400 with flash 1/32 90 degree straight upward, with some 5pm sunlight coming in from window on the top right direction. As you can see the fin, it's really amazing with this lens. Never thought I could take a photo of this fish (my father's and grand ma's favourite).

2 comments:

pixmation said...

I can feel and smell the fishy-ness of this from here. LOL. I feel that the ambient sunlight has lost in this photo. Might need to slow down the shutter speed further and/or bump up the ISO since you are using a telephone lens.

in the sea said...

Actually and originally I wanted to have the sink on the 4 sides to have an evenly bounce back flash when it's pointed to the ceiling. The ambient sunlight isn't that much when it's in the sink actually. Then the kitchen cabinet up on the ceiling makes the room a bit narrow. As I stood on my toes to stand higher to have a better angle, I was quite shaky on my ballet feet standing. That's why I set the shutter to a very fast speed to compensate the shaking.. :) I agreed that ths shutter speed is a bit too fast.