My Beautiful Niece's Most Beautiful Moment...

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28th April 2007

Fresh Catch on the Grass



Getting sufficient omega-3 has never been a problem for me. I eat fishes and leaves on a regular basis. Especially at the end of each week, there's always a fish on my dining table.

I've been eating fishes since, no, before I was born. My mum loves eating fish so much. Not a day has passed without a fish on her chopboard. When I was still a foetus, I must have been taking in a lot of omega-3. When I was a toddler, I used to play with the fishes mum bought home (in this part of the world, people prefer live fishes). When I was a kid, I started going to the wet market to get fishes for the family. When I was a teenager, I was doing most of mum's jobs. In short, this seemingly uninspiring creature means a good lot to me.

Here in Tung Chung, we have fresh catches from the surrounding waters and sold in the market everyday. Those who don't know where Tung Chung (東涌) is, it's a town in Lantau Island, not far from the international airport of Hong Kong. It was a fisherman's village back few decades ago, before the airport was built. Although it's an entirely different make-up now, if you travel a bit down west and south, you'll still see the old charms of Tung Chung and other parts of the Island.

This fish is one of the catches from this part of the sea. This time of the year, it's the best season for many species, especially the snappers. And this one, Lentjan (海連尖), roughly classified as a snapper family member, is my all-time favourite.

Bought live from the market here over the weekend. A few avid supporters of this blog would instantly know this creature has appeared here before. This fish is probably the most underrated species in the market. She never appears on restaurant's menu. She never draws the attention of the majority of the cooks. She is rarely barely on anyone's list. But, of course, to make her appearance here twice, she must possess a meaningful degree of charm.


Again, this fish was a live catch. I was able to do a bit of sashimi. And its size was big enough for me to add a few twists to an usual cooking recipe. Remember the "Pan-grilled Lentjan with a Double-lime Twist" back last August, I was using lime leaves, garlic, ginger and extra virgin olive oil as a marinate. Here, I kicked out the garlic, reduced the role of lime leaves and ginger and brought in the grass.

Let's see the ingredients, nothing extravagant:
1. two straws of lemongrass, remove the top and bottom parts and chop them finely; and
2. tiny bit of ginger and lime leaves, finely shredded;

Use a real sharp knife to slice off the meat from the fish (I had literally gone through a whole sharpening process). The meat was so super fresh. I made myself a small piece of sashimi. With a drop of soya sauce, it was gorgeously sweet. This act is not encouraged, however, as water in the wet market is most likely contaminated.

Okay, marinate the meat with lemongrass, lime leaves, ginger, extra virgin olive oil, 1/2 teaspoon of flour, sea-salt and fresh ground pepper (preferably a mix of white and black). Leave it for one hour.

Heat up the pan to a grilling temperature, with a few drops of oil. Toss the fish onto the pan. The skin side should be on top first. Leave it for 2 minutes, until it gets "toasted". Lower the heat a little. Turn over and give it another minute.

Give it some more fresh pepper and it's done! Sprinkle a few drops of extra virgin olive oil. Fresh lime juice is entirely optional. That night, I had the usual Chinese green, also from the local soil, to go with. Omega-3 never runs short, not on me.

With this fish and this recipe, I never bother to make a sauce. The ingredients are just enough to bring out the flavours of the fish while keeping its tenderness intact. When served with a fresh cut grass sauvignon blanc, the charm of this fish will start flirting with your taste buds. And you will forever be begging for more!

Eat Mostly Plants, Especially Leaves.

Unhappy Meals - Reprise

"Most people associate omega-3 fatty acids with fish, but fish get them from green plants (specifically algae), which is where they all originate. Plant leaves produce these essential fatty acids (“essential” because our bodies can’t produce them on their own) as part of photosynthesis. Seeds contain more of another essential fatty acid: omega-6. Without delving too deeply into the biochemistry, the two fats perform very different functions, in the plant as well as the plant eater. Omega-3s appear to play an important role in neurological development and processing, the permeability of cell walls, the metabolism of glucose and the calming of inflammation. Omega-6s are involved in fat storage (which is what they do for the plant), the rigidity of cell walls, clotting and the inflammation response. (Think of omega-3s as fleet and flexible, omega-6s as sturdy and slow.) Since the two lipids compete with each other for the attention of important enzymes, the ratio between omega-3s and omega-6s may matter more than the absolute quantity of either fat. Thus too much omega-6 may be just as much a problem as too little omega-3..."

