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.