Braised fish Shanghai-style or red-cooked fish
Red-cooking is a Chinese method of braising with soy sauce and sugar from the Shanghai region to produce savoury dishes with a rich mahogany hue. A typical red-cooked dish with pork or beef requires a long period of simmering, but with seafood, it doesn't take long for the flavours to blend. My version is inspired by a recipe from Mango Zhang of Ming Court Restaurant in Hong Kong.
Ingredients
500g whole snapper
3 tbsp vegetable oil
2cm ginger, peeled and thinly sliced
5 spring onions, 4 sliced into 10-cm lengths and 1 thinly sliced, diagonally, to serve
3 tbsp shao hsing rice wine
1 tbsp dark soy sauce
1 tbsp raw sugar or rock sugar, to taste
1 cup water or chicken stock
Method
Pat dry fish and make 2-3 diagonal cuts on each side.
Heat a wok over medium-high heat and add oil and ginger. Reduce heat to medium and once ginger slices begin to brown, remove and set aside. Slide fish in and leave to cook for five minutes, tilting the wok so oil glides around to brown the fish. Repeat on the other side then remove the fish.
Add the 10-centimetre lengths of spring onion, add ginger and stir-fry until the spring onions begin to wilt, about 20 to 30 seconds. Add the rice wine, soy sauce, sugar and water or stock. Bring to a boil and return the fish.
Reduce heat to medium and leave to simmer, spooning sauce over fish now and then, until sauce is reduced by half. Remove fish, pour remaining sauce over and scatter with remaining spring onion to serve.
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