Unhappy Meals

"Eat food. Though in our current state of confusion, this is much easier said than done. So try this: Don’t eat anything your great-great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food. (Sorry, but at this point Moms are as confused as the rest of us, which is why we have to go back a couple of generations, to a time before the advent of modern food products.) There are a great many foodlike items in the supermarket your ancestors wouldn’t recognize as food (Go-Gurt? Breakfast-cereal bars? Nondairy creamer?); stay away from these..."

Click here to read Michael Pollan's full article

birds

sing

for

their

lives

Mornington Peninsula, Australia
On film, Nikon f801s

Music: Nine Horses
Lyrics/vocals: Stina Nordenstam

Note from Mirna

Hi Kevin

Thanks for the pic's. I like your website..

Your camera takes very sharp, good quality photos.

Fred and I got back to Melbourne on Sunday.

The names of the dishes are.

• Chickpea dip called 'Hommus'. This is the one you have the picture of, on your website.
• Eggplant dip called 'baba-gan-ouwgh'.
• Spinach dish with mince meat and some plain rice, next to this you serve natural yogurt which has garlic and salt in it to give the dish more flavour.
• Potato and meatballs called 'Kifta & Batato'. The Meat balls has the following ingredients, mince meat preferably lamb mince (I used beef mince when I cooked in Hong Kong) finely chopped parsley, finely chopped onion with salt and paper. The sauce is tomato paste and pomegranate concentrated paste mixed with a bit of water and salt and pepper to taste. Then you put sliced tomatoes on the top.
• Tabouli has finely chopped parsley (any Mediterranean or Italian parsley is fine, best not to use the continental parsley as this is too hard to chop up) finely chopped spring onion, finely chopped mint leaves, nicely chopped square pieces of tomatoes, buck-wheat, lemon juice, oil, salt and pepper.
• Potato dices with coriander, garlic, lemon and salt and pepper to taste.

I hope this helps for your website.

Hope to see you when I get back to Hong Kong, and this time, your turn to cook.

Talk to you later

Mirna

Great thanks, Mirna!

لابانيسي يلة مع الاصدقاء والمطبخ



I can't wait. The holiday, or at least the mood of it, has been set in motion a week earlier. When Natty called me, I knew it was going to be another gorgeous home-dining experience. And I knew my cookware and everything else would have to give way to the challenge.

One thing I did't expect though. It wasn't the usual Thai dinner, which Natty Orranut Hiranmathakij is instinctively good at. It was, to my surprises, a gorgeous Arabian experience. (Natty is a beautiful friend of mine who, I still speculate, must have been Miss Thailand two decades ago.)





Natty's boyfriend Sam is an Australian living/working in Hong Kong for many years (arguably also, the most goodlooking pilot in this part of the world). He has an Lebanese ethnic origin. This holiday he had his family visiting. And I had the privilege to try out some of the best Lebanese family cookings.

This time Sam's sister, Mirna, took over the kitchen. The hard work began in the morning. Correct me if I'm wrong, Labanese food is closely associated with the Meditteranean. The parsley, the mint, the olive oil, the yogurt, the lamb, etc, etc. It was a huge task for her since the true ingredients are rarely available in Hong Kong.



When I got there, the eloquent Sam already started telling me stories of Lebanon. There were some that I'd heard and some that I hadn't. Anyway.

The area including modern Lebanon has been for thousands of years a melting pot of various civilizations and cultures. Originally home to the Phoenicians, and then subsequently conquered and occupied by the Assyrians, the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Arabs, the Ottoman Turks and most recently the French, Lebanese culture has over the millennia evolved by borrowing from all of these groups.

The country has enjoyed only brief periods of relative calm. The Israeli's attack during the summer last year. The 15-year civil war that began in 1975, devastating the country massively. The Arab-Israeli war in 1948. In short, it's a country that has a lot of complexities and sensitivities, politically, ethnically and religiously. (That's all an unqualified historian can tell.)



Some of the most popular Lebanese dishes include Kibbeh—a lamb-and-cracked-wheat dish, often grilled or fried—and Tabbouleh, a salad made with cracked wheat, finely chopped parsley, tomato, onions and olive oil. This time, Mirna was making a couple of popular dishes. I have forgotten most of the names. But I remember I did have Tabbouleh (2nd pic of this post). We ate it with bread and fresh yogurt. Simple but absolutely beautiful. Besides the yogurt, Mirna prepared a special dipping made with beans which I cannot name (3rd pic). Those dippings already made my day!



It wasn't a complete Lebanese dinner really. Natty made the chicken satay and some very nice Thai fried-rice with roast chestnuts. We were drinking Aussie and Kiwi wines, especially my favourite Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc. They all went perfectly well together. They were all mouth-wateringly beautiful!

This lady has waited too long.
Three more days. That's all she can hold.

Amberley
2004 Chardonnay
Margaret River