Seafood Recipe Part 2: Hake and Potatoes

I followed up with a rustic-style seafood main course using another pack sent by the purveyor Qwehli (see my previous post for the introduction). Hake is one of the fish species I love working with, for its firm texture and versatility, slightly richer than cod and leaner than black cod. One I received was caught wild off the Atlantic Coast off France and came in vacuumed and frozen pack of around 300g - good for 3-4 person.

Seafood Recipe Part 1 - Red Mullet Ceviche

I have to go back quite a few pages to see the last time I shared a recipe here – August 2018, to be exact. Not that I haven’t been cooking at home, just that I haven’t had much time to trace back the steps to create some of the dishes I have prepared. But when the team from the French seafood purveyor Qwehli offered to send me a few sample products to try recently, I thought I would share my experience with a couple simple recipes.

Fish Market Tour

The chef showed his disbelief when seven of us carried around 20 catty (or 12 kg) of live seafood to his restaurant just round the corner near the Ap Lei Chau market in an afternoon. “I doubt you would be able to finish all of them…” he said, and at the end, he might be right, but we all had a great time travelling to that part of town for some unusual catch, and rest assured all leftovers (not a lot of them) were carried home and didn’t go to waste.

Early Morning at Tsukiji Fish Market

A couple months ago just as I was planning my itinerary for the multiple trips to multiple destination, I suddenly realized it's been a long while since I went to Tsukiji Fish Market and that this might be the last chance to go before the market's moved further away from the city some time next year. So I tweaked my itinerary a little bit by adding an additional stop in Tokyo at the end of my second Japan journey.

Seafood Barbecue in Hachinohe

After leaving the onsen resort of Hoshino Aomori-ya, we made a pit stop at Hachinohe, the second largest city of Aomori Prefecture, before continuing our journey south to Morioka. Specifically we dropped by a local market called Hasshoku Center for a casual seafood lunch.

Cheap Comfort with a Simple Fish Chowder

I made a fish chowder as one of the meals during the forty dollars a day "challenge". It was the first cold(er) day of this winter and I felt like I wanted something warm and comforting. Plus making a stewed soup was one way to make a piece of cheap frozen fish fillet taste better than it normally does, and I could prepare ahead of time and just reheat later.

First in Hong Kong: Sushi Shikon

(I have changed the title of this to reflect the recent change of restaurant name from Sushi Yoshitake Hong Kong to Sushi Shikon)

It's almost surreal as I walked through the familiar sliding door of Sushi Yoshitake, seeing the familiar face of Chef Masahiro Yoshitake working behind the Hinoki wood counter - after all it's hardly 6 months ago when I walked into his restaurant in Tokyo and had the most memorable dinner there. Afterwards as I reflected on that meal in my blog, I did mention I would love to go back some time, but little did I know I would actually have such an opportunity so soon, except this time the venue changed from a non-descript commercial building in the neon-lit back streets of Ginza 8-chome to a boutique hotel in a quiet corner at Hong Kong's Sheung Wan district.

The wow meal at Kikuchi

There's little doubt in my mind that the omakase sushi meal at Sukiyabashi Jiro Roppongi was epic, but if I have to name my favorite meal during the 10-day stay in Tokyo, that belongs to the dinner at Kikuchi, a restaurant in Nishi-azabu which specializes in kappou gomi - which literally means the culinary art of cutting and cooking.

My Summer Dinner Menu - Salt Baked Fish and Pumpkin Soup

Many people thought cooking the whole fish is a very Asian thing - one may immediately relate to the classic Cantonese dish of steamed garoupa with ginger and green onions, or those grilled fish with chili sauce wrapped in banana leaves commonly seen in Thai restaurants. Well, it's only partially true. While this is probably more common in this part of the world, numerous western dishes involved cooking fish in the whole - for example, barramundi or rainbow trout are 2 kinds of fish often cooked as the whole - with barbecue in open fire or baked in an oven the preferred way of cooking.

Having spent a good part of summer in inner part of China where seawater fish was not readily available, I have been craving for fish when I am finally home. So I decided to do a salt-baked fish on this hot and humid Sunday evening.