I sometimes (not often) get the motivation to cook something other than my usual chicken rice – buffalo stew meal prep. Yesterday was such a day. I was driving my housemate Mandy to her workplace when we saw a morning market. I seldom wake up early enough for these things and she wanted to eat fish so I went to check out their offerings.
I got ikan bulus – a tubular type of white fish which is delicious when fried and a small broccoli. She wanted the small, flat kind of white pompfret but all the stalls there didn’t sell it. I managed to get some from the Jaya Grocer under my condo though.
I remember why I don’t cook fish often – it’s troublesome to remove the guts and descale the fish. I also don’t like how the scales fly everywhere and get my cat all excited. She’ll pounce and pat the scales and distribute them to the furthest corners of the kitchen, necessitating a good mop after.
I didn’t do much to the ikan bulus and small pompfret – just salted them liberally and fried them in hot oil. I bought a small bottle of maize oil cooking oil for this occasion. I don’t use oil in my regular cooking. I even skim off the buffalo fat the next day!
I also scalded the broccoli and pan-fried it with oyster sauce. If you’re wondering where the stem of the broccoli went, I blended it with cold water and drank it. I consume a lot of raw vegetables each night as a source of fiber and nutrients.
The fish kemek (lost structural integrity) during the frying process. I’m not sure what went wrong. It just started disintegrating. Maybe I should have battered it with tapioca starch so it’ll maintain its form. It still tastes good though. Half of the fish is ikan bulus and half is small white pomfret, served with Thai chilli sauce.
I also fried two duck eggs with a crispy bottom a la Chinese style. I’ve been buying duck eggs instead of chicken eggs lately coz I prefer the creamier yolk. It’s about 50% more expensive than chicken eggs but worth it.
This is the broccoli pan-fried with oyster sauce as a source of greens. I cooked fresh basmati rice to go with dinner and I also served my tom yam buffalo stew with beer.
It was almost 10 pm when I finished cooking. It tasted pretty good despite the simple execution. The fish was really fresh!
